Adding nothing to the sum of human knowledge

http://www.slate.com/id/2186757/

Why Did We Get It Wrong? Five years on, "liberal hawks" consider their support for the Iraq war.

Eh? I have a few problems with this project. Read down the list- 'How did I get Iraq wrong?' Well, unless you took the decision to intervene in Iraq, you didn't do anything. And the answer to the question, was President Bush and the Security Council wise to intervene in Iraq, that judgement is almost impossible to make in 2008. For one thing, the shooting hasn't stopped yet, the Iraqi central government has had virtually no opportunities to countervail some centripetal forces against the centrifugal ones currently dragging the country apart. Money from oil will be a big one of those, latent and present nationalism is another one. In twenty years, we might start to get the overall picture of how the Iraq intervention impacted on America, Iraq and the rest of the world. Right now thats impossible. We might come to see Iraq as a minor conflict in comparison with other events of the early 21st century- we just don't know yet.

Saying that, World War II is still brimful of contentious issues. How important was it to Britain and America to defeat Communist partisans while at the same time winning the war against German fascists, for instance? Is it possible that Britains SOE actually shopped some communists to the Gestapo? Not only possible but likely, in my view. Will it be possible in sixty years to write a history of Iraq that will be completely uncontroversial? Probably not. But right now, today, George W. Bush, the man who ordered the intervention is still President of the United States. There is no possibility of writing history, even its first draft, while the major players are STILL major players. Its not possible, and probably harmful.

Pretending to write history when you are actually writing political polemic is a really unhelpful thing to do. Especially when you lard into that professional ego and 'liberal' groupthink. What are you going to end up with? Something that adds to the overall understanding of Iraq in its last five years? I don't think so.