The vain and the vainglorious

I don't know how he does it, but Jurassicpork reached behind the NYT firewall again to bring us the talking heads we couldn't otherwise afford to read. Today he gives us a great column by Paul Krugman on The Quagmire of the Vanities. Suddenly it becomes clear why guys like Bill Kristol and Freddy Kagan still have an gram of credibility left after three years of pompous and ill-informed punditry and predictions that have been consistently wrong, wrong, wrong. It's so obvious I feel like I should be slapping myself on the side of the head.

It's because they're telling our Great Decider what he wants to hear. Being so hopelessly misguided is no impediment to success when you're in the favor of our willfully self-deceived Misleader in Chief. Krugman does a good job of collecting the reality rejecting opinions the pseudopundits and Beltway wisemen have put forward, but I especially like the closing graf.

Mr. Bush is expected to announce his plan for escalation in the next few days. According to the BBC, the theme of his speech will be “sacrifice.” But sacrifice for what? Not for the national interest, which would be best served by withdrawing before the strain of the war breaks our ground forces. No, Iraq has become a quagmire of the vanities — a place where America is spending blood and treasure to protect the egos of men who won’t admit that they were wrong.

Krugman asks if war proponents are cynical or deluded? I would suggest the real question in the face of their inability to accept responsibility for their error is whether they are merely deluded or truly psychopathic.