Saturday, April 10, 2004
History of the Iraq War, Draft Two
If journalism is the first draft of history, then, a year after the fall of Baghdad, a second draft of the Iraq War is just about ready for publication. And it goes something like this. . . While the 9/11 highjackers were living the U.S. or in friendly countries like Germany as they plotted their attack on our power, our weath and our perceived decadence, the Bush Administration was preoccupied with an outdated, state-centric view of threats against the West.
After the attacks that should've changed. It didn't, and we invaded Iraq, which was then Number 6 on any rational person's list of our top 5 threats and a country that and did far less to support terrorism than non-state networks like al Qaeda. Bush and his team of rigid Cold Warriors failed to recognize this sea change in 2001. With Iraq turning out so badly, let's hope they don't also pass up the latest opportunity to match the response to the threat. Robert Wright sums up this case nicely in an essay from Friday's Times Op-Ed page. His juxtaposition of Condoleeza Rice's testimony with the bad news from Iraq contained in CNN's "crawl" is especially powerful.
-- One Hearing, Two Worlds (NY Times)
If journalism is the first draft of history, then, a year after the fall of Baghdad, a second draft of the Iraq War is just about ready for publication. And it goes something like this. . . While the 9/11 highjackers were living the U.S. or in friendly countries like Germany as they plotted their attack on our power, our weath and our perceived decadence, the Bush Administration was preoccupied with an outdated, state-centric view of threats against the West.
After the attacks that should've changed. It didn't, and we invaded Iraq, which was then Number 6 on any rational person's list of our top 5 threats and a country that and did far less to support terrorism than non-state networks like al Qaeda. Bush and his team of rigid Cold Warriors failed to recognize this sea change in 2001. With Iraq turning out so badly, let's hope they don't also pass up the latest opportunity to match the response to the threat. Robert Wright sums up this case nicely in an essay from Friday's Times Op-Ed page. His juxtaposition of Condoleeza Rice's testimony with the bad news from Iraq contained in CNN's "crawl" is especially powerful.
-- One Hearing, Two Worlds (NY Times)
