Messianic Goat

It is reported that in a new Vanity Fair article, many prominent neo-conservatives who once advised Dubya on military matters came out to criticize the handling of the war in Iraq, sometimes using languages more harsh than the Democrats. What is interesting is not that they criticize the war but on what points are they criticizing it. They do not think that the war is wrong, nor the justification for the war was wrong, nor the idea that this war would solve any problem is wrong, but that it was simple poorly executed. One of standard patronizing retort conservatives use on liberals is that they are naïve, not understanding the messy and evil nature of the world. Now who is naïve? War is messy, hardly ever achieves its intended goals, and even if it does, the price, both human and material, is far beyond what is expected. Even if this war were executed perfectly, Iraq would still be a complete disaster, with ‘reformed’ Ba’athist in power and most infrastructures destroyed. That is hardly achieving the goals of the war. The most fundamental fault of this war is the idea of it—the idea that a war would be the first step to peace in the Middle East. It is like taking arsenic to cure lead poisoning. Sure the war is severely mismanaged, but who urged these incompetents on their present path? Who but Mr. Perle and Company? Now things are going bad and they figure it is time to save themselves by blaming it all on their ex-messiah. This is not even Monday-morning quarterbacking but the worst kind of scapegoat—selling out ones own to save oneself.