Bush And Blair Admit Mistakes - Road to the Middle Class

IT CAN’T BE a coincidence that the first time that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have “admitted mistakes” on Iraq is the week after the installation of a unity government following the national Iraqi elections back in January.

As reported by Joseph Curl and Stephen Dinan in the Washington Times, Bush and Blair admitted mistakes in not finding WMDs and taunting the Ba’athists to “bring it on.” Said Blair:

The chance of a major insurgency "should have been very obvious to us" from the beginning.

Bush admitted that Abu Ghraib was a major mistake. So that’s all right.

The problem that the coalition has faced from the beginning is that the government of almost every nation state has been defined and legitimized by war. Britain was defined in its Civil War, and the United States in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

The new Iraqi nation needs to define itself and its legitimacy in the same way. It must establish a “king’s peace” by defeating all the contending centers of power: in the insurgents, the Ba’athists, and all the war lords and barons with their private militias.

But it would be useless if the United States and its allies did all the work of pacification. The Iraqis must do that, the new Iraqi government, its new army, and its new police force. It must prove to the Iraqis, to the Middle East, and to the world that it deserves to govern the Land Between the Rivers. And to deserve to govern it must demonstrate that it has the toughness and power to defeat its enemies.

That is the challenge that the new government of Prime Minister al-Maliki must meet. It must pacify, and be seen to pacify, the roiling powers that contest for power in Iraq today. From that all else follows.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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