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In this week marking the third anniversary of the start of George Bush's deceptively justified and incompetently waged war in Iraq, many pundits, commentators and bloggers are looking back. The Web lets us see who said what, when pretty easily. (See, for instance, Daniel Radosh's devastating review of the remarkable waffling of David Brooks.)
I checked my own archives and found these two posts, which remain, I think, accurate, defensible and consistent with everything that's happened since. I don't claim any great clairvoyance; the insight I provided mostly came from a Thomas Powers radio interview. I'd certainly be happier for the U.S., Iraq and the world if my gloom had proven unwarranted.
But it was the president's job to look ahead and plan for different outcomes. His failures will haunt us and our children in the form of generations-spanning unpaid bills; the physical and psychic scars to hosts of returning American warfighters; festering anger towards the U.S. among throngs of the people we bunglingly liberated; the bright new anti-American banner we have handed our enemies in the war on the 9/11 perpetrators; and of course the graves of thousands of Americans and untold numbers of Iraqis. Even the best-case outcomes from here on in Iraq, unlikely as they are, cannot undo this volume of damage.
I also found this post, a week later:
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Before the war started, if one suggested that the US might be underestimating the problems of an invasion of Iraq, it was considered "helping Saddam"; now that the war is on, discussing those problems as they unfold is considered "helping Saddam." Apparently there is no appropriate time to challenge what may well prove a misguided policy. |
I note that this attitude -- with a slight shift in wording from "helping Saddam" to "helping the insurgents" or "helping the terrorists" -- has continued in the three years since, during which anyone who has chosen to offer a sober perspective on the horrors and disasters of a misbegotten war has been accused by the administration and its henchpeople of betraying the troops and comforting the enemy.
It's that deep engagement with reality -- that willingness to confront the world as we find it, not as we wish it -- that has provided us with so much success in post-Saddam Iraq. </sarcasm>
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Somehow I missed the fact that this humble blog made CNet's "Top 100" list some time ago, in the "Tech Business" category. Thanks, CNet! I'll try to live up to the billing. I've generally adopted the "blog is a mirror of the blogger" philosophy here; rather than trying to niche-ify the blog as a product (everything you always wanted to know about ROUTERS!), which is certainly a good business strategy, I've allowed the blog to reflect my own interests across tech, politics and culture. I can fairly well guarantee you won't find much sports or celebrity news here -- but beyond that, almost anything goes.
I have some new ideas and approaches to the blog that I intend to start experimenting with when work on my book, Dreaming in Code, is done. The handful of you who have been paying attention may recall that I completed a first draft of my manuscript before the holidays. Well, we're still in the middle of editing, and making progress. I hope to be done soon, and when we are, I'll be posting a lot more about the book and related subjects (basically, software development and its discontents). For those of you who've inquired in e-mail, wondering as to my health, or the health of the project: sorry for the slowness. Publishing, like software, has its own rhythms.
In other news on the "self" front, I am proud to see this site's homely name over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation on a short list of blogs that helped that group with a membership drive last November. It's fine company to be in. (And if you didn't join back then, you can still join now.)
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