(9:33 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

I'm Tired of the Iraq War

I'm tired of the Iraq War as a topic of discussion as well as a reality existing apart from those discourses. However, since this is a blog, and since, as we know, there is nothing outside the blog, I will treat of the level of discourse -- a structural weakness of the genre.

1. I am tired of hearing liberal hawks talk about how great an idea the Iraq War was and lamenting that the execution was bad. Yes, the idea of toppling an evil dictator and building a society with liberty and justice for all is appealling. So is the idea of owning a Green Lantern power ring.
   
2. I am tired of the "consensus" view that we need to "stay the course" and the repeated assertions that "no one is proposing we pull out of Iraq." Why not pull out of Iraq? If the alternatives are (a) staying, getting involved in a quagmire, possibly reinstituting a draft, and still likely having to pull out in humiliation in ten years and (b) pulling out in humiliation right now, then any economist will tell you to choose (b)!
   
3. I am tired of hearing about Iraqi schoolchildren -- from liberals! I don't read conservative blogs aside from Volokh, but I think that the Iraqi schoolchildren get more mentions per capita in the liberal blogosphere than they could possibly get in the conservative blogosphere.

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