I was going to write a response to TNR's breathtakingly bad "We Were Wrong" editorial, but I couldn't possibly better what their former employee Spackerman says:
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.
Read the whole thing. For TNR, it should be no surprise that "We Were Wrong" actually equates to "They are wrong." The magazine only admits error as a way to sucker punch those they believe are even wronger than they -- "the realists," whose understanding that "American power may not be capable of transforming ancient cultures or deep hatreds...does not absolve us of the duty to conduct a foreign policy that takes its moral obligations seriously." This comes in an editorial explaining that the magazine's attempt to "take its moral obligations seriously" led it to commit a great and grave misjudgment.
To limn that sentence would be an actual exploration of why the magazine was wrong. To let it languish as platitude, however, is to seek credit for an apology that denies the actual utility of regret: Learning. This is an apology to all "whom might have been offended by the magazine's actions." It is not an admission of wrongdoing, nor evidence of change. And so it is worthless. There is no growth here, only an admission of defeat that denies all implication of systemic error. The magazine wasn't wrong, reality was. And TNR deeply regrets that.
