Rod Dreher writes that since the war in Iraq began, he is no longer confident he can separate his emotion from his judgment, place implicit trust in government institutions, assume the Republican Party is better on foreign policy than the Democrats, and believe the military has the ability to change cultures. He has also grown more pessimistic about the state of human political nature. Andrew Sullivan says he'll ponder what he, too, has learned, and asks the same of his readers.
What have I learned? Well, nothing, really. Like many, I opposed the war from the beginning. Opposition to the war was a major part of my inner experience growing up in America at the dawn of the 21st century, particularly coming from a working-class area in a red state where many of my peers joined the military, and most of the others were patriotic to the point of nationalism.
I've learned most conservatives will look for any and all hints of possible "victories" in wartime before throwing in the towel -- Sullivan is as guilty of this as anybody.
Then, when they finally come along to something resembling the views many have expressed all along, they're perceived to be intellectually courageous and morally righteous. I don't mean that I don't appreciate what Dreher is saying here. I do. While I disagree with him on many, many things, I don't doubt his intellectual honesty, and I appreciate his seriousness. Somewhat the same for Sullivan, though to a lesser degree. But the sort of thinking Dreher and Sullivan exhibit here promotes a sense that the Serious Person's Thinking is one that evolved from support of the invasion, to critiques of the plan, and finally to an admission they were wrong all along.
But this isn't the most admirable or correct mental journey. The one that knew from the start this whole Iraq mess was senseless is.
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