Recognizing your own weaknesses -- and learning from them

Richard Cohen, writing for the WaPo and republished here, in the WSJ has the nastiest attack you can imagine on Clooney's Syriana, and couples it with a swipe at his own liberal party:

'Syriana''s cynicism is dated. To read George Packer's 'The Assassin's Gate' is to be reminded that the Iraq War is not the product of oil avarice or CIA evil, but of a surfeit of altruism, a naive compulsion to do good. That entire collection of neo and retro conservatives -- Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and particularly Wolfowitz -- made war not for oil or for empire, but to end the horror of Saddam Hussein and, yes, reorder the Middle East. They were inept, duplicitous, awesomely incompetent, but they did not give a damn for oil or empire. This is why so many liberals, myself included, originally supported the war. It engaged us emotionally. It seemed . . . well, right -- a just cause. It would be nice if Hollywood understood that. It would be nice if those who agree with Hollywood -- who think that this is a brave, truth-to-power movie when it is really just an outdated cliche -- can release their fervid grip on old left bromides about Big Oil, Big Business, Big Government and the inherent evil of George Bush, and come up with something new and relevant. Something new and relevant is desperately needed. Neoconservatism crashed and burned in Iraq, but liberalism never even showed up. The left's criticism of the war from the very start was too often a porridge of inanities about oil or empire or Halliburton -- or isolationism by another name. It was childish and ultimately ineffective. The war came and Bush was re-elected. How's that for a clean whiff?

My title is "recognizing your own weaknesses -- and learning from them." Hollywood isn't doing that, but apparently someone at the WaPo is.