Among the most annoying of TNR tropes is the flight to meta-analysis as soon as the recognition dawns that the magazine can't win an argument. And here, it pains and saddens me to say, TNR embraces it like a security blanket. First, TNR concedes that nothing it can possibly desire is likely to occur: "The U.S. presence in Iraq will not last long. Perhaps this new political reality will serve as shock therapy, scaring Iraq's warring factions into negotiations that can prevent the worst sectarian warfare. But perhaps not." The "perhaps not" is an intellectual prophylactic: it changes the subject before one can ask what in the world the U.S. could tell the Sunnis and the Shiites that could make them believe that that their interests are better served by peace than by war. If TNR has any idea what it means by this, it has an obligation to say so. But -- and, my friends, I can tell you, because I went to those Thursday editorial meetings for years -- these people have no idea what they mean.
No matter. Then the magazine calls for super-duper diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors -- but the kind of diplomacy that rushes blood to TNR's crotch: "It, too, must be brutal: It must include threats and promises, alliances and coalitions -- with the threat of being left out. A new campaign should lay the groundwork for agreements prior to the calling of a peace conference that would include Iraq's parties and its neighbors, as well as the United States, the European Union, and Russia." Hysterically, the magazine concedes in the next sentence that it has no idea what the endgame of that diplomacy ought to be -- or, in TNR-speak, "That's not clear." As long as we bloviate around the negotiating table, apparently, the magazine will be satisfied. (In this sense, TNR's posture is modeled after Bush's approach to North Korea.) Then, finally, comes the coup de grace. Now that TNR has dispensed with its empty attempt to discuss what ought to be done about Iraq, it comes to the real question:
[A]s we pore over the lessons of this misadventure, we do not conclude that our past misjudgments warrant a rush into the cold arms of "realism." Realism, yes; but not "realism." American power may not be capable of transforming ancient cultures or deep hatreds, but that fact does not absolve us of the duty to conduct a foreign policy that takes its moral obligations seriously. As we attempt to undo the damage from a war that we never should have started, our moral obligations will not vanish, and neither will our strategic needs.Please believe me when I say that this makes me want to cry, since I used to love working for TNR. But the magazine is setting itself up for making the same mistake over and over and over again. This is the emptiest of evasions -- a fetishization of "seriousness" without ever actually being serious. In one of my last pieces for them, I wrote that "Faced with a disastrous war, the most important consideration is not 'Were we wrong?' but 'Why were we wrong?' and 'How can we avoid being so wrong in the future?'" I begged TNR during my time there to address these last questions. But now it's dawned on me that my former friends never will.
--Spencer Ackerman
