It is rare that public intellectuals are held to account for their past positions relative to “adjustments” made later in light of events. So it is particularly satisfying to read Marcus Epstein’s devastating chronicle of National Review’s unacknowledged flip-flop on the Iraq War—a chronicle made necessary because NR itself has so far not admitted its own culpability in the calamity, much less admitted that the war’s critics proved wholly correct. Because NR pushed so excitedly for war, defended the looting, dismissed the loss of life, viciously attacked and smeared war critics, and uncritically embraced and spread war propaganda, Epstein’s article does moral good as well: journalistic justice of a sort.
National Review and Accountability
