No Cause for Hypercaution

The lesson learned is that the Iraq War never should have happened in the first place.
Why are George Bush's daughters not serving in Iraq ? Would he have said "bring it on" (like it was some game) if his own flesh and blood was in danger ? I doubt it.

He's doing nothing but justifying past mistakes. The national security reasons for invading Iraq are by no means concrete (and, in fact, were largely false). What the war in Iraq has done is measurably weaken the United States by degrading world opinion of our actions (this is especially true among muslims) and tie down our military forces in a never-ending quagmire, preventing us from dealing with larger threats. Don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons? Too bad, as we no longer have the capability to invade and prevent them. If Israel gets nuked, neo-cons are ultimately to blame.

How these people justify their self-importance by creating a scenario where military action is required is fundamentally anti-christian. Power comes from the Brain and is maintained by the Stick - not the other way around. This man is just another despot-wanna-be and someone should tell him and his ILk that the Third Reich will not rise again in America as long as there is a breath of Freedom in my body..

Some motives for going to war in Iraq have not yet been mentioned, e.g., OIL. One lesson to be learned here is that when a country goes to war for oil, supplies do not increase and the price does not go down. Bush did not order the invasion of Iraq for honorable reasons-- he did it for Halliburton. The problem we face now is simply how to clean up the mess that Bush and his cronies created. Bush and his ilk should not be included in this this process as they have demonstrated time and again that they have less interest in resolving the problems they have created than they do in lining their own pockets. Bush and his kind ought to be treated as the enemies of the State that they are, rather than excusing their actions because of their "incompetence". Let him be unapologetic in prison.

Gerson pulls out a familiar conservative insult ("Some claim... "), suggesting that the left opposes the war out of racism and paternalism: "Some claim the American project in Iraq was doomed from the beginning, because Iraqis and Arabs more broadly are culturally incapable of sustaining democracy. That is a familiar historical charge, made in other periods, against Catholics in Southern Europe, Hindus and Muslims in India, Eastern Orthodox in Eastern Europe, and Confucian cultures across Asia." It's true that some people have made these kinds of claims-- but they tend to come from the right, not the left. Why not name names instead of using the "some claim" dodge? From Charles Krauthammer, one of the neocons cheerleading the war from day one: "We have made a lot of mistakes in Iraq. But when Arabs kill Arabs and Shiites kill Shiites and Sunnis kill all in a spasm of violence that is blind and furious and has roots in hatreds born long before America was even a republic, to place the blame on the one player, the one country, the one military that has done more than any other to try to separate the combatants and bring conciliation is simply perverse. It infantilizes Arabs. It demonizes Americans. It willfully overlooks the plainest of facts: Iraq is their country. We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war."

instilled isnt a word

Is instilled a word?

Isn't it funny - the people with NO war experience (they guy is a bloddy speechwriter) becomes experts in war and peace.
Bush and Co has worked for the betterment of the top 20% wealth percentile - I do not think he truly understand the middle class as he is a trust fund kid.

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We have been led by history to a simple choice....
Uh... no... YOU led us... by which I mean President Bush led us... to not HAVE a choice... so to then claim the inexorable tide of history CAUSED the invasion of Iraq is the lamest defense of hubris I have ever read. And not one sentence of ... we screwed up, it went wrong, we did it wrong, we were wrong... instead it's the same old unavoidable lessons

Warmongers like Gerson are apparently incapable of learning form history, recent or otherwise. Worse still, they are completely amoral and think nothing of the tens of thousands of lives that are killed (i.e. euphemism for murder) as a result of their illegal and immoral policies. It's time for Gerson and his fellow neocons to go into a long retirement - preferably at the nearest federal penitentiary.

What a complete moron. I love listening to Bush Republican types rattle off things that many of us have known all along, and pretend like they're educating the "ignorant masses". So Michael, maybe you're right. Maybe we really do want to be in the business of nation building to the tune of a trillion dollars per venture (we don't but I'll playing along with your pathetic attempt at avoiding responsibilty for the disaster you helped create) but we can NEVER ALLOW MORONS TO BE PRESIDENT EVER AGAIN, because we can't afford to let him learn life lessons on the job that we all have learned much earlier, all the while being arrogant and combative. Your boss is a complete failure at everything he's ever done. I'm GLAD to see you realize that on some level and would be so desperate that you would put out this pathetic tripe to try to justify these horrible policies. Bush policies have resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people, all in the process of learning lessons that any reasonably intelligent person already knew, and you helped him do it. I fully realize that none of you care, because you are, by definition, sociopaths who are unable to empathize with the suffering of others, but I'm appalled that Newsweek would consider you worthy of any kind of consistent contributions, other than as a quick window into the idiocy of the worst president of our lives.

What a complete moron. I love listening to Bush Republican types rattle off things that many of us have known all along, and pretend like they're educating the "ignorant masses". So Michael, maybe you're right. Maybe we really do want to be in the business of nation building to the tune of a trillion dollars per venture (we don't but I'll playing along with your pathetic attempt at avoiding responsibilty for the disaster you helped create) but we can NEVER ALLOW MORONS TO BE PRESIDENT EVER AGAIN, because we can't afford to let him learn life lessons on the job that we all have learned much earlier, all the while being arrogant and combative. Your boss is a complete failure at everything he's ever done. I'm GLAD to see you realize that on some level and would be so desperate that you would put out this pathetic tripe to try to justify these horrible policies. Bush policies have resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 people, all in the process of learning lessons that any reasonably intelligent person already knew, and you helped him do it. I fully realize that none of you care, because you are, by definition, sociopaths who are unable to empathize with the suffering of others, but I'm appalled that Newsweek would consider you worthy of any kind of consistent contributions, other than as a quick window into the idiocy of the worst president of our lives.

I read this and I am stunned. The restraint we will likely show with regard to foreign policy in the future is a direct result of what the past six years have shown us. We did not complete our mission with regard to the source of the attack. Like distracted children, we ran off to change the regime of another country. And essentially adopt it. Our going into Iraq smacks of an incredibly oversized ego. The source of the attack of 9/11 was never caught. How can this be? That question is rhetorical - challenging terrain and loyal supporters still should not mean they get away with it. Every day we are faced with what this war has cost, the waste, the flagrantly overspending contractors, the rubber stamping of ever escalating costs, the cost in lives on both sides, the cost of our international reputation, it is endless. And this writer wants to resell the war and rebrand why it didn't go as planned? He doesn't mislead where his loyalties are and that's fair. But we should be asking ourselves the questions that restraint breeds. We are not cowboys. We have to be thinkers. If you get lost while driving, you don't keep charging ahead, knowing you're going the wrong way. We now hear daily how domestic spending needs to be reduced dramatically. Anything to benefit our own citizens is just flagrant overspending. But any restraint on spending in Iraq is unpatriotic. Any suggestion of leaving is defeat. We can't undo what our leaders have gotten us into. And it is folly of historic proportions. But we can rethink our approach, redefine our role and change the definition of our mission before this saps every resource this country has.

I read this and I am stunned. The restraint we will likely show with regard to foreign policy in the future is a direct result of what the past six years have shown us. We did not complete our mission with regard to the source of the attack. Like distracted children, we ran off to change the regime of another country. And essentially adopt it. Our going into Iraq smacks of an incredibly oversized ego. The source of the attack of 9/11 was never caught. How can this be? That question is rhetorical - challenging terrain and loyal supporters still should not mean they get away with it. Every day we are faced with what this war has cost, the waste, the flagrantly overspending contractors, the rubber stamping of ever escalating costs, the cost in lives on both sides, the cost of our international reputation, it is endless. And this writer wants to resell the war and rebrand why it didn't go as planned? He doesn't mislead where his loyalties are and that's fair. But we should be asking ourselves the questions that restraint breeds. We are not cowboys. We have to be thinkers. If you get lost while driving, you don't keep charging ahead, knowing you're going the wrong way. We now hear daily how domestic spending needs to be reduced dramatically. Anything to benefit our own citizens is just flagrant overspending. But any restraint on spending in Iraq is unpatriotic. Any suggestion of leaving is defeat. We can't undo what our leaders have gotten us into. And it is folly of historic proportions. But we can rethink our approach, redefine our role and change the definition of our mission before this saps every resource this country has.

Gerson's use of terms like "the war on terror" belies an underlying circular and soft - minded logic: How does a country wage war against a tactic? Like "the war on drugs", such emotion - laden rhetoric serves only to sidestep a difficult truth: There are problems in this world that cannot be solved with force, military or otherwise. Our country made a catastrophic blunder when we invaded Iraq, and the sooner we own up to it, the sooner we'll move beyond it.