WTF?
Hey, I couldn't make this shit up (via Instapundit).
Kevin Drum reviews Peter Beinart's latest book "The Good Fight" and comes to some pretty startling conclusions (startling in that he's willing to say out loud what we've all known for years about the left-wing anti-war crowd):
So what is it that Beinart really wants from antiwar liberals? The obvious answer is found less in policy than in rhetoric: we need to engage more energetically with the war on terror and criticize illiberal regimes more harshly.Maybe so. But this is something that's nagged at me for some time. On the one hand, I think Beinart is exactly right. For example, should I be more vocal in denouncing Iran? Sure. It's a repressive, misogynistic, theocratic, terrorist-sponsoring state that stands for everything I stand against. Of course I should speak out against them.
And yet, I know perfectly well that criticism of Iran is not just criticism of Iran. Whether I want it to or not, it also provides support for the Bush administration's determined and deliberate effort to whip up enthusiasm for a military strike. Only a naif would view criticism of Iran in a vacuum, without also seeing the way it will be used by an administration that has demonstrated time and again that it can't be trusted to act wisely.
So what to do? For the most part, I end up saying very little. And Beinart is right: there's a sense in which that betrays my own liberal ideals. But he's also wrong, because like it or not, my words--and those of other liberals--would end up being used to advance George Bush's distinctly illiberal ends. And I'm simply not willing to be a pawn in the Bush administration's latest marketing campaign.
What's most remarkable to me is that Drum fails to see a more "nuanced" (that is what liberals call that mushy gray area between the black and white they claim to loathe so much, right?) approach, a way to have their cake and eat it too, so-to-speak.
By failing to criticize Iran at all, they lose ANY moral highground from which to criticize the President's (or anyone's) efforts at dealing with that dangerous nation. Their silence IS consent of a sort. If they would speak up and say "Yes, Iran is HIDEOUS, we should be very very very afraid of them, and that is precisely why we should NOT go after them militarily, but rather this way, they would be able to add to the dialogue and--who knows--perhaps get the problem solved using their solutions.
Ahhhhh, but there's the rub you see...They HAVE NO SOLUTIONS. They have no better idea. They are like the husband who refuses to contribute to the decison of what color to paint the bathroom simply because he wants to have the perpetual right to criticize the choice.
Theirs is a position of the do-nothings. They want only to sit back and JUDGE, never to BE JUDGED.
And yet they recoil if we challenge their patriotism. What a load of crap.
Posted by insomnomaniac at August 21, 2006 2:46 PM | TrackBack