Nobody to Blame But Themselves

Reduced to the same circumstances, Americans would never slaughter each other like the Iraqis. Would they?

"One possibility is that people around the region and the world would come to judge Iraq's failure as largely the result of American policy. ... An alternative view is that the lion's share of responsibility for what has taken place in Iraq over the past few years belongs to the Iraqis themselves."
-- Thomas Ricks

"This is the emerging 'moral clarity' of the right wing, that we gave it our best, we handed the tools of freedom to Iraqis, and they'd rather kill each other."
-- John Tirman

Hear it? It's the sound of the hard right's pitch pipe. Time to harmonize again. The latest song goes something like this:

"To everything -- turn, turn, turn
There is a season (in hell) -- turn, turn, turn
A time to stop, beating up on ourselves

A time to stop, making excuses for the Iraqis

A time to surge, the insurgents to pieces

A time for free-dom, I swear it's not too late!"

It strikes a chord within the American public's heart (or where there once was a heart). In other words, it's a mistake to think Americans tune out the deaths and desperate plight of Iraqis because we're ashamed of what our government has wrought and guilty that we stood by.

In fact, we ignore the suffering of Iraqis because we think the brutality they inflict each other is something that Americans, in a similar situation, would never do. In other words, we subconsciously think they're savages and deserve what's happening to them.

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