Editors of National Review: An End to Illusion

This blog is in a series of posts from my readings of THE RIGHT WAR? THE CONSERVATIVE DEBATE ON IRAQ. Please contribute your comments. The following is a discussion of Chapter 5, a republished article by the Editors of National Review, May 3, 2004, National Review.


After reading from such great scholars like VDH, James Kurth, Kissinger, William Kristol and Donald Kagan, the May 2004 article by the Editors of National Review was quite a dissappoint - intellectually. Of course, it was merely a short editorial, while the previous articles were longer and more in-depth. But, NR didn't quite say anything intriguing or enlightening.

Instead, they merely admitted to making a pre-war "Wilsonian mistake" - as far as their own pre-war expectations for Iraq. They mention how things could have gone better - for example, more troops would have helped the security situation. But they admit that they, and many others, underestimated the difficulty of implanting democracy in alien soil and overestimated the sophistication of what is fundamentally still a tribal society and one devastated by decades of tyranny.

They argued, however, that “... Iraq was not a Wilsonian – or a ‘neoconservative' – war. It was broadly supported by the Right as a war of national interest. The primary purpose of the war was always to protect U.S. national security, by removing a destabilizing and radical influence in the strategically crucial Persian Gulf and eliminating a potential threat to the United States.”

They go further still to distance themselves from their previous Wilsonian mistake and state that in light of recent events of violence, going forward we should downplay expectations of implanting a democracy in the Middle East. They give us a bottom line of what success in Iraq now means: "If we leave Iraq in some sort of orderly condition, with some sort of legitimate non-dictatorial government and a roughly working economy, we will be doing very well.”

At least their backtracking still leaves us with a goal.