In honor of Kathleen Parker's new CNN show...

[Enrique]

here's my all-time favorite column of hers, published just after the staged toppling of the Saddam statue, where she gloats about how great her Iraq war turned out to be.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2003-04-13/news/0304120055_1_sparta-iraq-dowd/2

April 13, 2003|By Kathleen Parker, Sentinel Columnist

What was that whimpering sound? Oh that. It's just the "Yes, but" crowd formerly known as the "antiwar pundits." Ignore them.

Saddam's statue had barely hit the ground in central Baghdad before America's armchair doomsayers began harrumphing a new caveat in which to couch this unseemly turn of events. One might almost think they didn't want Saddam to fall.

(...)

It's also hard to be humble when you're right, but guess who is both? Guess who first cautioned against glibness, hubris, immodesty and arrogance? Those mean men Dowd can never bring herself to address as adults: her Bushy, Rummy and Wolfie. The lead players in this epochal drama have spoken with the restraint and authority of grown-ups undistracted by childish antics, either from the pacifist nursery or from exuberant Iraqis tasting freedom, in some cases for the first time. "Let them rant" or "Let them loot," as the case may be, is an attitude of tolerance born of higher sights.

The media are having a little more fun. The conservative Media Research Center, which monitors liberal slant in the media, quickly posted a special "Gloat and Quote" edition, showcasing the predictions and news analyses proved ridiculous by recent events. Various bloggers and Web sites, including National Review Online and Andrew Sullivan, did the same, providing amusing anecdotes for dull parties.

(...)

Those who supported the war policy had no special sixth sense, no claim to revelation or prescience. Rather they possessed an unambiguous moral clarity. As journalist Christopher Hitchens put it during a television interview -- and I paraphrase wildly from memory -- "There's just no way that allowing Saddam to continue butchering innocents and potentially threatening the rest of the world can be viewed as a morally superior position."

No doubt the antis and naysayers, who seem to favor any old status quo to the frightening prospect of upheaval, will lurch again from whimpering near-death to unleash new protestations. Little matter. They have proven themselves irrelevant to today's reality, which includes a freed Iraqi people for whom the operative conjunctive phrase isn't "Yes, but" but "Yes, and . . ."