Michael Ignatieff’s essay this weekend in the NY Times Magazine, Getting Iraq Wrong, reads more like an extended rationalization of his decision to support going to war in 2003 than an analysis of the current horror.

Ignatieff, a former Harvard professor and member of Canada’s Parliament argues that politicians cannot afford to think in ideological paroxysms and then goes on for most of the essay quoting Machiavelli and Becket.

“The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq,” writes Ignatieff, “has condemned the political judgment of a president.”

Has it really?

Ignatieff’s second mistake is to underestimate the Bush Administration. Has Bush ever tried to honor the will of the people? First term? Second term? Bush has gotten exactly what he wanted in Iraq and Afghanistan–war without end against an enemy that can never be beaten, as well as experience for future conquests in Iran, Syria, or Saudi Arabia (though Obama or Clinton might end up picking up those wars).

Bush and his allies in Washington took the dynamic potential from 9/11 and turned it into a reality in the Middle East. To control the deteriorating US domestic situation he has consolidated power in the executive branch and left the judicial and legislative branches too cowed and anemic to fend off further constitutional stripmining.

“In the case of Iraq, deciding what course of action to pursue next requires first admitting that all courses of action thus far have failed.”

Ignatieff seems to believe we have entered a war that we can win.

“Benchmarks for progress in Iraq can help to decide how long America should stay there. But in the end, no one knows — because no one can know — what exactly America can still do to create stability in Iraq.”

If war produces stability it is the result of a people’s utter submission after total devastation, and even that’s temporary. To wage war is to create instability. To occupy another country against the will of its people is to create instability.

Ignatieff tries to justify his own initial support of the war in Iraq by calling out people who opposed the war for the wrong reasons: “They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.”

“Wrong” as in, using the pretense of democracy to secure the US and Israel’s interests in the Middle East by establishing bases in Iraq and Afghanistan from which to launch total war on the Middle East while we subjugate free peoples who do not want our help and profit from their suffering? That seems like we’re getting it pretty right.

In the end it doesn’t matter which lie sent us to Iraq (To quote Curtis White, God help a country when the West decides they need our assistance). The paltry effort the Bush Administration made to convince the American people Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction will seem like a Nobel thesis if our country continues down the path forged by Bush.

In the future there will be no reason given for war at all. We have shown such little inclination to stop illegal wars being fought in our name perhaps they will stop announcing them altogether.