A year and a bit too late

Ignatieff comes to his senses! Kind of! And about 18 months too late for it to matter for his career!

"The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president," Ignatieff writes in a reference to U.S. President George Bush.

"But it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion."

There's also this bit:

In it, he is harshly critical of Bush. Ignatieff says that, unlike intellectuals who bat about ideas, political leaders can ruin millions of lives if they fail to understand realities.

"Good judgment in politics, it turns out, depends on being a critical judge of yourself," Ignatieff writes. "It was not merely that the president did not take the care to understand Iraq. He also did not take care to understand himself." That's why Bush did not hear "warning bells" inside himself about Iraq, Ignatieff writes.

So should we be reassured or not that Ignatieff gave up the more intellectually competitive life of academia for the drooling insipidity of politics?

And why oh why is Michael Ignatieff, MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, still seem more at home in the pages of the New York Times? Couldn't he have found a way to speak to people who might actually vote for him?