Oh Give Me A Break
How totally, myopically obsessive can the Left get about denying that anything good resulted from the liberation of Iraq? Robert Wright in this morning's Slate:
[I]t's true that in a "flattened" world, dominoes can fall fast once they get started... Much of the inspiration for Lebanon's "cedar revolution" came from watching Georgia's Rose Revolution and then Ukraine's Orange Revolution.
Now lets see where Walid Jumblatt, one of the leaders of the Cedar Revolution but historically a prominent and powerful supporter of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, says they got their inspiration:
"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."
Another favorite Leftist go-to is that while the Iraq war may have had some positive outcomes (less torture, less rape, more jobs, those kinds of thing), those were not the justifications that Bush initially gave the nation for going to war. More from Wright:
Friedman, of course, supported the war... But he supported the war reluctantly, and he supported it for the best reason, the reason Bush settled on retrospectively after most of his other reasons had collapsed: to create a market democracy in the Arab world.
First of all, I was shocked to find out that Bush only settled on that reason retroactively, given that many on the Left were turning out a stream of predictable, mind-numbing diatribes breathlessly revealing that Iraq was being invaded to spread free trade. See also: here and here and here and... well, here's the Google search.
And though they arguably belong in an institution, these lunatics do seem to at least have better research skills than Robert Wright. One of the reasons they thought that President Bush was using the preemption doctrine to spread free markets and free trade to every corner of the world is because President Bush said that he was using the preemption doctrine to spread free markets and free trade to every corner of the world:
Finally, the United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe. We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.
I'm not saying that the part of the political spectrum that we affectionately refer to as the moonbat Left is smarter than Robert Wright. But their hatred of everything Bush does seem to lend them a certain zeal in research that Wright's softer anti-Administration blinders prevent him from emulating.
[I]t's true that in a "flattened" world, dominoes can fall fast once they get started... Much of the inspiration for Lebanon's "cedar revolution" came from watching Georgia's Rose Revolution and then Ukraine's Orange Revolution.
Now lets see where Walid Jumblatt, one of the leaders of the Cedar Revolution but historically a prominent and powerful supporter of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, says they got their inspiration:
"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."
Another favorite Leftist go-to is that while the Iraq war may have had some positive outcomes (less torture, less rape, more jobs, those kinds of thing), those were not the justifications that Bush initially gave the nation for going to war. More from Wright:
Friedman, of course, supported the war... But he supported the war reluctantly, and he supported it for the best reason, the reason Bush settled on retrospectively after most of his other reasons had collapsed: to create a market democracy in the Arab world.
First of all, I was shocked to find out that Bush only settled on that reason retroactively, given that many on the Left were turning out a stream of predictable, mind-numbing diatribes breathlessly revealing that Iraq was being invaded to spread free trade. See also: here and here and here and... well, here's the Google search.
And though they arguably belong in an institution, these lunatics do seem to at least have better research skills than Robert Wright. One of the reasons they thought that President Bush was using the preemption doctrine to spread free markets and free trade to every corner of the world is because President Bush said that he was using the preemption doctrine to spread free markets and free trade to every corner of the world:
Finally, the United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe. We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.
I'm not saying that the part of the political spectrum that we affectionately refer to as the moonbat Left is smarter than Robert Wright. But their hatred of everything Bush does seem to lend them a certain zeal in research that Wright's softer anti-Administration blinders prevent him from emulating.
