It was 11 years ago today when Thomas Friedman
wrote his iconic NYT column declaring that no WMDs need be found in Iraq to justify our (as he put it elsewhere, on
Charlie Rose show) "suck on this" invasion. "Mr. Bush doesn't owe the world any explanation for missing chemical
weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue). It
is clear that in ending Saddam's tyranny, a huge human engine for mass
destruction has been broken. The thing about Saddam's reign is that when
you look at that skull, you don't even know what period it came from --
his suppression of the Kurds or the Shiites, his insane wars with Iran
and Kuwait, or just his daily brutality." (Much more in new edition of
my book on Iraq and the media,
So Wrong for So Long.)
Whether you were for or against this war, whether you preferred that
the war be done with the U.N.'s approval or without it, you have to feel
good that right has triumphed over wrong. America did the right thing
here. It toppled one of the most evil regimes on the face of the earth,
and I don't think we know even a fraction of how deep that evil went.
Fair-minded people have to acknowledge that. Who cares if we now find
some buried barrels of poison? Do they carry more moral weight than
those buried skulls? No way.
So why isn't everyone celebrating this triumph?
1 comment:
Apparently, Friedman is just one of the many comedy writers at the NYT, which posted this funny on the front page today: "President Obama said his policies were based on a workmanlike tending to American priorities that might lack the high drama of a wartime presidency but also avoided ruinous mistakes". The jokes just write themselves.
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