[pizzetta]

It's a bit late for the economist to come out with this.

They should have come out against the invasion of Iraq or the campaign to destabilize the middle east after that.

Why now that we're beginning to disengage from the world? It's a bit strange to see some dissonance: on the one hand they don't want America to disengage from the world on the other hand we're too in love with our military.

[chimeracoder]

> It's a bit late for the economist to come out with this.

This isn't "The Economist" coming out with anything. This is Lexington, a long-running column in The Economist. In journalism, columnists do not reflect the opinion of the publication's editorial board, and columnists receive much greater leeway with their content editorially than other reporters or op-ed contributors would.

The current author of Lexington has only been writing it since 2012, when the previous author died in a car crash. The previous author was, among other things, the foreign editor for The Economist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[_jgdh]

Adding to chimeracoder's comment, the Economist has expressed deep regret for its endorsement of the Iraq War. Not just the current writer of Lexington (the column linked in OP), but from 2006 onward every mention of the decision behind the Iraq war was suffixed with "(which this newspaper supported)". I know no other publication as willing to own up to its mistakes, which is why I have continued to subscribe for over a decade.