Even in defeat, they blame the dirty effing hippies

Michael Ignatieff, one of the liberal "hawks" in favor of the Iraq invasion, posts a mea culpa in today's NY Times Magazine. I'd give him more kudos for doing so, except for the fact his piece is so short on specifics. There are general musings on the difficulties of making political decisions in hard times and plenty of historical references from figures from the past, but little about his own thought process in this specific case. What's there boils down to this: he was moved by knowing a few refugees from Saddam's Iraq and had seen firsthand the violence that had been done to the Kurds. And those are good reasons, no doubt. But when he tries to analyze what moved those that correctly opposed the war, he came up with two groups. The first:

[M]any of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.

And the second group, he says, didn't "take wishes for reality." Well, exactly. Hence Atrios always blogging about "finding the pony." It's a well-established point by now, and the majority view from those of us who gave this serious thought.

My question: who the fuck is in that first group? Because, yes, many people wonder about the all-too-obvious importance of Iraqi oil in the equation. Maybe "no blood for oil" is too simplistic for him, but isn't the fact that the control will be given through Iraq's proposed oil law to mostly foreign companies at least a justification for that view?

As to the other point, that some groups say "America is always wrong"--name them, asshat. I imagine some fringe groups could be construed at saying that, but almost everyone of us "dirty fucking hippies" could see with a pretty clear mind that this Excellent Adventure was bound for disaster. He says we only had the same "flawed intelligence" as the pro-war movement. Bullfuckingshit. We thought two steps down the line and knew this intelligence was a) bad, and b) ridiculously optimistic. Sorry to see a freakin' Harvard professor still thinks it was an understandable miss in a "close call," because it never was. This is still rank name-calling, saying "well I tried to be serious, but didja see the Dirty Fucking Hippies over there burning the flag?"

This "mea culpa" is still a ridiculous attempt at covering one's own ass. And what do you know...not a word that hints that this Misadministration cranked the intelligence to spin supposedly logical people to fall into line. Nope. Just an unfortunate incident, I guess, with no one really to blame for it happening that way.