The war of our time and forgetting it exists.

Glenn Greenwald has a great post about how the neo-cons, after making huge, sweeping statements about how critical the war with Iraq is/was/will be, now want to ignore the whole thing, let the country collapse, and move on to the next phase in our grandious phase of remaking the world in our own image.

"It is the proponents of this invasion who have insisted that Iraq is the centerpiece of American national security, that it is the primary front in the war on terror, that failure is not an option, etc. etc. They used their militaristic posture in Iraq -- and the "appeasing weakness" of opponents of the invasion -- to win two consecutive national elections. And now that the extent of the damage they created is too glaring to be denied, they want to walk away from it all, insist that it's unfair to hold them accountable for it, and hope that the media moves on to more interesting and exciting adventures than the plodding, depressing collapse of Iraq.

"But along with the assault being waged on the rule of law domestically, Iraq is the political issue of our time. Our preemptive, disastrous invasion of that country has fundamentally changed not just the perception of America's character around the world, but America's national character itself. We spawned chaos, militia rule, and a sectarian civil war in the middle of the most inflammable region on the planet, and did so while knowing that chaos and lawlessness are exactly the conditions in which terrorists groups thrive.

"And we have no idea of how far things will unravel, of how far and wide this violence and instability will spread. But there is no greater danger to American national security -- no more potent ally of terrorism -- than the implosion of Iraq that our invasion created. And to know that, one can simply look at what the war proponents have been saying for the last four years.

"What rationale exists for not holding accountable the architects and authors and advocates of this debacle? It is not irrational that political challenges are being made against war proponents. What would be irrational is if there were no such challenges. Those who advocated this invasion -- and, worse, those who continued to insist that things were going well long past the time when it was clear that such claims were false -- have revealed themselves to be completely lacking in judgment if not integrity and honesty. It is self-evident that removing that faction from political power is a critical goal, arguably the most critical.

"It really seems as though the "plan" now in Iraq is just to step back and allow the whole country to collapse. That impression is strongly bolstered by the fact that war proponents seem eager to ignore Iraq and focus on other matters just as the civil war and destruction of that country seems to be reaching the point of no return. War proponents continuously argued that chaos, violence and instability in Iraq would be a grave threat to American security and a great ally of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. And yet exactly that situation has resulted from our invasion, and now the proponents of the war -- and apparently much of the media -- want to just forget about all of that."

Dead on. Impeccable logic, impossible to ignore, except for the fact that it is being ignored by a large percentage of the population of this country, a larger percentage of our politicians, and pretty much the entire population of the corporate media.