A quick follow-up to my last post. I always see a certain response to criticisms of Iraq superhawks who have moderated or dropped their enthusiasm for the war: Why are you focusing on what she said in 2003 instead of what she said last month?
My answer: What a person does before an event occurs (or is averted) matters far more than what she does years later, and that will remain true until time travel is invented. The time to be right about the Iraq invasion was March 2003, not March 2008 or March 2011 or March 2525. And it wasn’t even that hard to be right! Sure, it was hard to stomach all the abuse and ostracism, but that’s not what I mean. The argument for that war was logically, epistemically, and morally feeble, a grim fart joke that only fools, ignoramuses, and liars laughed at. I don’t say that lightly. There are some tough calls in the world; maybe Afghanistan was one, but Iraq sure as hell wasn’t. The more vigorous and vicious a person’s efforts were to bring that war about, the more you should question her judgment to this very day.
