New York Times Op-Ed- Admitting Your Wrong on Iraq

Tip of the Hat to Pro Ecclesia for directing me to the New York Times OP Ed by David Brooks. Mr Brooks has joined his voice to such folks at the Washington Post Editoral Board in recent days that are screaming for certain folks to get their heads out of their collective asses as to the situation in Iraq

David Brooks sort of lays it all out as to the Success of the surge in Iraq and other matters at his Op-Ed at the The Bush Paradox
He ends his piece:

The whole episode is a reminder that history is a complicated thing. The traits that lead to disaster in certain circumstances are the very ones that come in handy in others. The people who seem so smart at some moments seem incredibly foolish in others.

The cocksure war supporters learned this humbling lesson during the dark days of 2006. And now the cocksure surge opponents, drunk on their own vindication, will get to enjoy their season of humility. They have already gone through the stages of intellectual denial. First, they simply disbelieved that the surge and the Petraeus strategy was doing any good. Then they accused people who noticed progress in Iraq of duplicity and derangement. Then they acknowledged military, but not political, progress. Lately they have skipped over to the argument that Iraq is progressing so well that the U.S. forces can quickly come home.

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.
Life is complicated. The reason we have democracy is that no one side is right all the time. The only people who are dangerous are those who can’t admit, even to themselves, that obvious fact.

It is very difficult to admit you are wrong. In the age of the Internet it is even harder because one can just live in echo chamber. It effects people on the left and the right.

Take conservative Rod Dreher at Crunchy Con who has written for the National Review and now is with the Dallas Morning News.. I like Rod a lot even though he is from that part of the Conservative movement opposed to our presence in Iraq and seems to have their own Bush Derangement Syndrome going on.

Back in April he had this piece Iraq's "defining moment".that was relying on a New York Times reporting as to the Basra Offensive by Iraqi Troops , Reporting that people were very much questioning,.

For example of this just see from this Scholar and Newspaper editor posts at the time More Media Distortion s , Second-Hand Propaganda , As the haze clears... , The ‘Intifada’ That Wasn’t , The Great Green Zone Freak-Out of ‘08 (This was the real interesting story of Pentagon and State Department CYA that should have been covered), and Numbers, Sources and Assertions .

Even Democrat Mickey Kaus at Slate, no fan of Bush, was calling the New York Times reporting to task days later here. (look at the April 1oth Entry)

In Rod's entry April 3, 2008 linked above he writes:

Well, this is just splendid. Turns out that what Bush called Iraq's "defining moment" has defined what an incompetent boob Maliki is, and how pathetic is the US-trained Iraqi Army.....How lame is the Iraqi Army? Tonight comes news that over 1,000 Iraqi soldiers attacking Basra deserted during the fight, including two senior commanders.
We are so screwed.
George W. Bush is a relatively young man. He will have many years ahead of him to see what he's done, and to contemplate the gravity of it. Meanwhile, our men and women under arms soldier on. My brother-in-law flies back to Iraq tomorrow. God help him, and all our troops.

We now know that the Basra operation (see REPORTS: THE BATTLE FOR BASRA), as well as the Iraqi led Operation in Sadr City just weeks later, and now the current operation in Eastern Iraq have been great success.

Rod , who is a good journalist, basically proclaimed disaster and called our Iraqi allies that were putting their live on the line "pathetic". The problem is Rod did not not come back and do a follow up. In fact I have tried to follow his blog as to this offensive , and I am hope I just missed it, since this piece of doom and he never updated. Never went back to give his readers an update. TO post that that perhaps the Iraqi leader was not a "boobs" and our guys over in Iraq did a pretty good job of training the Iraqi Army.


This is not to pick on Rod Dreher that is a valuable voice in the conservative community. However it does point out that even the best have problems admitting they are wrong. Even good Journalists with degrees from LSU :)

Lord knows there have been mistakes. I think Bush as well as I did not forsee that AQ would make Iraq the ground zero of their war like they did. There were others .

Iraqis have paid the price for something the world shall benefit from. A contribution that is not noted by the political left and even more sadly the Political right at times. However at the end of the day it appears that the Muslim street has turned on Bin Laden and those that akin to his kind. They saw their handiwork in Iraq all so clear.

As David Brooks pointed out Bush learned from his mistakes. Shall others learn from theirs?