Liberal hawks still hawkish

Roger Cohen offers what he would probably consider an astute observation, but what I would basically consider pure drivel: "Whatever else the bungled Iraq operation has been, it marked the end of American buttressing of a poisonous Middle Eastern stasis and a murderous Stalinist regime [***]."

***= and the beginning of a new, bloodier status quo in a country that may find itself ruled by an equally despotic creature when the violence abates. Meanwhile buttressing of other "murderous" regimes continues apace in different strategically valuable parts of the world.

Those caveats are mine. They don't actually appear in the article, which is, unlike me, astonishingly bullish on the overall beneficence of the Iraq war.