LAT op-ed, Matthew Yglesias: D.C. elites want you to shush on Iraq

[DeepModem Mom]

D.C. elites want you to shush on Iraq
Be afraid when the same centrist consensus that has a lousy track record on the war lashes out at partisans.
By By Matthew Yglesias
August 2, 2007

The united states is now well into the fifth year of a war in Iraq that has, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, managed to get more Americans killed than 9/11 while alienating global opinion, undermining our strategic posture around the world, arguably speeding nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran and detracting from American efforts against Al Qaeda. The nation's elites, ever vigilant, have located the source of the problem: Public outrage over the sorry situation.

Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius, for instance, wrote on Sunday that "a good start" in finding an exit from Iraq "would be for Washington partisans to take deep breaths and lower the volume."

That same day, Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton's prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, argued in the Post that, in the foreign policy realm, "the fiercest battle is no longer between the left and the right but between partisanship and bipartisanship." The former, with its hard-right hawks and strident antiwar types, is bad, of course....

***

Citizens who have come to fear letting the powers-that-be sort things out from above have some sound basis for their anxiety -- the bipartisan elite turns out to have a fairly awful track record on Iraq. Indeed, one might begin to suspect that the real agenda here is to try to stifle political debate lest it risk displacing current elites from their cozy positions in favor of some new experts who've shown better judgment.

That, though, would be shrill and partisan. Better to not complain and just assume it'll all turn out for the best.

(Matthew Yglesias blogs for the Atlantic Monthly. matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-yglesias2aug02,0,2013584.story?track=mostviewed-storylevel

[EFerrari]

1. I want to make a t shirt that says " strident anti war partisan". K&R

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Great idea! nt