Sunday, May 01, 2005


Project Much?
I should be beyond surprise of this sort, but it's still a little striking to see self-righteous dudgeon and disingenuous horseshit combined in such close proximity and copious quantity. Glenn's reminding everyone of his "link-rich refutation" of the "revisionist" claim that democracy promotion wasn't part of the rationale for invading Iraq.

Since most of his readers presumably were, like, alive and paying attention in the run-up to the war, I can only assume that this is a case of self deception, in which case it's a fairly heroic instance of the phenomenon. The argument appears to be this: Since the value of ousting a despot and incubating a democracy was mentioned as a fringe benefit of removing this dire and immediate threat to American national security, anyone who regards the emphasis placed on it now as an ex-post rationalization for a mistaken policy is engaged in "revisionist history." Look at all the speeches we can link to where Bush used the words "democracy" and "Iraq" in the same sentence!

Seriously now. We all know that this was advanced as a benefit of the invasion, but gimme a break. If someone sells you "a Porche with a nice stereo system" and you then discover you've actually bought a Dodge Dart, are you supposed to be mollified because it actually has had a nice stereo system installed?...

...And as a commenter reminds me, of course, we effectively offered all along to do nothing military if Saddam "disarmed." How does that square with democratization being a significant reason (as opposed to a fringe benefit) for the invasion? Our own government was pretty explicit about it not being a good enough reason on its own: No WMD meant no invasion....