The circumstances change, but the advice remains the same from Robert Kagan. Whatever an American administration is doing about Iran, it's not doing it forcefully enough:

The past two weeks have been a big success for the rulers in Tehran, despite what many in the United States and Europe may think. The Obama administration, the Europeans and the media have been obsessively focused on Iranian missile launches and secret enrichment facilities, on Russia's body language, and on the likely success or failure of Thursday's talks in Geneva. What the world has not focused on is the one thing Iran's rulers care about: their own survival.

[...]

The regime's overriding goal since the election...has been to buy time and try to reestablish and consolidate control without any foreign interference in its internal affairs. In this Tehran has succeeded admirably.

But it has also had help. The Obama administration has, perhaps unwittingly, been a most cooperative partner. It has refused to make the question of regime survival part of its strategy. Indeed, it doesn't even treat Iran as if it were in the throes of a political crisis. President Obama seems to regard the ongoing turmoil as a distraction from the main business of stopping Iran's nuclear program. And this is exactly what the rulers in Tehran want him to do: focus on the nukes and ignore the regime's instability.

It would be better if the administration focused on the regime's instability and ignored the nukes.

This ought to be the goal of the "crippling" sanctions the Obama administration has threatened. Sanctions will not persuade the present Iranian government to give up its nuclear weapons program. Ahmadinejad and Khamenei see the nuclear program and their own survival as intimately linked. But the right kinds of sanctions could help the Iranian opposition topple these still-vulnerable rulers.

[...]

Americans have a fundamental strategic interest in seeing a change of leadership in Iran. There is good reason to believe that a democratic Iran might forgo a nuclear weapon -- just as a democratizing Russia abandoned long-standing Soviet foreign and defense strategies -- or at least be more amenable to serious negotiations. Even if it is not, we have much less to fear from a nuclear weapon in the hands of a democratic Iran integrated into the liberal democratic world than from a weapon in the hands of Ahmadinejad.

So in short, we should ignore the "lesser" goal of persuading Iran to drop it's nuclear ambitions, and pursue regime change instead. This is silly for several reasons. First, Kagan completely ignores the fact that the Iranian regime's crackdown on the opposition movement has made it more difficult for Iran to avoid sanctions aimed at the nuclear program. The reason we've made any progress on that front is largely thanks to the the Iran government's repressive treatment of its own people, as well as revelations that it continues to build secret nuclear facilities (that it argues are for peaceful purposes, to be fair.) Kagan acts as if pursuing sanctions against the nuclear program is completely out of context, when in fact its a direct result of the government's own bad behavior in two regards.

Second, nowhere does Kagan explain exactly how a program of crippling sanctions is supposed to aid the opposition in overthrowing the government. I challenge Kagan to provide one recent example of sanctions fostering regime change. He will struggle to find one. Sanctions were employed against Saddam Hussein for over a decade to no effect. Iran is more complicated politically; the regime itself is divided over the crackdown and it's brutality has yet to match Saddam's in scope or scale. And Kagan is also probably right that the Iranian people are not going to rally around a hated government even in the face of outside condemnation. But again, how does any of that aid the opposition in toppling the regime? In what concrete, specific manner, does a program of damaging Iran's economy aid the opposition politically? Can you imagine a scenario in which Iran's government uses the threat of sanctions and outside influence or intervention to justify even more repression? To make it even more difficult for the people to express their dissent, to oppose the government? I can, because that's what they did after the fraudulent elections. It's what repressive regimes do the world over when faced with threats to their survival, especially when those threats come from outside the country. Foreign enemies are quite useful for propaganda purposes.

And even if the regime were changed, would Iran's nuclear ambitionsm merely evaporate as we hope? This bit about a democratic Iran foregoing nuclear weapons is just plain nonsense. On what basis does Kagan make this absurd claim? On Indian's foregoing of nukes? France's? Our own? Political systems come and go; national interests remain the same. A "democratic" Iran would be regarded with only moderately less suspicion by the Arab world than a dictatorial one is, because Iran's national interests remain the same. The idea that Iran pursues nuclear weapons only because it's dictatorial leaders desire more despotic power, is fallacy of the highest order. Iran's democratic leaders may choose to justify a nuclear weapons program in the same manner that it's present leaders do, and they would not be wrong to do so.

Glenn Greenwald condemns David Brooks most recent idiocy in far great detail and with far greater passion than I can summon, but there is one small point of fact that I'd like to point out regarding Brooks' column. This, from Brooks' column:

Always there is the illusion of the easy path. Always there is the illusion, which gripped Donald Rumsfeld and now grips many Democrats, that you can fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint, with cruise missiles, with special forces operations and unmanned drones. Always there is the illusion, deep in the bones of the Pentagon’s Old Guard, that you can fight a force like the Taliban by keeping your troops mostly in bases, and then sending them out in well-armored convoys to kill bad guys.

There is simply no historical record to support these illusions. The historical evidence suggests that these middling strategies just create a situation in which you have enough forces to assume responsibility for a conflict, but not enough to prevail.

The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands — that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as General McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together.

To put it concretely, this is a doctrine in which small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and roads.

Yeah, about that Mr. Brooks:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military officer in Afghanistan, has told his commanders to pull forces out of sparsely populated areas where U.S. troops have fought bloody battles with the Taliban for several years and focus them on protecting major Afghan population centers.

But the changes, which amount to a retreat from some areas, have already begun to draw resistance from senior Afghan officials who worry that any pullback from Taliban-held territory will make the weak Afghan government appear even more powerless in the eyes of its people.

Senior U.S. officials said the moves were driven by the realization that some remote regions of Afghanistan, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountains that range through the northeast, were not going to be brought under government control anytime soon. "Personally, I think I am being realistic about this," said Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan. "I have more combat power than my predecessors did, but I won't be as spread out. . . . This is all about freeing up some forces so I can get them out more among the people."

The changes are in line with McChrystal's confidential assessment of the war, which urges U.S. and NATO forces to "initially focus on critical high-population areas that are contested or controlled by insurgents."

I'm not actually just going to type "gotcha!" with a smirk on my face to conclude this post. McChrystal has certainly not abandoned COIN and yes, protecting the population is obviously the key behind this move. But to write a column suggesting that the only appropriate strategy is to deploy American forces to sparsely populated ares and "remote valleys" only days after the U.S. senior military commander in Afghanistan has announced his intent to pull forces from such places, is just sheer idiocy. Nonetheless, I do not expect Brooks' next column to acknowledge this change in events, or more absurdly, call out McChrystal for not understanding the importance of deploying American soldiers to remote places where they both fail to protect Afghan civilians and are more easily killed.

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that I am not opposed to our military presence in Afghanistan. If anything, the three of us have been arguing (in futility, largely) since about the beginning of the Iraq war that Afghanistan requires more military, economic and diplomatic attention. But neither have we been dismissive or unconcerned about the very real possibility that nothing we do in Afghanistan may be enough to contain the resurgent Taliban. Looking at the ever-increasing odds of failure with a clear eye, having written about Afghanistan many, many times, we conclude that more can still be done to secure Afghanistan (and now hopefully Pakistan) against the threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. However, no such thoughtfulness is apparently required on the part of Richard Cohen, who pens the 100,000th or so column in the last six years by a media pundit who acknowledges the difficulty of winning in Afghanistan but argues that we must stay the course or very, very bad and awful things will happen:

The challenge for President Obama is to explain to the American people why Afghanistan and potentially Pakistan are worth the lives of yet more Americans. So far, Obama has stuck pretty close to the message that he is determined to eliminate al-Qaeda -- and more power to him. But that is too little, too late. The Taliban has already spilled over the border. A bit of nation-building is what Pakistan needs. That will take time -- considerably more than the year Obey and others are willing to grant.

The relevant history here may not be Vietnam at all. It could be World War I. The assassination of a single man somehow set off a chain reaction in which millions were killed and, after a pause, it all resumed under a different name: World War II. (Books are still being written about the cause of World War I.) Now, though, the stakes are so much greater. The region is a nuclear neighborhood, a pharmacy for nuclear addicts with Pakistan choosing to add even more weapons instead of -- just an idea -- opening some schools. The region is roiled. The only constant is enmity.

The critics of Obama's policy for the region are not easily dismissed. Vietnam has its lessons; Iraq, too. What's more, they have their cumulative effect. A kind of national weariness has set in. Why us? Why is it that Americans are always asked to risk their lives? Where the hell is everyone else?

These are hard questions to answer. But an even harder question could someday come after a nuclear catastrophe when people demand to know why nothing much was done to head it off. The answer cannot be that our year was up.

Do you follow? Even though there are "hard questions", we don't need to worry too much about the actual answers to those questions (beyond a little column-ish hand wringing and acknowledgment of the hardness of the questions) because the hardest question of all would be posed by a little crying American child asking why we let Al Qaeda nuke New York or something.

I give Cohen points for trying, in that he at least acknowledges that there are no good answers to the hard questions (but I also deduct points for bad questions like "Where the hell is everyone else? The answer is, getting killed in Afghanistan too.) But we've seen quite pointedly the results of the "there's a 5% chance that this very, very awful thing could happen if we don't go to war so of course all serious people should acknowledge that we must go to war (and don't worry about the odds of bad things happen because we go to war because those things aren't as awful as the 5% chance very, very awful thing)" school of foreign policy. That's not a serious approach to foreign policy and warmaking and quite honestly, it's annoying to have to read in major newspapers (over and over again) columns written by people like Cohen, who I'm sure was grimacing and grimly stroking his beard as he came to the necessary conclusion that we must forever fight in Afghanistan if we are to prevent certain catastrophe, after which he submitted the column to his editors and then went out and had a latte or something. 

There is absolutely no end to the extremely silly writing about the Obama campaign that passes for "analysis" on the right (if you don't believe me, visit Memeorandum at any point in the day and take a gander at the nonsense that right-wing bloggers and pundits are putting out there.) Occasionally someone manages to pen a column that sounds quite reasonable and even-handed, but is nonetheless as devoid of fact or content as anything else you'll read on the right. Today's example is "Obama and the Politics of Crowds", by Fouad Ajami, which he surmises that essentially, Obama's campaign is nothing but a projection upon a "blank slate" of the fears and desires for retribution by Obama's supporters:

There is something odd -- and dare I say novel -- in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies. We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.

Of course, we've never witnessed such a phenomenon in our country. Never before have thousands, hundreds of thousands, showed up to listen to a man speak. Except of course for Martin Luther King Jr., during the height of the civil rights movement. Obama is no MLK, but the comparison is illustrative; like then, people today sense that we might be at a transformative moment in American history, and that the candidacy of Obama is at the epicenter of that transformation. They are lifted by the twin messages of change and of hope, and those messages resonate and become more than clever marketing because they sense that there is something deeply wrong with our nation at present, something that can only be fixed by a grand movement inspired by the first African-American candidate. They may be wrong, but this is what they believe. But they are not as wrong as Ajami seems to think they are; they are not being lulled by a candidate who will somehow impose tyranny and subvert democracy; at worst, Obama will disappoint them in their great hope for something new. Such is the nature of politics in our country. But it is silly to compare the crowds that show up to see Obama to the adoration that was heaped upon someone like Nasser or Khomeini, who promised a different kind of change to their nations. It does matter why people show up in such great numbers. Really, this paragraph is a dressed-up version of the derogatory "Obama messiah" comments you see thrown out by right-wing pundits, as if there is something wrong with Obama merely because he inspires so many people. This is nonsense. Great leaders inspire, and never more so at moments of peril for a nation; Ajami would turn this fact of history on its head and have us believe that such inspiration is necessarily troubling, negative, reminiscent of crowds willing to surrender their freedom to a "great man." In Obama's case, nothing could be further from the truth.

He goes on:

On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest -- African-Americans and affluent white liberals -- has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking -- Canetti's feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama's vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.

Well, he's sort of right. People do project onto Obama their hopes and fears, but they do that with every candidate. Obama occupies an historic place in American politics and so perhaps this phenomenon is more marked than usual, but neither is he a blank slate. To imagine that he is one would have to ignore entirely the words he speaks, as opposed to the eloquence with which he speaks them. This is nothing more than the "empty suit" rhetoric that right-wingers throw around, that there is nothing to Obama but his ability to speak (but only with a teleprompter!) Right-wingers have a difficult time understanding that people turn out not only for how Obama speaks, but for what he has to say. Of course these people are united for these speeches, and divisions will re-appear after the election is over; such is the nature of politics throughout human history. But Ajami, in dismissing their desires for "entitlement" and "redistribution", fails to understand that what are merely code-words on the right for socialism, are legitimate public policy prescriptions for many Americans on the left and in the middle. In the wake of the recent economic crisis and general growth of inequality, Americans find themselves wondering what is so bad about asking those who are very well-off to help more to provide for those who struggle? This notion is so reasonable, and so common-sense, that pundits on the right can only hope to counter it by calling it socialism, or even communism. And to think that only supporters project upon the candidate is ridiculous; else why would so many on the right insist on believing that Obama is a Muslim, or a black Christian nationalist? At least his supporters project their hopes for the nation; his detractors project their darkest (and most irrational) fears.

He goes on:

It was no accident that the white working class was the last segment of the population to sign up for the Obama journey. Their hesitancy was not about race. They were men and women of practicality; they distrusted oratory, they could see through the falseness of the solidarity offered by this campaign. They did not have much, but believed in the legitimacy of what little they had acquired. They valued work and its rewards. They knew and heard of staggering wealth made by the Masters of the Universe, but held onto their faith in the outcomes that economic life decreed. The economic hurricane that struck America some weeks ago shook them to the core. They now seek protection, the shelter of the state, and the promise of social repair. The bonuses of the wizards who ran the great corporate entities had not bothered them. It was the spectacle of the work of the wizards melting before our eyes that unsettled them.

Race most certainly is on their minds. If they vote for Obama it is in spite of old racial attitudes, not because of them or because they have none at all. Ajami is right to some extent about the effect the economic meltdown has had on them, but he overstates the case; white working-class voters have been watching their earnings disappear for three decades now. That it has taken them so long to come back around to the Democratic Party is entirely indicative of their attitudes about race, which the Republican Party has played to skillfully. Those days are likely now over, along with the fetishization of the white, working-class voter, whose opinions (if not votes) have never counted for more than yours or mine. 

And now, on the desire for "retribution":

A younger man, "cool" and collected, carrying within his own biography the strands of the world beyond America's shores, was put forth as a herald of the change upon us. The crowd would risk the experiment. There was grudge and a desire for retribution in the crowd to begin with. Akin to the passions that have shaped and driven highly polarized societies, this election has at its core a desire to settle the unfinished account of the presidential election eight years ago. George W. Bush's presidency remained, for his countless critics and detractors, a tale of usurpation. He had gotten what was not his due; more galling still, he had been bold and unabashed, and taken his time at the helm as an opportunity to assert an ambitious doctrine of American power abroad. He had waged a war of choice in Iraq.

This election is the rematch that John Kerry had not delivered on. In the fashion of the crowd that seeks and sees the justice of retribution, Mr. Obama's supporters have been willing to overlook his means. So a candidate pledged to good government and to ending the role of money in our political life opts out of public financing of presidential campaigns. What of it? The end justifies the means.

Frankly, I don't know what Ajami is talking about. Retribution, against whom? Bush? Wall Street? Red state voters? Alas, Ajami is four years too late; for some Democratic voters the 2004 election may have been about revenge against Bush for stealing the 2000 election, for the war in Iraq, but that certainly isn't the case now. What revenge is their even to be had against Bush, who will retire in comfort to somewhere in Texas? Retribution against Republicans perhaps, but no one is voting now for revenge alone. People look at the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, growing income inequality and the global financial meltdown and they are afraid. They see that Republicans have done nothing about these problems except to exacerbate them, and they'd like to see if Democrats would do any better at fixing them. This is the "end" that they have in mind, and the policies Obama articulates are suited to this end; the means is his campaign, which last time I checked has been entirely focused on the issues (unlike McCain's campaign, which is entirely about Obama.)

Ajami, like many on the right, seems completely blind to the public mood at the moment. They simply can't understand why anyone would want to vote for Obama, for a Democrat of all things, and they must fashion all sorts of rationales and explanations that have no basis in reality. But it's really all very simple. Obama's supporters see what's wrong with our country, they trust based on Obama's words, character and temperament that he's the man to change it, and they'll vote for those reasons. For those of us who are not right-wing pundits, this is very simple to understand and explain.

Thomas Friedman, out of that strange desire some members of the media have to appear "neutral" by attacking both Democrats and Republicans, chides Democrats-and Obama in particular-for their focus on Afghanistan and equates it with the Republican obsession with more drilling to solve the energy crisis. Here's an excerpt:

Republicans, by mindlessly repeating their offshore-drilling mantra, focusing on a 19th-century fuel, remind me of someone back in 1980 arguing that we should be putting all our money into making more and cheaper IBM Selectric typewriters — and forget about these things called the “PC” and “the Internet.” It is a strategy for making America a second-rate power and economy.

But Democrats have their analog. For many Democrats, Afghanistan was always the “good war,” as opposed to Iraq. I think Barack Obama needs to ask himself honestly: “Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war?”

So the question in Friedman's mind is whether Obama is willing to let soldiers die for a cause he actually believes in, or just to win a political campaign? He's just asking, you know. but that's only the beginning. Friedman thinks this is a legitimate question to ask because he doesn't know any damn thing about Afghanistan, as he goes on to demonstrate.

The truth is that Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan are just different fronts in the same war. The core problem is that the Arab-Muslim world in too many places has been failing at modernity, and were it not for $120-a-barrel oil, that failure would be even more obvious. For far too long, this region has been dominated by authoritarian politics, massive youth unemployment, outdated education systems, a religious establishment resisting reform and now a death cult that glorifies young people committing suicide, often against other Muslims.

The humiliation this cocktail produces is the real source of terrorism. Saddam exploited it. Al Qaeda exploits it. Pakistan’s intelligence services exploit it. Hezbollah exploits it. The Taliban exploit it.

The only way to address it is by changing the politics. Producing islands of decent and consensual government in Baghdad or Kabul or Islamabad would be a much more meaningful and lasting contribution to the war on terrorism than even killing bin Laden in his cave. But it needs local partners. The reason the surge helped in Iraq is because Iraqis took the lead in confronting their own extremists — the Shiites in their areas, the Sunnis in theirs. That is very good news — although it is still not clear that they can come together in a single functioning government.

The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want.

So, if you link disparate conflicts under the rubric of the "war on terror" then they are all clearly different fronts in the same fight. This only works of course if you completely discount the differences between these unique nations, or better yet, conflate Afghanistan-which remember, lies in Central Asia-with the Arab world, even though most of the Arabs in Afghanistan are only there fighting for Al Qaeda. In fact, if Friedman knew anything about Afghanistan, he'd know there's little "humiliation" being exploited. Afghanistan has been riven by different factions for decade, and only became united after conquest by a tyrannical theocracy led by Pashtuns who feel as comfortable in Pakistan as they do in Afghanitsan (and who, by the way, are not Arabs or even Persians.) They were ousted with easy by the United States and the Northern Alliance not only because of that coalition's superior firepower, but because many Afghans were tired of being ruled by religious tyrants...especially the Tajiks, who generally make-up Hamid Karzai's central government.

The reason the Taliban are faring so well has nothing to do with Afghans who are unwilling to fight them (and Friedman insults the 3000+ Afghans who have died fighting the Taliban.) It has everything to do with the fact that the Taliban have a safe haven in Pakistan from which they can cross into Afghanistan at will, to prosecute military operations and acts of terror along with Al Qaeda, who is for all intents and purposes are now based in Pakistan. The Afghan people in general are not prepared to be ruled by the Taliban again, but they are still vulnerable to acts of terror and intimidation by the Taliban as a result of a lack of sufficient forces to protect them. They also are at the mercy of a corrupt and ineffectual central government, a government that is incapable of imposing it's authority upon the country because of feuding warlords who fear no retribution or worse, are part of the government. How did that come about? Because the Bush administration saw it as a convenient way stabilize the country and to get troops out of Afghanistan quickly so they could fight in Iraq.

In short, Friedman doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Afghanistan is winnable, both politically and militarily, and the grave threat posed to us by terrorist who roam free in Afghanistan and Pakistan justifies a continuing commitment to the conflict in that country. It's not playing politics to think so or to say so, and Friedman impugns the patriotism not only of politicians, but the intelligence of Americans such as myself by equating the focus on Afghanistan with the desire to drill for more oil. Afghanistan is a war worth winning, but we are apparently going to have to win it despite the efforts of ignoramuses like Friedman to turn it into a triviality of our own electoral politics.

David Brooks, roasted (and not in the funny way.)

This leading intellectual thinker of the right weighs in with his own moral calculus on Iraq (via Andrew Sullivan):

[T]he argument that moral responsibility for whatever happens rests on us is not clear to me. Where were our intentions not honorable? At which point during the last four and a half years were we trying to incite Iraqis to kill Iraqis? At which point were we doing anything other than try to help them—however clumsily and sometimes wrong-headedly—to get their act together as a nation? How long do we have to struggle with such efforts before our moral responsibility can fairly be considered to have been discharged?

...Most voters, in their everyday lives, feel that if they make a blunder that causes someone distress, there is some finite and proportionate action they can take as recompense. That is the common understanding of moral responsibility.

How easy to wash our hands of what we've done! We need merely ask ourselves some entirely rhetorical questions that only serve to illuminate that what we did, we did with the best intentions, and suddenly the fault of the war lies entirely with the Iraqi people, who Derbyshire describes earlier in this post as "a people...determined to kill, cook, and eat each other." Little did I know that once the Iraqis have engaged in cannibalism, the slate is wiped clean!

Of course, there are actual answers to these questions, answers Derbyshire did not think of or doesn't care to reveal. I'll give it a try. Where were our intentions not honorable? When we made a deceitful case for war premised fundamentally on our own unreasonable and narrow national security interests. At which point during the last four and a half years were we trying to incite Iraqis to kill Iraqis? When we co-opted militias wholesale into the Iraqi police and security forces so that they could rampage among the Sunni populace, so we could argue that we were enjoying success in our efforts to train Iraqi forces. At which point were we doing anything other than try to help them—however clumsily and sometimes wrong-headedly—to get their act together as a nation? When we rushed through the process of holding elections that only further divided the country, so we could argue that were enjoying success in building a stable government. How long do we have to struggle with such efforts before our moral responsibility can fairly be considered to have been discharged? When as many Americans have died as Iraqis that have been killed in this war? When Iraq is stable again? When we are destroyed as a nation, as we destroyed Iraq? That one I truly don't know the answer to, though Derbyshire's answer is assuredly "When those savages decided not to cooperate with our experiment in imperialism disguised as democratization."

The egregiousness of this and Derbyshire's other claims do not prevent him from being a voice on the right. The banality of his argument, the utter failure to provide any illumination on how we got into Iraq or what to do about it now, do not prevent him from being a voice on the right. The pomposity, hubris and self-righteousness do not prevent him from being a voice on the right. In fact, these traits are what guarantee him a place as a voice on the right. To argue that the publication of the ravings of this man, ravings that in genuine polite society would qualify him only as a pompous windbag, is a sign of broken discourse in this country would be a mistake. The invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq indict us on that score to a greater extent than the rantings of this fool, or many others.

Yesterday I wrote Adam and all but begged him to write a post skewering David Broder for his ridiculous column in which he smears Sen. Harry Reid as the Democrat's Alberto Gonzales. I hardly needed to. The liberal blogosphere has erupted with responses:

• Paul Begala: "David Broder is a Gasbag."
• Oliver Willis: "Democrats United: David Broder Is An Ass" (bonus amusing illustration.)
• No More Mister Nice Blog: "Utterly Lacking in Basic Comprehension of the Simplest Facts."
• AmericaBLOG: "David Broder is a Loser."

Those are hardly the only responses, though they are indicative.

In related news, Bill Moyers put together a special on this sort of punditry and how it landed us in a war. Oh, and Glenn Greenwald has been writing about it for about forever.

We don't normally engage in the internecine blog wars between the left and right here at TWM, in large part because it's a waste of time (there are too many things of substance to blog about in a given day as it is) and because it's dangerous to gaze too long at the madness that is the right-wing blogosphere. But this post by Nitpicker (filling in for Glenn Greenwald) is too good not to mention. Apparently, right-wing pundits and bloggers share with our terrorist enemies a hatred of American culture:

You would think that Republicans would be shamed by the fact so many of them seem to agree, at least to some extent, with the beliefs of terrorists and other Muslim extremists. For example:

• Dinesh D'Souza thinks that "decadent and depraved American culture...angers and repulses other societies—especially traditional and religious ones." You know, like the religious conservatives of al Qaeda.
• Congressman Virgil Goode (R-VA) believes, in the manner of the Taliban, that countries should be run by a single religion. They only disagree on which religion should rule.
• Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter think certain Americans are simply asking to be attacked by terrorists.
• Bush supporter author Orson Scott Card thinks that, when terrorists call us decadent and evil, Hollywood movies "prove their point."
• Mary Grabar, writing on one of the most-visited conservative sites, writes she agrees with pre-Enlightenment views of women, specifically that"Women, without male guidance, are illogical, frivolous, and incapable of making any decisions beyond what to make for dinner."

It's unlikely the Saudis who keep women from taking part in the electoral process would disagree. Me, I'd be ashamed if these beliefs were held by people on my side of the political aisle, but not Republicans.

Of course these people are not at all ashamed. In fact, they completely lack any sense of irony. After decades of accusing liberals of celebrating American defeats at the hands of our enemies, these super-patriots now find themselves sympathizing with terrorists who wish to kill Americans. These absurd arguments permit an inference of the belief that America "deserves" to be attacked by terrorists because of our decadent and self-indulgent ways. Who now then is on the side of our enemies? And this from the people whose overriding concern is supposedly some fear of a world-wide Islamic Caliphate ruling over us? It seems to me that these wise pundits think such a result would be an improvement on the current state of affairs.