to the discussion Derb and Rich are having about Iraq with a few points about some of the side-issues: 1) I don’t know that anybody has talked about making Iraq an “Anglosphere-type nation.” Many people in and around the administration have talked about making it a liberal democracy, which is not the same thing. I’d be happy with a stable government that wasn’t totalitarian and wasn’t a threat to its neighbors. 2) That goal could theoretically have been achieved with a strongman. But the drawbacks to that approach are not limited to its not being “nice.” It would probably have been harder to sustain domestic and international political support for that approach than it has been for the current one; in any case, it would not obviously have been easier. 3) Derb conjures up a hypothetical person who claims that Rich is now talking as though the chief reason to be in Iraq is to kill jihadis but did not treat killing jihadis as the purpose of the war in the first place. Derb asks how Rich would convince this hypothetical person that he was not merely following the administration line. I’m not sure that a hypothetical person who reasoned thus would be worth a response, other than “stop being a jackass.” No sensible reader would conclude that Rich was suggesting that we had gone to Iraq to kill jihadis. No sane person ever suggested that our policy in Iraq should take no account of shifting circumstances. Killing jihadis is a good in itself and furthers the aim of leaving behind a stable, non-threatening government. Where’s the inconsistency?