Try, Try Again

“The liberation of Iraq was a good idea; its execution is merely lacking.” Thus do numerous supporters of Saddam Hussein’s ouster assess our current problems in Mesopotamia. Although numerous conservative critics remain hopeful about Iraq’s future—Norman Podhoretz and Victor Davis Hanson come to mind—a number of pundits have taken this line of argument.

“Balderdash,” say our left-wing friends. The quagmire in Iraq is the direct result of the stupid, myopic, ahistorical idea to invade the sovereign nation in the first place. To blame the aftermath of the Iraq War on the war’s execution, they say, is foolish and disgusting. It was impossible to bring democracy to a country like Iraq, they suggest, demonstrating the dehumanization of Middle Easterners that many quizzically see as pro-Arab.

We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” count ourselves among that shrinking group of Americans who don’t think that the fat lady has sung in Iraq. In fact, we have the sneaking suspicion that, if the mainstream media today were covering World War II, they would have clamored for FDR’s impeachment already.

And Truman? Oh, forget it: How, they’d bellow, can you bring democracy to a country like Japan? Maybe, just maybe the same folks who harp and harpie on the horrors of Guantanamo would have been slightly troubled by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—even though it was ordered by a Democrat.

Yet this is not, dear reader, the focus of today’s lucubration. Rather, we pine to make a point about the folks who scoff at the “problem of execution” line of argument. For some reason, these lads and lasses take a rather hard line on this issue—though in regard to other matters they prove far more forgiving.

Take, for example, the topic of Communism. How many times have you endured the following argument from your pals on the Left: “Communism wasn’t necessarily a bad idea. It was merely executed improperly”? We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have overheard that line umpteen times, most often from people who live in lovely homes in the suburbs. Volvo drivers of the world, unite!

It’s very quizzical, is it not? To our buddies on the Left, the civil strife in Iraq is proof positive that the case for invasion was wrong and evil. But the millions and millions killed by dozens of Communist governments during the course of the 20th century don’t prove Marx, Engels, and countless faculty lounges wrong.

The liberation of Iraq was attempted once, and it is still too soon to determine what the result will be. The world witnessed numerous Communist governments, and they brought disaster and mass-murder every time. The Left sure does argue funny.