The War, According to Mother Jones
Nathanael Berends May 5th, 2004
Being right on Iraq means forgoing bragging rights. It will all have truly been for naught if the best we can hope for is the satisfaction of saying, “I told you so.” The answer to the ultimate question of whether the war has turned out to be a good thing is the same as the one Mao’s No. 2 man, Zhou Enlai, gave when asked what he thought of the French Revolution: “It’s too early to tell.” That doesn’t mean we get to defer today’s judgment until it’s sanctioned by tomorrow’s event, any more than we get to revise it retroactively; as Martin Amis once told a scandalized student audience at Princeton, “You can change your mind before, even during, but just not after sex.” It isn’t the least bit too soon to weigh what the war so far reveals and—in the spirit of The Fog of War, Errol Morris’ brilliant documentary on Robert McNamara—to tally a few of the lessons.
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oneword:
Clusterfuck.