Iraqis are “ingrates” for failing to love our invasion

Probably nobody but me cares how much I dislike the thinking of National Review’s Andy McCarthy, but man that guy bugs me. Take his latest:

Thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds have been expended to provide Iraqis the opportunity to live freely. And this despite the facts that (a) the U.S. interest in Iraqi democracy remains tenuous (our interest was the elimination of Saddam’s terror-mongering, weapons-proliferating regime), and (b) Americans were assured, when the nation-building enterprise commenced, that oil-rich Iraq would underwrite our sacrifices on its behalf. Yet, to be blunt, the Iraqis remain ingrates. (Emphasis added.)

What arrogance. Not everybody who advocated for the invasion of Iraq was an imperialist, of course, but it’s clear that Andy McCarthy is. You’ll take our invasion, you’ll help us pay for it, and you’ll like it!

This paragraph breaks down under the weight of its own internal contradictions. McCarthy wants Iraqis to be grateful to us for spending blood and treasure in the cause of Iraqi freedom — only he admits that wasn’t really our cause. Andy McCarthy is morally blind, and he’s got the perch of conservatism’s leading magazine from which to spread that blindness.