The misguided liberal (?) hawks

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By Tony Judt
October 8, 2007


The "liberal hawks" are back. These, of course, are the politicians and pundits who threw in their lot with George W. Bush in 2003: voting and writing for a "preventive war" - a war of choice that would avenge 9/11, clean up Iraq, stifle Islamic terrorism, spread shock, awe and democracy across the Middle East and re-affirm the credentials of a benevolently interventionist America. For a while afterward, the president's liberal enablers fell silent, temporarily abashed by their complicity in the worst foreign policy error in American history. But gradually they are returning. And they are in a decidedly self-righteous mood.

Yes, they concede, Bush messed up his (our) war. But even if the war was a mistake, it was a brave and good mistake and we were right to make it, just as we were right to advocate intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo. ("The difference between Kosovo and Iraq isn't between a country that wanted peace and one that didn't," the Slate editor and one-time war cheerleader Jacob Weisberg, now tells us. "It was a matter of better management and better luck.") We were right to be wrong - and that's why you should listen to us now.

In addition, they say, we have the guts to call a spade a spade - to designate Muslim suicide-bombers "Islamic Fascists" (Paul Berman) and "Islamofascists" (Christopher Hitchens) - and to denounce Iranian demagogues as would-be Hitlers. We are the heirs, according to the former New Republic editor Peter Beinart, of the anti-totalitarian struggles of World War II and the Cold War, and our battle against terrorism is the defining cause of the age.

We are going to hear much more in this vein in the coming months. And there is a new twist. For all its shortcomings, the Iraq war, we are now reminded, was "justified" (Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator) by its impeccable moral credentials. It was supported - and is still - by leading European intellectuals, notably former dissidents like Adam Michnik and Vaclav Havel. They understand evil and the need for America to take a stand. So do we. Our domestic critics simply don't "get it." They are appeasers and defeatists . . .


more: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/08/opinion/edjudt.php

[texastoast]

1. Misguided liberal (?) hawk voters

What I'm seeing is that a lot of folks here do not get that as long as we have the war going on, there will be:

(1) No money for health care (unless we borrow more from China)
(2) No money for education (unless we borrow more from China)
(3) No money for anything precious to the liberal (sane) perspective for America.

All of this borrowing, of course, laid on the backs of the next generations.

The war is THE thing that we have to get rid of.

[damntexdem]

2. Iraq hawks are liberals, they're abetters of warcrimes.

The Iraq invasion is nothing like the international intervention in Kosovo.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. My "liberal" (D) rep now favors the surge and demands more time.

There are a lot of folks in this district who are less than pleased with his flip-flop and will, presumably, vote accordingly.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003850954_bairdop24.html

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4. presumably

hopefully.

It's amazing to see the ambitions these Democratic politicians are still intent on pursuing behind the sacrifice of lives in Iraq.