When Oops Isn't Enough

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What is the proper way to act when you have made a boo-boo on the scale of what Perle and Adelman now admit to? A brief period of silence might be in order, followed by a bit of ideological spring cleaning. If this big idea has turned out to be wrong, isn't it possible that some of their other ideas are also wrong? In fact, maybe their whole philosophy is mistaken. Perle and Adelman are both neoconservatives, or neocons, a group that prides itself on being tough-minded and pragmatic while rejecting liberals as soft and romantic. Yet they managed to turn a President who was elected on a promise to eschew nation building into Woodrow Wilson in cowboy boots, promising democracy everywhere.

Adelman and Perle probably put on a better display of chagrin when they are 20 minutes late for a dinner party than they have managed to come up with so far in concluding that maybe the war was not such a great idea after all. "Just say 'oops' and get out" might be an excellent policy for the U.S. at this stage in the Iraq war. But it's not sufficient for the people who got us into it.