Thursday, January 27, 2005
NAMES NAMED
Nobody is safe! Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh reviews the pre- and post-Iraq attitudes of some prominent opinionists:
If President Bush’s re-election demonstrated wide support for his “forward strategy of freedom�—the aggressive region-building scheme embodied in the Iraq war—you never would have known it from the people who took that strategy most seriously and argued most eloquently for it.
Cavanaugh then launches into Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Fred Kaplan, Kenneth Pollack, Fareed Zakaria, Jeff Jarvis, Andrew Sullivan, and Michael Ignatieff. You may disagree with much of Cavanaugh’s analysis - I do - but his eloquently brutal conclusion is irresistible:
Perhaps in their ideal world, where President Kerry and Secretary of State Biden run the show, such precision is possible. In the event, they must now either admit they were wrong or stick with the war Bush delivered for them. If it succeeds, perhaps they’ll take some of the credit. They’ve already shown they won’t take any of the blame.
Reactions from those mentioned above will be lively. Maybe they should be posted here.