The Children's Crusade
Yes, David Beito and Jonathan Dresner, our Volokh Conspiracy colleagues are way behind the times. I too presented the possibility of the three-state solution on November 26, 2003. At this point, I doubt that anything will solve the mess that the U.S. has created.
I do like the fact, however, that a number of people who supported this fiasco of a war, are now grasping the insanity of it all. Perhaps someday the Volokh people will take their heads out of the Iraqi sand and come up for a much-need dosage of Liberty (& Power). Richard Cohen, whose essays I've cited here a number of times, once supported this war too. He writes in today's NY Daily News that this desire to use Iraq to" change the world" (something that has led Justin Raimondo to call the President, the"Neocon Napoleon") is Bush's Pipe Dream. Cohen writes:
Like a kid who has been told otherwise, Bush persists in believing in his own version of Santa Claus. The weapons are there, somewhere - in a North Pole of his mind. What matters more, is the phrase Bush used five times in one way or another:"We're changing the world." He used it always in reference to the war in Iraq and in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson, that personification of naive morality, shake his head in bemusement. In Bush's rhetoric, a war to rid Saddam of his WMD, a war to ensure that Condoleezza Rice's"mushroom cloud" did not appear over an American city, has mutated into an effort to reorder the world."I also know that there's a historic opportunity here to change the world," Bush said of the effort in Iraq. The next sentence was even more disquieting."And it's very important for the loved ones of our troops to understand that the mission is an important, vital mission for the security of America and for the ability to change the world for the better." It is one thing to die to defend your country. It is quite another to do that for one man's impossible dream. What Bush wants is admirable. It is not, however, attainable.
Cohen concludes:"This is Bush's cause, a noble but irrational effort much like the one that set off for Jerusalem in 1212. It was known as the Children's Crusade."