Lessons learned?

Ezra's baffled by Richard Cohen:

You see this lament on occasion, and it almost always suffers from the same internal dissonance exhibited in Cohen's column. Cohen "acknowledge[s] that the war is a catastrophic mistake and was incompetently managed," but he seems disturbed that future policy-makers will shy away from repetition of those mistakes. In other words, he grants the lessons of the war, but laments our willingness to learn them. It's baffling.

That is indeed the correct interpretation of Cohen's words, and "baffling" is a perfectly appropriate  adjective to describe a sensible person's reaction to such words. However, there's no reason for Cohen to worry just yet. It is perfectly likely that, in the spirit of his column, we will forget the lessons of Iraq in short order.