Planks

Whenever I write about my old friend Tom the law professor it always seems to be to criticize him. Well, I'm gonna do it again.

Over at Mirror Of Justice he writes about what Leon Wieseltier believes Reinhold Niebuhr would think about the war in Iraq, but forget that. Here's what Tom believes:

I'm pretty certain we could find numerous occasions (though I haven't gotten the cites, I confess) in which the President or other war supporters [he links here to something completely irrelevant--check it out if you don't believe me] have effectively asserted that we as a nation are or will be successful because we're "fundamentally good." The relation between such sentiments and the huge missteps in Iraq is pretty direct: we knew better than other nations whether Saddam was an immediate danger, we knew better than others how to build a successful postwar Iraq, and anyway it would be relatively easy to rebuild because the Iraqis would react positively to our obvious commitment to democracy.

I find this argument seriously flawed in every particular, but what strikes me most is how he's guilty of what he accuses the Bush people of--he misunderstands Iraq but is certain he knows better.

ColumbusGuy adds: Plus he has questionable taste in sweaters.