Jonathan Rauch on the War and the President
Don't let the title ("The War Was Right, The President Was Wrong") put you off--Rauch doesn't defend or even seem to accept that first bit.
At any rate, this is a an admirably honest essay in which Rauch criticizes his own faulty pre-war positions. In short, he has roughly an HRCesque position: it wasn't stupid to give a president the authority to invade Iraq--it was stupid to give this president the authority to invade Iraq.
Of course I disagree with even this more minimal claim. It might have been sensible to give some president or other the authority to invade Iraq on or before September 10th 2001...and it might have made sense after the war and reconstruction in Afghanistan was completed and OBL and al Qaeda were annihilated. But in early 2003, it simply made no sense.
Don't let the title ("The War Was Right, The President Was Wrong") put you off--Rauch doesn't defend or even seem to accept that first bit.
At any rate, this is a an admirably honest essay in which Rauch criticizes his own faulty pre-war positions. In short, he has roughly an HRCesque position: it wasn't stupid to give a president the authority to invade Iraq--it was stupid to give this president the authority to invade Iraq.
Of course I disagree with even this more minimal claim. It might have been sensible to give some president or other the authority to invade Iraq on or before September 10th 2001...and it might have made sense after the war and reconstruction in Afghanistan was completed and OBL and al Qaeda were annihilated. But in early 2003, it simply made no sense.
posted by Winston Smith at
1:18 PM
1 Comments:
The argument from prudence re Iraq is a strong one. Still, the drift of the Bremer years seems to be the worst of it.
Too much inshallah, we'd say here in the West.
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