Beinart is Wrong

Peter Beinart is wrong, in a dangerous way. “Fighting Faith,” his long cover story in this week’s issue of the New Republic, is dangerous because it comes from a place of great authority. It’s wrong because in calling for a “new liberalism,” he suggests that Democrats who haven’t yet placed the “war on terrorism” at the center of their foreign policy platform are making a mistake, that they are a big part of the problem. Michael Moore and MoveOn are the two leading culprits, he suggests. They, and those like them (whom he compares to the anti-anti-Stalinist Democrats in the 1950s who didn’t see the essential need to aggressively fight communism), are holding liberals back. A winning strategy will stem from an acknowledgment that a new approach to foreign policy is long overdue, that in the years following 9/11, Democrats have failed to respond to the threat of Islamic totalitarianism (hello, Paul Berman, and thanks a bunch). Kerry saw this, Beinart says, but he didn’t seize the message.

Wrong, and dangerous. First, Michael Moore and MoveOn are not part of the problem. They’re prime targets for thoughtful critique, fine, but they’re not worthy of such blame. The Bush Administration, on the other hand, has long since squandered any moral justification it once had for retaliation after 9/11. The expansion of, or distraction from, the war against Al Qaeda to its current front in occupied Iraq -- that's the problem. Any Democrat who agrees with the way this Administration is prosecuting its “war on terrorism” generally, who actually believes that our current actions are helping to foster democracy in the Middle East, thereby defeating a global network of Islamic fascists, who still believes in the central justifications for invading Iraq, may as well sign on to the Bush Doctrine and turn in his donkey at the door.