A good op-ed in The Atlantic by James Fallows examines what he was right and wrong about the Iraq invasion as we mark it’s 10th anniversary. Everyone, he proposes, over the age of 30 should also take a retrospective look at the event and it’s aftermath to measure how close their predictions came.
Now I’ve done so myself, and here are three things I got wrong:
1) I predicted that there would be an outbreak of fighting between Sunni and Shiite factions, but I never imagined the fighting would ring-up such a high number of casualties and I never thought the violence would be so brutal.
2) I never saw what a huge role Al-Quaida foreign fighters would play in the on-going violence, especially after Malaki’s death.
3) I was blindsided by the fact that we replaced a Sunni dictator with a Shiite leader that is also on a path towards absolute power.
Sparking The Left 