{"id":8108,"date":"2006-08-03T11:18:59","date_gmt":"2006-08-03T15:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8108.html"},"modified":"2006-08-03T11:18:59","modified_gmt":"2006-08-03T15:18:59","slug":"maybe-iraqis-dont-want-our-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/maybe-iraqis-dont-want-our-gift\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe Iraqis don’t want our ‘gift’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) has always supported the president’s approach to the war in Iraq, but after having recently visited Baghdad, he’s starting to waver a bit<\/a>. (via Holden<\/a> and a tip from reader J.D.)<\/p>\n

While still hopeful that Americans would one day be able to look back on their foray into Iraq as “a courageous decision that made a positive difference,” he also alluded to the possibility of failure in the goal of creating a stable, democratic nation.<\/p>\n

“We may look back and say we gave it our best shot and we did everything we could do to make it a success. And at the end of the day we could not make people accept the gift of freedom.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, that’s it. The war is a nice, big present for Iraq, and unfortunately, the country is checking the box for the receipt. The problem isn’t the Bush administration’s catastrophic mistakes at every possible stage of the conflict; it’s the fact that Iraqis don’t really want to be free.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen some fairly outrageous rationalizations for failure, but Rep. Bonner is breaking new ground here.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, maybe now we’re starting to understand who the president is lashing out at when he condemns critics of the war.
\n
\nJust last week, Bush said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“There’s this kind of almost — kind of a weird kind of elitism that says well maybe — maybe certain people in certain parts of the world shouldn’t be free; maybe it’s best just to let them sit in these tyrannical societies. And our foreign policy rejects that concept. And we don’t accept it. And so we’re working.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Any chance Jo Bonner is one of the “elites” that Bush is railing against?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) has always supported the president’s approach to the war in Iraq, but after having recently visited Baghdad, he’s starting to waver a bit. (via Holden and a tip from reader J.D.) While still hopeful that Americans would one day be able to look back on their foray into Iraq as “a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}