Tuesday, June 24, 2008

If wishes were horses...

...beggars would ride. And if all journalists were like David Brooks, I'd read more newspapers. He doesn't give in to cant and makes an uncompromising effort to be fair and correct, however awkward that may be. While happily and frankly admitting the failures of the current administration, he is among a minority who openly declare the "surge" in Iraq a surprising success.

The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.

No argument there.

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