A PROMINENT NEO-CON COMES CLEAN ABOUT IRAQ

(h/t Memeo)

It's hard to overestimate how devastating this interview of Lawrence Kaplan in Speigel Online¹ is to all the remaining BushBots and other war whores. Kaplan co-wrote "The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission" with William "The Bloody" Kristol.

Here are some excerpts:

- The political situation, admittedly, remains a disaster.

- I think it is impossible to disentangle the progress that comes from the tribes switching sides, from the new American strategy, from the fact that Shiite radical Muqtada al-Sadr has stood down and the surge. My sense is that the influx of 30,000 new American troops holds the least explanatory power. Most important were the tribes. And their switching sides predates the surge.

- Before the war, Iraq was an abstraction, an idea. Once you have seen the place you can't help but be much more cautious with the ideas that you put on the table.

- So on the whole the effects have been huge and overwhelmingly negative. I don't see anything good that's come from this war, I'm afraid.

- But the democratization of Iraq was never the main reason for the invasion, even though that may have been the rhetoric.

- SPIEGEL ONLINE: So for the record: Was the Iraq war a mistake?

Kaplan: Yes. Knowing what we know today, definitely. I know this is political poison in some quarters, but respect to reality demands this answer. However, this is a completely different question from whether or not having invaded Iraq we should stay or leave. On this I am equally clear: We turned this country upside down and we have an obligation to put it back together again.

- SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Iraq war was percieved as the one chance the neocons had in our time to prove that their theories were right. Is neoconservatism already a historical footnote?

Kaplan: The near-term argument here is that if John McCain wins the presidential election, neoconservatism will have been vindicated. Because by voting him into office, people will have tacitly given their endorsement to that sort of foreign policy. His advisers are the very people we are arguing about.

¹May 06, 2008
NEOCONSERVATIVE LAWRENCE KAPLAN ON IRAQ
'I Don't See Anything Good That Has Come from this War'