Moronic Commentary by Michael Kinsley

I've been reading the August 13, 2007 edition of Time magazine and just finished the Commentary on page 26 by Michael Kinsley.

What a disappointment! Kinsley is normally in sync with my views on things. At the very least he writes intelligent, insightful and thought-provoking opinions. But this one, entitled Nostra Culpa, is so flawed that I couldn't resist commenting on it. The subhead is, Pundits and politicians admitted to being wrong about Iraq. Shouldn't the American public do the same?

Are you serious?

Basically he is calling for the American public to recant or apologize for supporting the country's decision to invade Iraq. He figures if the politicians who supported the war and are now backtracking can admit they were wrong, so can the American people. Someone he doesn't see President Bush's dwindling approval rating - especially as related to his handing of the "war" - as exactly what he is demanding. We are withdrawing our support. We are recanting our acceptance.

There is another big difference that Kinsley seems to have missed. A politician, a congressman, a senator, a military general or a member of the Bush administration is a person. And a person can apologize, recant, admit wrongdoing and change his or her mind. The apology can be made to the American public. But the American public is not one person with one voice who can possess a single point of view. Does Kinsley expect a couple hundred million apologies? And to whom? How about if instead, we withdraw our support of the war by not approving of the way the administration is handling it? Oh wait, isn't that what we're going?

Kinsley also seems to want to lay a certain amount of blame for the invasion on the American public. He says we supported it at the beginning, so we're responsible for it.

But Mr. Kinsley, we were lied to by people who were supposed to know what they were doing! How may of us could independently check the "facts" we were being fed about weapons of mass destruction, ties between Iraq and terrorists and why we needed to do what the Bush administration was telling us we had to do? We trusted our leaders. Are we supposed to apologize for that?

This is a very misguided commentary from an otherwise excellent columnist. I can't imagine he thought it through very well. But I don't think the American public is the culprit in our current nightmare. I don't think we have anything to apologize for but have every right to expect those who do to quickly make amends.