Another Neo-Con Washes His Hands Of It All

In August I wrote a short post entitled "Conservatives Pre-Spin Iraq Defeat", in which I argued that U.S. Conservatives (in particular the N.Y. Post's Ralph Peters) were getting set to throw in the towel on Iraq and, when they did, they would blame the Iraqis themselves for the whole catastrophe. Well, about six months later Charles (the Kraut Hammer) Krauthammer has, as if on cue, emerged and denied all responsibility for the disaster, on behalf of himself, his Conservative ideology, and his Conservative President. He writes:

America comes and liberates them from the tyrant who kept everyone living in fear, and the ancient animosities and more recent resentments begin to play themselves out to deadly effect. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, the overwhelming majority of them killed by Sunni insurgents, Baathist dead-enders and their al Qaeda allies who carry on the Saddamist pogroms.

[...]

Iraqis were given their freedom and yet many have chosen civil war. Among all these religious prejudices, ancient wounds, social resentments, and tribal antagonisms, who gets the blame for the rivers of blood? You can always count on some to find the blame in America.

[...]

...Iraq is their country. We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war.

And you know what? I'm just going to repeat what I said in August:

This excuse has been brewing among the American Right since 2004, when the insurgency first took a solid hold. But they've been holding it in reserve until recently when things really started to go South on them.

Specifically, the excuse runs as follows: The U.S. invasion was actually a gift to the Iraqi people, and all those bombs were the sound of Freedom coming. If the Iraqis had just behaved like a conquered people should behave, they too could have had a Starbucks on every corner. But they've fucked it up. Hence, when the last American soldier gets hauled off out of the Green Zone by helicopter, shit flying out of the bottom of his pant-leg, the mess he leaves behind will not be the fault of the good old U.S. of A.

Expect to hear more of this argument in the coming weeks and months. Expect a recurrence maybe two years down the road in Afghanistan, mouthed by whatever Canadian politicians are in power at the time.

h/t to Boswarlos Daily.