Reading this Washington Post article, On Iraq, U.S. Turns to Onetime Dissenters, I’m encouraged a little that the White House has learned some lessons and is finally approaching policy with some sensible choices.

It goes almost without mention, as Atrios puts it, that these corrections are obvious and wouldn’t be necessary if the administration weren’t filled by ideologues less interested in actually building a stable Iraq than proving pet theories about economics. It’s clear reading some of this stuff that these people think in absolutes. Free Markets, good. Government run businesses, bad. As they’re finding out, these absolutes are false. The factory situation is an appallingly obvious example. Free markets rely on a great deal of government infrastructure. Without that infrastructure (courts, contracts, law and order among them), markets fail to materialize.

So, as the administration finally turns to critics, we’ll see if things aren’t too far gone for these approaches to work. Of course, I wonder if someone will go through and compare these new action items to the original state department post-war Iraq plans that the administration discarded so casually in 2003. I suspect you’re going to find a great deal of overlap.

That is, after all, the moral of this story. Arrogance and hubris over reason and experience at every turn. History will not be kind to these leaders.