Joan Walsh looks back:
A week later, after the statue of Saddam fell, I got a call from the New York Times’ David Carr, one of my favorite writers there, who seemed to be asking me, politely, gently, even compassionately, what it felt like to be so, well, wrong — and to be so alone in being so wrong. Carr wrote a fair piece; he corralled me, Dan Perkins (our Tom Tomorrow), Katrina vanden Heuvel and Eric Alterman of the Nation, and Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker; he didn’t lump us with any far-left Saddam-boosters or anyone hoping for “a million Mogadishus.” He did let Christopher Hitchens say this about us: “Their prediction and deepest hope was that the black shirts of the fedayeen were going to win and force a stalemate. Just like they predicted, the Arab street did explode, but with the joy of freedom, which is not the one that they meant, so they are furious and depressed.” But that’s a nice quote to have four years later. Just look at all that joy of freedom out on the Arab street!