N.Z. Bear rejects tainted honey
Zounds! A conservative agrees that the looting of Iraqi museums and cultural sites with little or no intervention by American troops is a disgrace. That is more surprising than today's earthquake. Saying Mickey Kaus does not go far enough in his criticism, N.Z. Bear follows through.
Following the chain of evidence and logic Kaus himself lays out, it's clear to me that the looting of the Iraqi National Museum in particular, and the chaos following Baghdad's fall in general, must unavoidably be chalked up in the "screwup" category for U.S. forces.
Don't misinterpret, Bear has not cashed in his Bush chips. He still supports the invasion of Iraq and believes the Iraqis were "liberated." However, considering the unwillingness of many conservatives to admit the administration can do anything wrong, I am surprised to see a blogger from the Right take this stance.
The war is still a tremendous success. But: it is crucial that those of us who supported the war be willing to stand up and actually acknowledge when some things genuinely do go wrong.
The Right Wing blogger at Tobacco Road Fogey is still ducking the issue, as I would expect.
It probably was a situation of not enough soldiers to do too many things at one point in time. And I'm inclined to give our troops the benefit of the doubt in this kind of situation.
He claims, after looking at a few maps of Baghdad, that U.S. forces must not have been able to get to the National Museum and protect it, or perhaps it was low priority. Right. Fogey ignores the looting of other buildings.
Hesiod at CounterSpin, the liberal blog with attitude, is also impressed with Bear's clear-sightedness. (Make that attitude, but no link to the Diva, which is shameful.)
. . .Even prominent warbloggers like N.Z. Bear are now admitting that not securing the National Museum [and hospitals!] from looters was a major screw up by the Bush administration.
But, he doesn't believe Bear goes far enough. He saves his stronger ammo for a bigger target.
Hesiod is not at all pleased with Glenn Reynolds, who he accuses of what amounts to dereliction of duty as a leading blogger. Noting the Instapundit's blindness, he says:
By focusing ONLY on the looting, Glenn is deliberately obscuring the major problems the United States has in post war Iraq. He ridiculously claims that we who opposed the War of Bush Aggression are focusing on the looting because that's the only thing we can complain about!
In "Where's the new regime?" Ming the Mechanic clearly and concisely cuts to the chase.
Yeah, it is a bit of problem when you engineer a coup in another country, but you're trying to pretend that you didn't. Or maybe rather that you brought down the government in that country, and you destroyed its infrastructure, and now you're bringing in a few expats who you think you can groom to run the country instead, but you're still trying to pretend you're not the new government.
I cliche that. Until the Right realizes it has made a mess that will take decades to clean up, it is still missing most of the point about the invasion of Iraq. The destruction of Baghdad's museum and other public buildings is disgraceful, but so is the entire occupation, if it turns out the way I expect to it to. It doesn't look like conservatives are going to see the greater light anytime soon.
