Stop making sense!

It's still too soon to declare the Iraq mission a failure. Some of the best reporting out of Iraq suggests that many Iraqis have stared into the abyss of what their country could become and have decided to work with renewed vigor toward the democracy that both we and they want.

Nonetheless, it's not too early to begin thinking about what was clearly an intellectual failure. There was, above all, a failure to understand the consequences of our power. There was a failure to anticipate the response our power would have on the people we sought to liberate. They resent us for our power and at the same time expect us to be capable of everything. There was a failure to understand the effect our power would have on other people around the world. We were so sure we were using our might for noble purposes, we assumed that sooner or later, everybody else would see that as well. Far from being blinded by greed, we were blinded by idealism.

David Brooks still accepts that it the war was driven by Bush's idealism. Brooks may have been blinded by idealism, but the administration was blinded by hubris, arrogance, an inability to even consider worst case scenarios even when they were handed to them, and an unwillingness to level with the American people -- and certainly the Iraqis -- what the war was going to cost in terms of blood and treasure. Among other things.

But Bush has clearly lost Brooks. Brooks' prescription -- to let a "million flowers of democracy bloom" -- is not one Bremer is willing to swallow or else we wouldn't have the Sadr brigade in the news every day.

And Brooks isn't the only one turning on the administration.

"The first axiom is: When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate. Leave aside the question of who or what failed before Sept. 11, 2001. But who lost his or her job because the president's 2003 State of the Union address gave currency to a fraud -- the story of Iraq's attempting to buy uranium in Niger? Or because the primary and only sufficient reason for waging preemptive war -- weapons of mass destruction -- was largely spurious? Or because postwar planning, from failure to anticipate the initial looting to today's insufficient force levels, has been botched? Failures are multiplying because of choices for which no one seems accountable."

Im not sure what George Wills' point is -- should Rummy stay or should he go, now? But he too offers up a prescription -- fire someone, already -- that Commander Codpiece is certainly not going to fill.

Kevin Drum has more on some of the more intellecutally honest partisans on the right.