Gullible’s Travels: David Brooks’ Trip to Reality

Bush-Cheney’s Iraq adventure has provided David Brooks a terrific opportunity for what self-help gurus would call “personal growth and development”. It has been a strange trip in which Brooks has had to finally realize that his emperor has no clothes and that those Democratic leaders who had no alternatives actually had – and he had somehow missed them.

On Nov 2, 2006 in the NY Times Brooks had this to say:

“Partitioning the country would be traumatic, so after the election it probably makes sense to make one last effort to hold the place together. Fire Donald Rumsfeld to signal a break with the past. Alter troop rotations so that 30,000 more troops are policing Baghdad.”

On Jan. 7, 2007, it was:

“The record shows that in sufficient numbers and with sufficient staying power, U.S. troops can suppress violence. Perhaps more U.S. troops can create a climate in which decentralized arrangements can evolve.

We can’t turn back time. But if the disintegration of Iraqi society would be a political and humanitarian disaster, perhaps we should finally commit military resources, and create a political strategy, commensurate with the task of salvaging something.”

On Jan 11, he began totally to lose it:

‘If the Democrats don’t like the U.S. policy on Iraq over the next six months, they have themselves partly to blame. There were millions of disaffected Republicans and independents ready to coalesce around some alternative way forward, but the Democrats never came up with anything remotely serious.”

On Jan. 25, he came to grips with the reality that, “yes Virginia. There are alternative plans out there – some even formulated by Democratic leaders and analysts”:

“I for one have become disillusioned with dreams of transforming Iraqi society from the top down. But it’s not too late to steer the situation in a less bad direction…
for a ”soft partition” of Iraq in order to bring political institutions into accord with the social facts — a central government to handle oil revenues and manage the currency, etc., but a country divided into separate sectarian areas to reduce contact and conflict. When the various groups in Bosnia finally separated, it became possible to negotiate a cold (if miserable) peace.

Soft partition has been advocated in different ways by Joe Biden and Les Gelb, by Michael O’Hanlon and Edward Joseph, by Pauline Baker at the Fund for Peace, and in a more extreme version, by Peter Galbraith.”

Yes David, there are and have been for some time, alternatives to your Bush-Cheney approach. Glad to have you climbing on board. Better late then never I guess.

In his last NY Times column he threatens new insights to be delivered from the mount on Sunday on the NY Times Op-Ed page. As Bush-Cheney would no doubt agree: “ God help us all”.