BETTER THAN THE ROBESPIERRE QUOTE

John Gray in Black  Mass, p. 127, notes that Jeanne Kirkpatrick, a formidable early Reagan conservative, in her last book, Making War to Keep Peace (2007), opposed the Iraq War, as even wingnut Terrence Jeffery noted:

Now, Kirkpatrick's final book, "Making War to Keep the Peace," has been published posthumously. It demonstrates her thinking remained consistent in the decades since "Dictatorships and Double Standards." Most importantly, it draws a line between the morally enlightened realism of President Reagan and the unrealistic moralism of President George W. Bush.

It is unrealistic to expect the U.S. military to build nations — let alone democracies — in cultures we know little about and where the preconditions for representative government don't exist, Kirkpatrick argues.

This is one reason she opposed the invasion of Iraq. "Iraq lacked practically all the requirements for a democratic government: rule of law, an elite with a shared commitment to democratic procedures, a sense of citizenship, and habits of trust and cooperation," she writes. "The administration's failure involved several issues, but the core concern is that they did not seem to have methodically completed the due diligence required for reasoned policy-making because they failed to address the aftermath of the invasion. This, of course, is reflected by the violence, sectarian unrest, ethnic vengeance and bloodshed we see today in Iraq."