David Brooks as Fear Mongerer

In a decidedly fear-mongering "blame everyone but Bush and the 'stay-the-course' supporters" column by David Brooks raising the future spectre of a thirty-year Middle East conflict, he says:

This war had several stages. The first was the disintegration of Iraq.

Someone should remind Mr. Brooks that that is not a contingency. It's already a reality, courtesy of the worst President in United States history.

Look at the last two thousand years. The Middle East will take more than thirty years to work itself out to whatever it will be. We should not fret. We should make it our global goal to attain higher ground, not to act in a deliberate effort to cause one another to fear. We should look toward uniting in a common, attainable, and reasonable purpose.

Diplomacy, heart, and intelligence will be required. In the future, I hope that David Brooks, an intelligent man with a New York Times column, will use his talents for a higher purpose than to defend a course that has already been crushed into to the blood-tinted sands of Baghdad.