The liberal elite dreams of American failure, and they claim to find it wherever they look:
American and European intellectual elites were not moved to action when 182,000 Kurds - a people who trace their history back more than 3,000 years - were slaughtered by Saddam Hussein.
The chattering classes hardly flinched when Saddam drained the wetlands of southern Iraq, destroying the environment of the Marsh Arabs and, with it, a 5,000-year-old way of life.
But now they've got their dander up: Iraq's antiquities have been vandalized.
That the Iraq National Museum was looted is, of course, a tragedy. But isn't it curious that the same people who now insist that U.S. Marines should have used lethal force to protect cuneiform tablets were, just a few weeks ago, arguing that only non-military actions were appropriate to stop Saddam's looting of billions of dollars worth of oil wealth - not to mention his mass murders of ancient peoples?