Reuel Marc Gerecht celebrates President Bush's creative destruction:
Although the White House often seems bedeviled by the task of defining "victory" in Iraq, it really isn't that hard. Flawed and ugly as it is, Iraqi democracy stumbles forward. The Shiite and Sunni Arabs are slowly establishing representative political arrangements within their own communities that allow some diversity of opinion.
Leaving aside the fact that as this "victory" as Gerecht defines it, in addition to obviously representing a monumental climbdown from each and every one of the numerous justifications previously offered for the war, does not actually add up to "an Iraqi state" as much as to "a series of armed militia communities we're going to call Iraq," was this outcome really worth 4,000 American dead, over 28,000 wounded, and, by the end of 2008, some $600 billion in American treasure? Was it worth over half a million Iraqi dead, many times that maimed, and some 3 million displaced? Was it worth creating an open source laboratory for terrorists to develop and sharpen their tactics against the most technologically advanced military in the world, enabling them disseminate those tactics around the world via internet? Was it worth losing a thousand dollars at poker just to win twenty at blackjack?
The remainder of the article takes neocon propaganda to the level of farce. Gerecht tries to put the best possible face on President Bush's flawed, ugly, and incoherent Middle East policy, which stumbles forward as courtiers like Gerecht trail behind, praising the monarch for his genius and assuring him that the blighted wasteland he surveys is a verdant oasis.
--Matthew Duss
