Another look at The Great Idiocy

Baker, Gates and their Iraq Study Group will

report to President Bush next week. Judging from

press leaks and the public record, they will

propose a ghastly misevaluation of Iran,

identical in character to their misevaluation of

the Soviet Union a generation ago. As widely

reported, they will propose to "engage Iran"; but

for what object should Iran be engaged?... The

ghosts of defunct European monarchies mingle with

the shades of failed policy in Washington. Who

you gonna call? Not the neo-conservatives, whose

effort to turn the sow's ear of Middle Eastern

politics into the silk purse of democracy has not

a shred of credibility remaining. The Reagan

administration did not win the Cold War by

proposing regime change in Moscow, but by

humiliating Russian power to the point that its

will to fight evaporated. There is no one to

interpret the fiery letters on the wall. For the

past five years I have counseled the United

States to learn to live with the chaos that it

can do nothing to prevent. No matter: Americans

will learn, late and at cost, the way they always

do.

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