Getting Iraq Wrong - Michael Ignatieff is still wrong.

[Cassandra]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05iraq-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin

"We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.

The people who truly showed good judgment on Iraq predicted the consequences that actually ensued but also rightly evaluated the motives that led to the action. They did not necessarily possess more knowledge than the rest of us. They labored, as everyone did, with the same faulty intelligence and lack of knowledge of Iraq’s fissured sectarian history. What they didn’t do was take wishes for reality. They didn’t suppose, as President Bush did, that because they believed in the integrity of their own motives everyone else in the region would believe in it, too. They didn’t suppose that a free state could arise on the foundations of 35 years of police terror. They didn’t suppose that America had the power to shape political outcomes in a faraway country of which most Americans knew little. They didn’t believe that because America defended human rights and freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo it had to be doing so in Iraq. They avoided all these mistakes."

This makes me want to rip this guy's head off!
Crappy straw man! Invading Iraq was stupid regardless of ideology (and he's wrong about my ideology, too).

[GliderGuider]

1. Michael "Torture Lite" Ignatieff

That was his nickname during the Liberal Party leadership convention. I was so pleased they didn't elect him.

From Wikipedia:

"Ignatieff is a staunch supporter of interventionism, and was in favour of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, despite the conflict's relative unpopularity in Canada, and recently in the United States."

[bemildred]

2. Boy, that is some major league butt-covering there.

Aside for all the erroneous projection about why people who opposed the war did so, his basic argument is that if you are wrong for the right reasons that is better than being right for the wrong reasons, an attitude that will empty your wallet real fast at Vegas or on the markets.

[Cassandra]

3. Thank you for boiling that down so nicely.

I was too pissed off to do so.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. He still has much to learn about the situation

"They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil"

That still looks like the primary reason for the invasion (not just Iraqi oil, but the oil of the whole Middle East - Bush wanted a central garrison, and to threaten others in the area that the USA must be complied with. The profits they foresaw for Halliburton, etc. were an added bonus). Yes, Bush also wanted to get electoral advantage in the US by producing a Mission Accomplished moment (especially after screwing up getting bin Laden 'dead or alive'), but those who said Bush was only after the oil got the bare essentials of the Iraqi invasion right. The later justifications of 'spreading democracy' etc. don't hold up to scrutiny - there are plenty of non-democracies in the world for which Bush hasn't manufactured reasons for invading. He chose one in the world's greatest oil producing region for an obvious reason.