The war in Washington: between Conservative realists and Conservative idealists

Fascinating article by Ian Buruma, who was invited to Washington to take part in a discussion about Iraq. His reflections on what he heard in the US capital suggest that if we want to undrstand what happens next, the best thing to do is to look back at how the US handled post-defeat Japan. He came away also convinced that the die is cast:

“On the merits of the war itself, there could be no question. That was settled. Scepticism on this score was met with the kind of eye-rolling impatience with which committed Marxists treat people who still fail to understand the laws of history. In the course of this eye-rolling, I learned a new expression for the word “aesthetic”, as in: “Oh, you’re only against the war for aesthetic reasons.”

The assumption here is that one is a namby-pamby European wimp, too squeamish for the necessary task at hand. Sure, a few tens of thousands may die, but what is that compared to the glories of democratic revolution? This goes beyond anti-European prejudices. It is where the neo-conservative ideologues reveal the now distant, but still unmistakably Trotskyist antecedents of their dogmatism. One cannot afford to be sentimental if one is to change the world. ”