Well..., at least in 1991, the United States foreign policy was supported by a wider, broader range of entities. Further, the defined goal was achieved and we ended our major deployments.

I remained troubled that we and the UK continued to bomb Hussein with impunity for the next baker's dozen years... yet I couldn't think of an alternative to extricate ourselves from it.

After, as Dubya puts it, "September the Eleventh," I knew that scared, angry people were driving our foreign policy ("...imagine those terrorists with other weapons...") and that was going to be bad.

Have any sociologists or historians done a study on the length of time the metaphorical aftershocks continue after the upheaval of invasion and occupation? After all, there are Confederates still.

The Good Fight, a book that promotes a vigorous, anti-jihadist foreign policy vision for liberals.

Liberals need a book telling them how to create a vigourous anti-conservative policy, not another book on how to kill more brown skinned innocents.

On the other hand, republicans like Bush , Cheney, and Mccain can't be trusted to fight the "war on terror' because they don't fight terrorists so much as brand anywhere they want to hit with a bomb (Iraq!) as a central front in the war on terror no matter what the actual facts are.

Killing terrorists is good. Labelling every random war you want to fight as part of the "war on terror" is idiotic and harmful.

Beinart threw in with those idiots. he can't be trusted.

Al, you're right. I also reject spreading freedom and democracy around the world because it is inherent upon a nation's people to claim it.

Freedom cannot be imposed by an outside agency.

Beinart threw in with those idiots. he can't be trusted.
Please. Beinart, and The New Republic, was never so naive as to label the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism.

No, a lot of us WON'T agree that opposition to the first Gulf War was wrong. That opposition, by the way, consisted of many Republicans as well as Democrats. Remember that G.H.W. Bush told Saddam ahead of time that he wouldn't interfere with Saddam's affairs with Kuwait (which was historically part of Iraq). Also remember that the "international coalition" put together by G.H.W. was only slightly more "willing" than the one put together by his son. Also remember that there was a news blackout (in the U.S.) for anything not pre-approved by the G.H.W. Bush administration. And, as now, the best source of information was the foreign press.

It was a wasteful, unnecessary war (with over 100,000 Iraqis gratuitiously killed) waged simply to correct the ideas people had about the size of G.H.W.'s penis. It should have been handled diplomatically, to address the real grievances Saddam (up until then our ally) had with Kuwait. But, as in 2003, diplomatic solutions were shouted down by people like Beinart.

Amazing how Republican talking points become received wisdom from people like Beinart. I suppose in the next breath he'll say that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War and that Joseph McCarthy was brave because he dared to identify spies in the State Department.

Beinart's book "promotes a vigorous, anti-jihadist foreign policy vision for liberals." How is that different from the vision that led him to be mistaken about Iraq in the first place? Until they explain exactly what they mean by "jihadist," I'm not interested in what this wrong, but still rabid, group of liberals has to say.

Beinart also doesn't distinguish between being wrong on the side of caution and being wrong on the side of recklessness. I have much more respect for the cautious analyst than for the reckless (sloppy) one. The country can't afford to be proactively wrong too many more times.

Finally, claims that if would be hard for the reader to find a better source - "if you were looking for an untainted record, you would find very few people." What I am looking for is a better record than Beinart's. I have no interest in learning what he thinks about subjects where he has already demonstrated his ineptness. I am most definitely willing to look for a better record than his for further analysis.

It is not that he was for the war before he was against it. The reason Beinart is contemptible and useless and counter-productive is his focus then and now to beat up on more on progressives who are against the U.S. invading other countries, rather than on Republicans. Because, like Leiberman, and most of the rest of the DLC/TNR croud he spends more time going after his supposed friends, and less time going after the Republicans. Because he is an enabler of their narrative and hurts our side getting elected. that is why he is bad. This is not the case for all people who were for the war and now get it. Also, though those who got it right (as in correct) may be few, why don't we concentrate on them why they were correct, how come they are all democrats, and more and more progressive democrats, and lets make that the narrative!

Gulf War 1 lead to Gulf War 2. How can that be defined as a success? And I never to this day understood why Americans died to re-install a monarchy. Weird. BTW, Bush lost the election so it didn't work out to well for him either.

Oh, now it's the Democrats what are the isolationist instead of just simply Bush as the isolationist.

Bush's own father knew how to get NATO to help with the Gulf war but "isolationist" like Bush junior knew only how to start smear campaigns and after much begging from the Clinton administration to take terrorism serious, pre-9/11, Bush simply ignored a threat of hijack from terrorist in his own intelligence briefing? Even Bush's own father wasn't an isolationist in the way that Bush junior been with talk about how diplomacy was actually another term for the word appeasement.

If Beinart actually says this: "what I can say is that the polling data on Democrats and liberals suggests an increasing unwillingness to see the war on terror as a priority at all. And some real evidence of growing isolationist sentiment, measured by questions like, "Do you think the United States should mind its own business, essentially?"

It would shown that Beinart is trying to paint liberals as "isolationist" instead of the real isolationist which is and has always been Dubya himself. Bush didn't talk to North Korea to prevent NK from making nukes - only Clinton did that and now the UN is begging Bush to talk directly with Iran. NOW why is that? Because Bush is a isolationist - that's why.

I don't think Beinart is a real centrist Dem, or for that matter a Dem at all - He has always been a Republican operative pretendting to be a so called centrist Dem and TNR pretending that Clinton shared all of TNR's so called centrist viewpoing. And of course Kevin is one and the same thing as Beinart. A Republican parading about as a centrist Dem. Why did Kevin push the peak oil BS, the sheild law for Judith Miller, and why was Kevin so quick to trash Richard Clarke? It's beginning to be rather obvious what the Washington Monthly shares in common with TNR.

Anything one writes deserves to be judged by itself.

Well now, that's the Ponnuru fallacy in a nutshell, isn't it? Fact is, life is short, one cannot read everything, and an author's claim to pride of place in the public discussion most certainly depends upon the wisdom of his previous judgments.

So, is it "perfectly fair" that YOU, Kevin Drum, get beat up about joining the Iraq war chorus as well?

At least Drum has more credibility than you do, Charlie.

Anything one writes deserves to be judged by itself.

Well...no. A stopped clock is right twice a day, but one can't point to those two minutes and judge them by themselves without also accounting for all the other times it's right. It's as if I were to write "The Iraq War is right. The Iraq War is wrong" and them demand that each individual sentence be judged by itself.

Anything one writes deserves to be judged by itself.

Haha!

I have decided not to read that book on the basis of that statement alone.

What a self-serving chickenhawk.

a book that promotes a vigorous, anti-jihadist foreign policy vision for liberals.

That, plus this comments thread, really says it all. We've been at war with the same enemy for five years, and liberals are still deciding whether or not to be pro- or anti-jihadist. Unbelievable. It's also very telling that Beinart has to defend himself for allegedly erring on the side of freedom and democracy. You guys are dedicated to never winning another election, aren't you?

There is a big difference between being wrong on the Gulf War in 1991 (which happened notwithstanding Kerry et al's opposition, with relatively benign ocnsequences) and being wrong about the iraq War. Being wrong about the Iraq War means having assisted in the cheerleading and lies (or at least not examining the lies) that got us into that war. Moreover, the consequences of the Iraq War, in terms of lost lives, treasure, prestige and military capability, are staggering in comparison to the Gulf War, let alone Kosovo.

In short, it is one thing to have been (maybe wrongly) against the consensus of a war that was probably necessary and had a comparatively benign result, and having been (clearly wrongly) in favor of a war that has been a disaster in almost every respect.

Arguably there was some courage in the former position, but none whatever in the latter. Maybe Beinart has forgotten which side was the consensus view all 3 times--the one he was on.

How can you take this idiot seriously?

He tells us to judge his writing on its own merit without any reference to what he said in the past, and, then, in the same breath, faults the Democrats for nominating someone who was wrong on Gulf War I.

He should go back to debating Ann Coulter on the community college circuit.

What invalidates Beinart's opiions on anything are his comments re Cheney ("I'm not sure where he stands on democracy promotion").

If he thinks there is even a chance Cheney is for anything other than the promotion of a belligerent, militaristic USA that exists solely to benefit his cronies in the oil and defense industries, than he doesn't deserve a podium from which to comment on politics. Fuck Peter Beinart. He is stupid, and he is irrelevant.

....I mentioned a couple of days ago that I had recently interviewed Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of The New Republic and now author of The Good Fight, a book that promotes a vigorous, anti-jihadist foreign policy vision for liberals. It's a very readable book (and fairly short, weighing in at only 208 pages), and spends most its time tracing an intellectual history of the "anti-imperialist" left.

Maybe its just me, but shouldn't a book -- particularly one that is "fairly short" -- that seeks to promote a "vigourous, anti-jihadist foreign policy vision for liberals" spend most of its time, outlining and justifying such a vision, rather than "tracing an intellectual history of the 'anti-imperialist' left"?

What exactly has Beinart come up with here? Multilateralism, diplomacy, Marshall-planesque approach...DUH! That's what sensible people have been talking about all along.

The problem isn't that that sensible people didn't agree on these ideas or advocate for them, it's that sensible people were drowned out by idiots on the right and left, BEINART AMONG THEM! Beinart derided anyone who thought Iraq was a fool's errand as a hippy anti-war peacenick. He misrepresented and marginalized the views and the people whose ideas he's stealing right now!

So, no, Beinart doesn't get to slap his name on the sensible ideas he previously derided and pretend it's something new that he and his gang of morons came up with!

He's an idiot with poor judgment, and deserves to be ignored, as do all the fools left and right who shanghaied the American people into this war that, even before it began, screamed "error of catastrophic proportions" to anyone with half a brain.

We've been at war with the same enemy for five years, and liberals are still deciding whether or not to be pro- or anti-jihadist.

No, really, its more competing liberal pundits are arguing over the right way to oppose jihadism, and accusing those who disagree with them of not being genuinely anti-jihadist.

In fact, the word "liberal" in the preceding sentence is entirely superfluous except for the purpose of correcting your mischaracterization.

What a winger-ish pigpile.

Now -we- are judging books without reading them, and dismissing arguments solely on the basis of the person making them?

OK Righties here is a little secret for you. The British knew the middle east was nothing but trouble,There answer,Break it up into small pieces and let them fight thereselves,keeping them to busy to fight other's. G.W. Screwed that one up bad,But none of these people have ever fought a war so what do they know.Knewt for Prez.

Gulf War 1 lead to Gulf War 2.

No more than, say, WWII lead to Gulf War 2, in that the circumstances in which the lies that proximately led the latter war to occur would probably not have existed without the former war having occurred. Certainly, Gulf War 1 did not make the war that actually occurred in 2003 desirable, necessary, or inevitable.

Beinart is an example of a 'liberal' who secretly likes wars. As a general position it's better to be pro-war rather than anti-war.

The fact is that the U.S. is a militaristic society. The indications are everywhere - just look at the defense budget. There are an awful lot of people in the U.S. who *like* the idea of war. This doesn't mean that all wars are uniformly good, or that things don't go wrong, but muscularity is to be preferred over diplomacy.

It's a defining characteristic of the U.S.

Now -we- are judging books without reading them,

Books are written far faster than I can read them all; the only way to make non-random decisions about which to read is to judge them without reading them.

cmdicely:Give it up these righties are not smart enough to get there selves out of a wet paper sack.

The pathetic elitism and narcissism of the left, exemplified by many here especially brewmn, is staggering. Opposing opinions are not welcome and only if you sing to the choir are you considered enlightened. And how can one be enlightened if in fact they merely parrot the talking points? It does however start my day with a laugh.

btw, anyone who refers to any other person as "brown-skinned" is racist. In fact that is the very definition of racism, pointing to ones skin color or ethnicity. Do you see yourself here Powerpuff.

We've been at war with the same enemy for five years, and liberals are still deciding whether or not to be pro- or anti-jihadist.

This is not just untrue, but spectacularly untrue. First of all, 9/11 was less than five years ago. Second of all, al Qaeda, Afghanistan and Iraq are not the same enemy, although it's understandable to conflate the first two.

Most importantly, there's nothing jihadist about Iraq, or specifically about Saddam Hussein. Saddam's Iraq was as secular a state as there was in the Middle East. We didn't go in there to fight against a jihad; we went in there to remove his weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, saying liberals are "pro-jihadist" by being against prosecuting a war in the Middle East is like saying the right wing is pro-communist by being against prosecuting a war in North Korea.

"themselves", I think that's what you meant Now, right? Smart people use spell check. At least those who can get "themselves" out of a paper sack.

Excuse me a minute, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha

ok, carry on.

Jay -

Pray enlighten us on which aspect(s) of brewmn's comment you disagree with, and why. Instead of merely characterizing those comments disparagingly.

Thanks,
JB

Beinart fails to mention that Kerry was not only "wrong" about Gulf War I, but wrong about Gulf War II, which would seem to be more germane to his point.

Well, how about this one; "Fuck Peter Beinart. He is stupid, and he is irrelevant".

I could say the same thing about 90% of the people on this site.

The Democratic Party nominated someone in 2004 who had been flat wrong in his opposition to the Gulf War in 1991

Yes, and look at what wonderful candidate he turned out to be. And it's not like Kerry was hugely popular among the liberal Democrats Beinart is trying to reach in this statement.

Although Beinart's right in that we can learn from people like John Kerry. What I've learned is: don't nominate a consensus (i.e. everybody's third choice) candidate like John Kerry.

And ohmigod, when are supposedly intelligent people like Beinart going to figure out that the biggest reason we haven't caught Osama bin Laden is IRAQ? We've got damn near our entire army in the wrong damn country!

Golly gee, think the reason we've got zero coherent strategy to deal with the threat posed by jihadis might be related to the fact that we decided to go play RISK in Arabia instead?

Why exactly isn't it obvious that we quit Afghanistan to do Iraq and oops, Iraq was a fool's errand (and poorly executed to boot)--so, duh, we've got no Osama, no Arabian outpost, and things are getting worse for us by every conceivable measure with each passing day? Because it seems damn obvious to me, and I expect it will seem equally obvious to historians when they write about great military blunders in history.

Now -we- are judging books without reading them, and dismissing arguments solely on the basis of the person making them?

Not "solely" on the basis of the person making them -- we are judging them based on our familiarity with that person's previous writings and arguments.

I just wanted to point out that none of Beinart's arguments against the left devolve into such ill-conceived, inflated rhetorical attacks by the left against Beinart as demonstrated by comments in this thread. One can disagree with Beinart, but still consider him to be a potentially valid source of liberal ideas. I thought the war was a bad idea from the beginning, but jesus, Beinart's an intelligent guy who was wrong about one foriegn policy issue. A big one, yes. But one, nonetheless.

You're right Boots. That statement was untrue because we have actually been at war with this enemy for over 30 years, we just didn't realize it. 1972 Munich Olympic games was one their first acts of aggression (and I am sure there were earlier ones) towards the west followed by years and years of explosions, murder and mayhem while we had our heads firmly planted.

9/11 was the wake up call (for most people) as was the London and Madrid bombings and if Beslan didn't wake you up, I am not sure anything will.

And it's not like Kerry was hugely popular among the liberal Democrats Beinart is trying to reach in this statement.

And it's not like Kerry is saying, "OK, I was wrong about everything before, but now I'm right, and you guys should start listening to me." And to the extent that he is doing that, no one is taking him seriously.

Beinart started it.

How is the "anti-imperialist" history of the Left relevant if every decision should be evaluated on its own?

Libby Sosume nailed it.

...but still consider him to be a potentially valid source of liberal ideas..

Well it's not as if there is a paucity of current rather than potential sources of liberal ideas.

Should we consider Zell Miller also as a potentially valid source of liberal ideas?

That was a pretty tough interview. Drum got Beinart to whine about how "even Tim Russert" was more polite to his guests. Kudos to you, Kevin.

One key point that you didn't address is worth bringing up sometime in the future. The TNR hawks dive into the comforting embrace of their facile Cold War analogies almost as reflexively as the neocons whip out their bad Chamberlain analogies. But in the case of Beinart's cold war rhetoric in 2002 and 2003, not only were the situations non-parallel, but the policy prescriptions were non-parallel. When faced with an existential threat from the Soviet Union, Truman pursued a policy of containment. When faced with a lesser threat from Al-Qaida, the neocons prescribed a greater response-- military conquest-- and the TNR hawks bought into it.

The key false lesson learned from the Cold War by conservative and liberal hawks alike is that containment was the right policy because, and only because, of mutually assured destruction. In this mindset, the threat from the Soviet Union kept America from doing what it could and should rightfully do... kick ass all over the globe with impunity whenever it serves our interest.

Now Beinart chalks up the problems in Iraq to a lack of "legitimacy", but still seems to think that the Iraq War could have worked with UN support. I would argue that containment was the right cold war policy not merely because of the external limits placed by the Soviets, but by the inherent limits of military force to solve political problems. In Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Kurdish Iraq there were local allies with popular support capable of forming a government. In the rest of Iraq, we had no such thing, and therefore we had no hope whatsoever of securing the country.

This is the crucial, essential lesson of Vietnam that the right-wing with their stab-in-the-back mythology failed to learn, and which the TNR hawks with their knee-jerk opposition to conceding any intellectual arguments to the Vietnam-era peace movement failed to learn. Military power can only solve military problems.

In postwar Germany and Japan we succeeded only with a massive number of conscript boots on the ground... and even then only because the countries were utterly devastated and their fascist ideologies had been so thoroughly discredited. Jihadism, with its 72 virgins-and-a-pony afterlife promises, is much more widespread and pernicious, and a lot harder to discredit. Yet no one seriously believes its a big enough military threat to require a draft.

The only logical conclusion to draw from this is that military intervention cannot eliminate jihadist terrorism and can't be used to build liberal democracies from scratch. Period. Not with the support of the UN. Not with the support of the Arab League. Not with awesome fighting liberal leadership and a neo-Marshall plan. Not with Book of Revelations Jesus and his army of angels. Only if and when a solid local majority is willing to fight to the death on our side can we expect a military intervention to work.

Containment was the right policy not because the Soviets kept us from righteously kicking ass. It was the right policy morally, pragmatically, and philosophically. Until Joe Leiberman, Peter Beinart, and all the liberal hawks learn this lesson and learn it good, this party is going to be split down the middle over foreign policy. Because I don't trust these assholes to command the United States Armed Forces, and neither should you.

All Al Qaida attacks date from after Gulf War 1.

Thus one can frame an argument that the Arab world regarded America's intrusion into the region as a casus belli. In other words: since Americans dropped bombs on Arabs, the Arab World had a right to drop bombs right back.

In other words, arguably, Gulf War 1 led directly to 9-11.

If this argument is even only partially correct it speaks volumes when we consider the rage Bush's Iraq mess must be creating in the Arab world.

As I read Kevin's description, Beinart spends most of his book poisoning the well against those he expects to disagree with him based on their past record (rather than advancing the notional thesis of the book directly), and yet Beinart objects that people might dismiss his book based on his own past record.

That is...amusing, I suppose. But its not convincing me to take Beinart seriously.

Beinart's claim that there are few people with unblemished records is reasonable...for a politician who is confronted with these decisions. Shouldn't we make a qualitative distinction between public policymakers and, well, pundits? With access to fewer facts, less directly to gain or lose, less accountability, don't pundits bear a fair amount more responsibility for their track records?

And incidentally, when did it become ok for a 'good story' argument to trump a 'correct' one?

Could Joe Lieberman be considered a source for liberal ideas?

Could Joe Lieberman be considered a source for liberal ideas?

I don't see much reason for that, even if you delete "liberal".

I like Kevin's smackdown of Mr. Beinart.

To me he comes across more as an apologist for the Bush and the war mongering neocon rather than someone who has to say something useful to the Democrats. Whatever he says that is useful is nothing that is not already understood by the big bad liberal and the anti-war type strawmen that he tries so hard to excoriate.

I had an argument with my father this week-end after calling Bernard Lewis a war pig. Like Beinart, Lewis has lost all credibility because of his inaccurate predicitions of what an invasion of Iraq would produce. Despite all of the scholarship of writers like these, they were horribly wrong about Iraq and must not be trusted again with producing any reasonable analysis of what US policy should be. If there was truly a free market, Lewis would not be able to teach anything more than community college world history and Beinart would not be able to edit a magazine of any more import than a Pennysaver. However, our journalism is mercantilist controlled.

Estimated number of jihadists in Iraq; 10,000. Population of Iraq; 27 million. And yet ajl is claiming we have no chance for victory. I sure wouldn't trust him to command the forces.

Also, we never had a massive military presence (boots on the ground) in Japan. Remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And can you imagine the far left and what they would have been saying about WWII had that brain damage been around then? Over 10,000 soldiers died at D-Day, one day. They would have been pulling back so fast that Michael Moore would have had a hard time filming it.

Beinart's use of the word 'jihadist' rather than terrorist exposes him as an apologist for the Michael Savage wing of the Republican party.

It wasn't just that Bienert and company were pro-Iraq War, it was they were complete jerks about it.

They were rude and contemptous of anyone who even tried to raise some problems. Ridiculed them as being "soft on terror" and the like.

That's one reason not to listen to him: he didn't ever engage in honest debate.

Second, what the heck has he ever done that would make you take the time to listen to him? Krugman was a spectacular insightful economist. Friedman wrote several insightful books before becoming a nut. But Bienert? He was on Peretz's payroll.

That's it - he was a paid hack. And why on earth would we want to listen to the musing of a paid hack?

Ajl is right on the foreign policy analysis.

But regarding Beinart himself, you have a situation where it's not only that he was wrong. It was his attitude and behavior about being wrong. He was condescdending, deceitful and arrogant. Those are personality traits that don't disappear overnight.

Now he tries to adopt more moderate ideas (Invading Iraq, being radical of course), and he STILL disparages those people who've been saying those ideas from day one.

If he wants to be taken seriously, he needs to apologize, not for his ideas. But for his behavior in discussing those ideas.

One final thing. To us (meaning most of the people against anti-Iraqi war here...I'd dare wager all). It's not that we're not "anti-jihadist". It's that we believe (and we're probably proven right on this, if you look at opinion polls about the US worldwide), that the Iraqi war only served to strengthen the hand of the jihadist movement worldwide, through decreasing our moral authority throughout the world.

I'd argue that moral authority started out on pretty shaky ground as it is, but that's neither here nor there.

Kuwait was never part of Iraq, and Saddam saying so did not make it true.

Labelling every random war you want to fight as part of the "war on terror" is idiotic and harmful.

Sort of like invading Panama? One of the cited reasons for Operation Just Because was that Noreiga was allowing drugs to be transshipped through Panama. Just a logical extension of the War on Drugs.

"I could say the same thing about 90% of the people on this site."

Then why are you still here? And only an idiot would quote the conclusory sentence of a post and then claim that the original author didn't support that conclusion. Therefore, "Fuck Jay. He's stupid and irrelevant."

BTW, Ajl, great post.

Jay-- you're half right on postwar Japan. Certainly the A-bomb was used to prevent a massive ground invasion, but compare the number of boots on the ground to the occupation of Iraq.

By the end of 1945, more than 350,000 US personnel were stationed throughout Japan.

And this was in a country with somewhat less land area than Iraq.

As for your insistence that there are only 10K insurgents in Iraq, I find this highly dubious, particularly if you factor in people who are willing to aid and abet the insurgents without picking up a gun.

But you miss the point. The important factor is not the number of insurgents. As I put it in my earlier comment, the key factor is the number of people willing to fight on our side. Every report from Iraq indicates sectarian violence from militias that have no interest in supporting US troops and care little for democracy. In Vietnam we were not defeated by the VC, but by the much larger number of Vietnamese who simply did not support the RVN regime and were unwilling to fight for it.

Only Iraqis can bring stable democracy to Iraq. If there were significant domestic factions who wanted peace and supported the US occupation, we could have assisted them in securing the nation and putting together a stable government. This is what we did in Afghanistan... or at least in Kabul and the surrounding areas. This, quite obviously, has not been the case in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle.

No one else seems to have pointed out that Beinart didn't even bother to answer the question.

That is the most compelling reason *not* to bother listening to what he has to say now.

Jay for President!!!!! HAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHHA he

But did you get the wet paper sack thing or did that go over your head.What a Bush!!

Over 10,000 soldiers died at D-Day, one day.

Just for the record, this is wrong. 10,000 is the total killed and wounded. Trivial point I know, but I couldn't let it pass.
Beinhart seems much too forgiving to Bush and his "commitment" to democracy. All available evidence is that this is a campaign technique and not a serious belief on his part.

Hmm...Kosovo and Gulf 1, one thing about those conflicts is that people who are more or less grown up were running the country and the military, and Serbian nationalism was a really ugly thing. I was no fan of Bush Sr. and I wonder in retrospect if we might have been spun, but it was a multilateral exercise. That means if were spun, so were most of our allies. That counts for a lot. Moreover, we went in with a reasonable plan and sufficient force.

But the current war in Iraq -- there is no excuse for being wrong about that one, and if you were convinced on the basis of what was provided, you really should just shut the fuck up and go away.

If you underestimated the mendacity and the incompetence of George W. Bush and his handlers you have no authority to be telling the rest of us how to run our party. It was right there to be seen all along.

Just 24 hours after the United States commemorated Memorial Day, the American people are being reminded once again of President Bush's folly in going to war in Iraq with too few troops. The American commander in Iraq General George Casey is dispatching up to 3,500 reinforcements from Kuwait to turbulent Anbar province in Iraq.

For the details, see:
"The Price of Folly: Reinforcements to Iraq."

what's with KD's fascination with people writing for TNR? why not just quote writers for the Jerusalem Post?

It wasn't just that Bienert and company were pro-Iraq War, it was they were complete jerks about it.
And they were proven wrong, and the blogosphere has been bigger "complete jerks" right back to them (TNR) than they ever were or have been, completely dismissing them out of hand as intellectually bankrupt and even Republican operatives while at the same time failing to (and even being proud of) not reading anything he/they write anymore. As if he/they ever did or will write about only Iraq, and that that issue, alone, qualifies him/them as a bona fide right-winger. How utterly ridiculous.

brewmn, that conclusion was your opinion, hardly fact. You disagree with him, therefore he is "stupid and irrelevant". Hardly the conclusion someone of intelligence would come to. I said that I could reach the same conclusion about much of the comments on this site, yet I try not to, because that is just my opinion. That's where the left usually gets it wrong, the seperation of opinion and fact.

Example; Polls are opinions, elections are facts.

I get a laugh at all the liberals who are staunch supporters of past wars. Or the ones who want to flex our military muscle with Iran claiming that ours is the strongest military in the world, yet have a huge problem with current conflicts, when we actually have to use that muscle. Can talk the talk but not walk the walk, right?

for the record, I am not just for the promotion of a belligerent, militaristic USA that exists solely to benefit my cronies in the oil and defense industries - I also like quail hunting ; )

Don't forget joking about dead kids, Charlie.

O.K. Red flag in front of bull (trolls) time.
Suppose GWB is nothing more than an irresponsible twit with a chip on his shouder wanting to tear down that which his father wanted to preserve, aided by Neo-Nazis who see a wonderful chance to institute police state state controls worldwide ( yep, this is not just a U.S. problem ) .
There are enough posts on this idea around that I don't feel compelled to make all the arguments for this analysis, particularly on someone else's blog.
What other idea explains all the destructive policies promulgated by this administration ? I see little obvious downside for destabilizing world peace for arms merchants. Likewise oil producers ( Texas ) have nothing but money to gain from increased prices for petroleum.
If Americans would approve of what is being done to and by their nation, why all the rollbacks of government information and increases in spying ?
Control freaks. I don't care about their ideology or motivation. Anything that might provide some measure of moderation has to go.
Signing statments.
Patriot Act.
Torture.
Warrantless arrest.
War to keep the population in line ( Congress never did explicitly authorize it )
Why doesn't the policy make sense ? Hey. If your objectives are power just appeal to short-sighted policies that make the money roll in for the rich ; who are hardly hurting but obviously know something about doing what they want because they can.

opit, GW could have made a hell of a lot more money by not going to war (see France, Germany and Russia; oil for food). If GW would have continued the policy of containment and made backroom deals with Saddam, he could have raked it in. And talk about power, hell the liberals, the French, the Germans and the terrorists (that's quite the group isn't it?)all would have supported containment. GW could have had much more power.

"war to keep the population in line"? WTF is that? If you are implying that vocal opposition is not allowed you're sadly wrong (of course you are a liberal so that usually goes hand in hand). The incessant whining from the left is deafening much akin to scared little school girls. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Jay

I just found some newly invented devices and clothing that might help you.

It must be embarrassing for you lib.

Jay I whistled, you came.
All you have to do is check what happened to the opposition to war in Iraq once the Prez announced it to be a go. That and "emergency" powers for the GWOT : which completely flushed successful prosecution in court down the tubes by contaminating evidence.
All the electronic surveillance "tips" chased down by investigators have not been shown useful : else the FBI wouldn't be protesting wasting its time with nonsense.

As I said, I don't know who "Charlie" is, and I've never joked about dead kids.

Your feeble lies convince no one, Charlie. Of course, that's always been the case.

I thought the interview was solid & I also thought he was great on Al Franken's show today. But I just don't see him winning over many of his antagonists.

Dustin, so you are the one person that listens to Frankens show. I was wondering who that person was.

Seems like the prostate massager did not help you Jay.

Just trying to help here.

"Anything one writes deserves to be judged by itself."

WTF?

Do we apply THAT to stockbrokers or sportswriters? So why should we apply it to pundits? Why shouldn't I give a LOT more credence to Scott Ritter on a threat assessment of Iran than I would now give to Peter Beinart or a whole host of other people who were both so wrong most recently, and so incapable of assessing the threat level even if they were wrong on the facts?

First of all, the way the question is put, so bluntly, is beautiful.
Secondly:
The Democratic Party nominated someone in 2004 who had been flat wrong in his opposition to the Gulf War in 1991, I think most people would acknowledge that.

So, opposition to the Gulf War in '91, when military bases in Saudi Arabia pissed off an obscure psychopath with a significant trust fund who ten years later murdered 3000 Americans in response to which Peter Beinart and George Bush and Joe Lieberman said, "let's go back and hit that guy who hasn't done anything in ten years", was a bigger mistake than supporting this war? B/c the people who weren't pissed off when we asked a fantastically corrupt and oppressive regime to host our military bases in their Holy Land would be thrilled when we made their brothers and cousins and daughters "martyrs to the Liberation?" The lesson of the First Gulf War isn't "We won and it's easy", it's that things don't happen in a geopolitical vacuum, especially in the Middel East, and we need to take a broad and long view, not cut the head off one snake and hope the Great Whitebearded Grandpa in the Sky takes care of the others.
Maybe the fact that Beinart's voice sounds like, um, something hasn't dropped influences my opinion, but Beinart's worldview strikes me as extraordinarily naive for someone who is regularly hailed as the Wunderkind of the "Truman Democrats". I would not reject, for myself, the label of liberal interventionist, but people like Beinart and Whittman and the other cheerleaders of the Lieberman-McCain Caucus seem to think that militarism, in and of and by itself, is a good thing. It's one component in a very complicated national defense machine.

Do any of you recall the issue of TNR where Beinart, Wieseltier and all the other geniuses at that august journal wrote essays defending their own earlier positions after it became obvious that the war had gone terribly wrong? "If only they had followed the strategy I recommended prior to the opening of hostilities..............." I dropped my subscription at that point.

we have actually been at war with this enemy for over 30 years, we just didn't realize it. 1972 Munich Olympic games was one their first acts of aggression (and I am sure there were earlier ones) towards the west followed by years and years of explosions, murder and mayhem while we had our heads firmly planted.

Sheeiit, longer than that Jay-man. Them libs have had their heads in the sand fer over 2,000 years. From Wikipedia:

In the 1st century, Zealots conducted a fierce and unrelenting terror campaign against the Roman occupiers of the eastern Mediterranean. The Zealots enlisted sicarii to strike down rich Jewish collaborators and others who were friendly to the Romans.

Virgil This lib isn't quite that old. I do know the Irish kept up resistance to English occupation for centuries. The Palestinians have very little to be content with right now. Persecution and hate are a poor recipe for amicable relations in any era. To say it's safer to export violence elsewhere is to miss the idea that what goes 'round comes 'round. You can keep some semblance of control over people without doing it the hard way....hard for you and them both. That's not the same as being soft ... lazy maybe.

In some fundamental sense, does it really matter what Peter Beinart thinks?

Whether one agrees with his thesis or not, he's just some guy that writes for the New Republic, not a member of Congress, not the president. He's not even a staffer, or aide, or consultant.

Instead of directing hostility at him, perhaps people should argue for some alternative policy in the so-called war on terror, or argue that there shouldn't be a war on terror.

If the Deaniac alternative is not continuing to enable the corrupt, oil rich dictators whose populations hate us for doing so, and whose princely class is funding terrorism with our oil dollars, then what is the alternative?

See: unless you propose a different course people get to thinking you either believe the status quo is okay, or you're an isolationist, or that you're just unserious. The reason why much of the left isn't taken seriously is because so many on the left are unwilling to articulate a strategic alternative to democracy promotion. They give us tactical answers (get out of Iraq, find Osama, etc) but only the neoconservatives, realist right, paleocon isolationists, and liberal hawks are really spelling out what they would do in response to terrorism.

There's a reason people think liberals are unserious about this issue...

Can anyone demonstrate how the first Gulf War (even if one acknowledges it as the "first" Gulf War, rather than the opening shot in the disastrous continuing Gulf War) has:
1) Made America more secure
2) Enhanced freedom, stability, or security in the Middle East
3) Produced some tangible result commensurate with the cost
???

An argument could possibly be made, but it's far from self evident. To say that those who opposed it were flat wrong is just flat wrong.

Sir, I believe you have me confused with someone else you hate.

Contempt isn't hatred, Charlie, and there's no confusion -- just a little puzzlement on why you keep up the charade.

Uh, Linus?
Regarding your question:
"If the Deaniac alternative is not continuing to enable the corrupt, oil rich dictators whose populations hate us for doing so, and whose princely class is funding terrorism with our oil dollars, then what is the alternative?"

If you're trying to prove a point, that one needs an alternative to a present course of action, don't include that alternative in your assertion.
The alternative to "continuing to enable corrupt, oil rich dictators ..."
is pretty clearly, to NOT do so.
Granted, that idea could be fleshed out a bit, but as the doctor said when I told her "It hurts when I do this," "STOP DOING THAT."

Also, please stop using the phrase "democracy promotion" - from what I can tell based on your previous commments, it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Kevin and denizens,

Just a couple of very simple questions.

Do any of the commenters here have any military, counter-terrorism, or foreign policy experience?

Wouldn't it be hard for an average person, lacking any of the aforementioned, to correctly assess what would have been the right position on Gulf War 1 or 2?

(At least so far as what works, doesn't work, causes, leads to, and much of the other rhetoric flowing in comments.)

I acknowledge from a public policy perspective, any citizen should be have an opinion and make an informed judgement. But as to making assessments of military strategy, foreign affairs causes and effects, what leads to what, are any of you arguing from a position of knowledge or experience?

Just asking. Because most here completely dismiss (often with insult and conclusion rather than factual rebuttal) the very people who *might* have more insight into the knowledge content.

Just an observation. ( Scream away.

Oh, and Linus, I very much appreciated your post.

Someday I might actually return to the Democratic party if they ever are able to formulate a coherent response to the threat of terrorism, and mean it. (Other than talking nice and not having George W Bush as President.)