He Blew It on Iraq, but Makes Sense Now: Peter Beinart’s Thoughtful Lessons
If there is one Iraq war hawk who has properly grappled with his mistake it has to be Peter Beinart. In fact, he’s written entire books about his own — and America’s — moral failings and the need to confront them with a cold and unsparing honesty if it’s to face threats in the modern world. Indeed, if there’s one Iraq war hawk worth talking to about what’s happening in Iraq today, it’s probably Beinart simply for the fact that he’s one of the few who’s thought this issue through. So, it’s also worth considering his opinion that contrary to popular lefty opinion, the media should be willing to interview the Very Serious People (Paul Krugman’s shorthand for “experts” who never have to account for their failures) — as long as its members will agree to address their own responsibility for the situation.
After all, they continue to have a major influence on the direction of Republican national security and foreign policy. Watching TV over the past couple of days you would almost think that it’s 2002 all over again from the hysterical rhetoric pouring from the mouths of Republican officials. From John McCain’s maniacal insistence that we should have stayed in Iraq forever (“We had that war won, and we blew it!”) to Lindsay Graham’s hysterical pearl clutching (“We’ve got another Benghazi in the making here! What I heard in there scared the hell out of me!”) to Congressman Mike Rogers’ incoherent fearmongering (“an al Qaeda army is marching across Baghdad!”) it’s fairly obvious that foreign policy debacle which resulted in a failed presidency slinking out of office with a 28 percent approval rating didn’t provoke any mistrust for their “experts” among the right wingers. If anything, they seem to think they were somehow proved right because the whole place has gone to hell in a handbasket.
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