I've said it before and I'll very likely say it again: David Brooks is a moron.

In his column today, he offers the line, "Iraq has revealed what human beings do without a strong order-imposing state." Brooks spends the entire column making the case that man's nature is inherently evil or "nasty" and thus requires submission to authority. Obedience is to be encouraged to save man from himself.

Recall that Brooks was one of the original cheerleaders for the Iraq war. Logic dictates that given these beliefs, Brooks should have never been for freeing the Iraqi people. Hell, according to his way of thinking, they were apparently better off under Saddam's strict rule.

To sum up, Brooks has all along supported a war that -- after the WMD and links to 9/11 and Al Qaeda excuses fell flat -- was alas about freeing the people from suppression by ridding them of a horrific authoritative tyrant. But if as Brooks professes, man is not nice and needs to be kept in line, then it stands to reason he should not have been so adamantly in favor of the war. Given his dark view of man's nature, what did he think was going to happen once Saddam was removed? At the very least, he should've been pounding the table at the start that many more troops were needed to insure obedience and order would quickly follow.

Yet here we are, 3000+ dead U.S. soldiers later, and what does Brooks have to say? Something along the lines of you see, this disaster in Iraq is what you get when you free people and don't have in place "a strong order-imposing state."

Warm cup of totalitarian rule, anyone? Yup, he truly is an idiot.