Djerejian on the Iraq Vanity War

We now know Iraq is the war we did not need. The mystery to this day is why Bush and his friends went to war in the first place. Colonialism? Oil? Macho strutting? Hobbesian paranoia? I' not sure anyone really knows. Maybe the neocons don't know either. It's the strangest war in American history, the war without purpose, the war that is gaining no advantage for the U.S. The war that just goes on and is its own justification. We are living in times disconnected from our great history.

Gregory Djerejian of The Belgravia Dispatch has a take on this war, just as many people have a take, trying to explain it all. Djerejian's explanation is that perhaps this is the vanity war:

A commenter in a previous thread says Iraq was a "vanity" war. I suspect many historians, a few years on, will increasingly take this view. There was the dynastic vanity of the son who wanted to right the perceived shortcomings of Poppy's prior Mesopotamian involvement. There was the Cheneyesque 'I know best' vanity of the soi disant wise, knowing elder calmly steering us through the choppy Hobbesian waters. There was the crude Jacksonian vanity of Rumsfeld, who never cared a whit for the Iraqis. There was the Wolfowitzian vanity of the too exuberant high-brow neo-cons (and there was also the "cakewalk" vanity of the low-brow, group-thinking, spittle-licking ones). There was the 'shock and awe' vanity of Tommy Franks. There was the vanity of good intentions, as with Colin Powell--soldiering on rather than resigning earlier--likely thinking he could temper all the cheap bravado and mitigate the fall-out resulting from the gross incompetence that surrounded him. And then there was something of a national vanity: that Afghanistan had been too easy, 9/11 too big, and so we needed to kick a little more ass, to put it colloquially.

Vanity as in strutting on board the Abraham Lincoln. Bush was gloating that day though the war was not finished and his incompetence would only later come to light. When America's greatness is reduced to a peacock strutting for the cameras, we have a problem.

I think it's time to reclaim our country. I just hope enough voters 'get it.'