This is easier to write than Rocky!  It does all of its own work.  I'll try to stop soon. But this, from Brookings, is hard to take. It's a roundtable discussion of Iraq where they end up talking about who is to blame.

The participants are Kenneth Pollack, Suzanne Maloney and Michael O'Hanlon.  Two of the three were supporters of the Iraq War and leading liberal interventionists. Their answers to who is to blame are.

1) Maliki. 2) It doesn't matter. 3) Everybody.

O'Hanlon:

"I'm not personally inclined to blame either George W. Bush or Barack Obama that much. I think by the end of 2011, the Iraqis had a fair chance. And yes we should have done more, we should have stayed engaged ... but fundamentally I would give 90 percent of the blame to Maliki and company and only a modest amount at this point to the United States."

Love how he puts Obama and Bush on equal footing here, as if inheriting the war inferred as much culpability as starting it.  Of course, back in 2002, O'Hanlon wanted to start it and he's not about the blame himself. He also says that Americans have "beaten themselves up enough" over this.  Nice of him to let us off the hook.

Now, Maloney:

“I think that focusing on to what extent Maliki is to blame, to what extent George Bush is to blame, to what extent President Obama is to blame is really asking the wrong question. The right question today is, ‘How do we put it back together?’”

Maloney is taking the high road, she thinks.  But it seems to me that if we completely set aside the notion of blame then we will continue listening to the people who created the mess in the first place.  Really, Maloney should be blaming her co-panelists.

Finally, Pollack, who was the most influential liberal interventionist before the war:

"As much as I am unhappy with the decisions that President Obama made, many of them have their antecedents in mistakes that President Bush made and you cannot separate the two. And Mike is also correct that Prime Minister Maliki did things that he didn't have to do, that exacerbated the situation. And Suzanne is right that there are any number of other states in the region that contributed to this. We are all to blame."

So, I guess Pollack is including himself.  But only alongside all of the rest of us.  Even those of us who didn't want to invade Iraq in the first place.  Or maybe he isn't speaking so grandly.  Maybe he is only including people who have had an actual voice about any of those issues.

Some Iraqi.  It doesn't matter.  Everybody!

That passes for serious self reflection.