Enough of the Self-Servers on Iraq

Should we have sent more troops to Iraq? Did Defense Secretary Rumsfeld criminally omit to plan for the Iraq occupation? Right now, observes Victor Davis Hanson there is a plague of retired senior officers plugging books on TV. And they

offer sharp interviews about our supposed strategic and operational blunders in Iraq — imperial hubris, too few troops, wrong war, wrong place, and other assorted lapses.

Imagine if we had talking heads second-guessing every action in World War II!

Then there is Iran, for which there are three “bad” options, and

on which talking heads can blather about the dangers of "preemption," but without either responsibility for, or maturity in, advocating a viable alternative.

In Iraq we might have sent more troops. But more troops doesn’t necessarily mean a better outcome. “More troops may have facilitated Iraqization — or, in the style of Vietnam, created perpetual dependency.” Who knows?

What we need, then, are not more self-appointed ethicists, but far more humility and recognition that in this war nothing is easy. Choices have been made, and remain to be made, between the not very good and the very, very bad. Most importantly, so far, none of our mistakes has been unprecedented, fatal to our cause, or impossible to correct.

And in any endeavor, let us never forget, there are always going to be mistakes. It comes with the territory, as Dan Rather used to say.

It’s easy to play the game of outrage politics, and dish out blame on national TV. But in the real world people have to make decisions based on the information they have at the time. After they have made the decision the facts on the ground change, and it turns out that many of the decisions were wrong.

It may be, for instance, that the whole Islamo-fascist eruption is an ephemeral flash in the pan that will soon fade away. Or it may turn out to be a titanic clash of civilizations.

If you were the leader of the United States, the nation preeminent in the world for the idea and the vision of a global commonwealth of democratic capitalism, what should you do? Take Islamism seriously as a force to be stopped, or just ignore it?