You won’t be surprised to learn that I’m not super-impressed by the US Institute of Peace’s plan to end American military involvement in Iraq in five years. The release did, however, pique my curiosity about the USIP board. The only name I recognized was of the late Seymour Martin Lipset, who was a great political sociologist before dying last year.

I didn’t really agree with Osama’s case for tax cuts, but I have to admit that this part of his message (PDF) seems to me to be asking a good question:

Why are the leaders of the White House keen to start wars and wage them around the world, and make use of every possible opportunity through which they can reach this purpose, occasionally even creating justifications based on deception and blatant lies, as you saw in Iraq?

I don’t think bin Laden’s answer (“those with real power and influence are those with the most capital”) really makes much sense, but it really is a good question.

I was interested to see Charles Krauthammer concede today that important “strategic errors” were made in Iraq, “most important, eschewing a heavy footprint, not forcibly suppressing the early looting and letting Moqtada al-Sadr escape with his life in August 2004.” Previous to this column, Krauthammer had only mentioned the looting once, in is June 13, 2003 “Hoaxes, Hype and Humiliation”. The only point he made in the column was to argue that the story of the looting of Iraq’s national museum had been initially overstated. Or, as he put it in his typically measured manner, “You’d have to go back centuries, say, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find mendacity on this scale.” He referred also to the “narcissism” and “sheer snobbery” of people like Frank Rich who were concerned about the looting.

He then noted that after the stories of widespread looting in Iraq had been debunked (this would be the same looting he now says was a key strategic error) “The left simply moved on to another change of subject: the ‘hyping’ of the weapons of mass destruction.” Ha, ha, silly left.

As for Sadr, back in April 2004 at the height of fighting between the US military and the Mahdi Army, Krauathammer was confident. Back in his April 16, 2004 column “This Is Hardly Vietnam” he observed merely that “the Shiite establishment has been negotiating on our behalf with the Sadr rebels.” In his May 14, 2004 column “The Abu Ghraib Panic”, Krauthammer said that “The Sadr insurgency appears to be waning.” Sadr, whose survival in 2004 Krauthammer now sees as the key turning point in the war, then goes unmentioned in his columns for almost two years.

And such is the war in Iraq as seen through neocon lenses. Mistakes are always in the past. The current policy is always working. When the mistakes are being made, those who point out the mistakes are tarred as near-treasonous. Then, after another year or two of pointless, futile bloodshed, it’s conceded that mistakes were made in the past. But now we’re right on track. And the liberals, once again, just don’t get it.

Given what happened to John McCain, I can’t help but think that as the Republican electorate learns more and more about what Rudy Giuliani really thinks about immigration, he’s going to be in big trouble. He managed to somehow pass himself off as an opponent of the comprehensive immigration measure, but the reality is that as mayor he turned New York City into a giant “sanctuary city” and sought vigorously through the courts to preserve that status. This was all unremarkable in what’s probably the most pro-immigration jurisdiction in the country, but it’s really, really, really not where the GOP base is.