War be upon you
A remarkable feat of what Jon Elster calls ’sour grapes’ can be observed these days among US neo-Jacobins, and much of it in the once-respected Washington Post. The other week, neocon shill Charles Krauthammer extolled the goal of “getting the Iraqis to fight the civil war themselves.” Now Caleb Carr, the military historian and juvenile blowhard who as late as July 2005 fulminated in The Wall Street Journal about how the mere thought of leaving Iraq engenders terrorism, is suddenly all for it: “Let Them Have Their Civil War,” he demands in the WaPo. His argument is that the Americans had their go in the 1860s, and so should not begrudge the Iraqis the right to an ennobling carnage of their own.
I think this gives a whole new dimension to the concept of being ‘pro-war’.
Meanwhile, more recent history is also repeating itself, though whether as tragedy or farce I cannot quite decide.
