Tuesday, August 9, 2005
Christopher Hitchens asks many good questions:
...How can so many people watch this as if they were spectators, handicapping and rating the successes and failures from some imagined position of neutrality? Do they suppose that a defeat in Iraq would be a defeat only for the Bush administration?...
Well, yes, actually. The pathology and self-conviction run so deep at this point, that those who have themselves convinced that Iraq was no threat to us, that Saddam wasn't interested in WMD, that the carnage there is only a by-product of the Coalition presence, that the problems in Iraq would disappear coinciding with their disapperance from the front-page of the local papers -- these people who's numbers are far from insignificant -- do, indeed, believe that a failure to leave Iraq in a stable state and an immediate and unconditional withdrawal would be nothing worse than a black eye for George Bush personally. And that is not, for those so convinced, an undesirable outcome. Believe it.
