Alex DeLarge takes Jarvis out to the woodshed.
This amoral rationalization by Jarvis has the added quality of morbid stupidity, and not only because it assumes such an argument is politically workable. In addition, Jarvis stupidly assumes that Bush anticipated an insurgency, and could therefore have explained it in advance, when all evidence points to the contrary Bush expected a docile, thankful Iraq. Bereft of any analytical capacity, Jarvis buys into the “flypaper” theory of Iraq, that a destabilized and anarchic Iraq is in our national interest and makes us safer; a theory which is little more than a post hoc rationalization for a completely incompetent plan which failed to anticipate or plan for any unrest at all, once Iraq’s major combat units were defeated. In short, Jarvis is weirdly arguing that Bush should have made excuses for a screw up he failed to anticipate.
Good article. Wasn’t it Rumsfeld who said we would be greeted as liberators?
It was Cheney, which naturally meant it was the official stance of the administration.