Irresponsibility is not changed by a half-way decent Day every six months

A sickening headline at the Washington Post.

For Bush, Validation in Iraq


We've had so many self-proclaimed turing points in Iraq that fittingly the Bush Administration's policy would be a perfect NASCAR race (with RIGHT turns for left).

But it doesn't change things.

It is still much more likely that Iraq ends up win a worse state than it was by leaving Hussein isolated and surrounded. No amount of post-invasion spin and proclaimation that "the World is better off without Saddam" can really change that evident fact.

Indeed this is one of the real examples of the bugaboos of arguing this issue. So overwhelming were the denunciations of the obviously vile Hussein and the requisite cheers for his overthrow by "our brave boys and girls" that a rational approach has been impossible.

For if the world was actually better in early March 2003, then, well we are complete fucks aren't we?

But that is about the sum of it.

As cruel and vile as Hussein was, for the world outside of Iraq (and bluntly for the now nearly two years since he was tossed inside Iraq) was more stable and safer with the dictator there as a known, and toothless tiger (for he was clearly toothless outside Iraq).

I suppose this is a reality only a middling anonymous blogger can put forth (you more prominant people must shut up), but taking a survey of the landscape it is true. Just because Hussein was an evil motherfucker, doesn't mean that one cannot step back and take a glance at how we have fucked things up (and it's a collective we, as much as we can lay this on Bush, and he obviously has a healthier portion than most, it is "my" country doing this). Tens of thousands have died, and what do we have in Iraq? No matter what they tell you, nobody really knows.

A mature foreign policy recognizes the devils, but also realizes that when you decide to remove the pieces abruptly, when you don't have to, you really do not know what the hell you will get. Ask the Hohenzollens and the Romanovs how deciding to completely shake up the stable but unsatisfactory known works out.

And despite it all, despite all the lessons of history, Bush decided that the status quo was intolerable, having no idea, and still having no idea what he would get. That is not mature leadership, it is the action of a spoiled brat leading a disinterested and immature people.

It could work out to some passable situation, but I doubt it, and no matter how things work out, it came at a high cost and does not make the decision any more correct.