Gary Kamiya may be using "us" a bit broadly. But his comment on Establishment thinking - what liberal bloggers have taken lately to calling "the Village" - is uncomfortably accurate (Iraq taught us nothing Salon 11/06/07):The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months. ...I wouldn't go so far as he does in criticizing Clinton's position on the Iran issue. A couple of recent Huffington Post articles with differing points of view help put the Democrats' position in context, A Reality Check on Iran Policy and U.S. Campaign Politics 11/04/07 by Joe Wilson and Coercive Diplomacy and War: The Vietnam Precedent by Gareth Porter 11/01/07.
The fact that this sentence can be written with a straight face proves that the Iraq debacle has taught us absolutely nothing. Talk of attacking Iran should be confined to the lunatic fringe. Yet America's political and media elite have responded to the idea of attacking Iran in almost exactly the same way they did to the idea of attacking Iraq. Four and a half years after Bush embarked on one of the most catastrophic foreign-policy adventures in our history, the same wrongheaded, ignorant and self-destructive approach to the Arab-Muslim world and to fighting terrorism still rules establishment thinking.
The disturbing thing is that we have no excuse this time. (my emphasis)
Tags: gareth porter, gary kamiya, iran war, joseph wilson
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