The Good Fight Against Straw

Where we first came in, Peter Beinart was fretting that if Democrats opposed the Iraq war "the Democratic Party becomes the anti-war-with-Iraq party...we really will no longer have a 50-50 nation, we'll have a 60-40 Republican nation," concerned that what he considered to be a kind of naive isolationism would turn off voters. Next Beinart began fretting that the fact that since the Iraq war, which he supported, was going badly Democrats would... turn to a kind of naive isolationism which would turn off voters. 3 years later Beinart's... calling on Democrats to reject this naive isolationism and embrace what is pretty much their current position on foreign policy. As Yglesias writes:

As best as I can tell, it's just not the case that any substantial bloc of liberals has "grown suspicious of intervening in other countries' affairs" if this is done through the mechanism of "powerful international institutions" and with the "legitimacy" that entails. There haven't been many instances in the Bush years of the US government acting constructively with international institutions to address issues of common concern, but in the handful of instances when it has happened (Ukraine and Lebanon come to mind) what you mostly heard from liberals was "now that's how it should be done." I haven't seen influential Democrats agitating to cut off the various NATO deployments in the Balkans or Afghanistan.

I know when one doesn't have many ideas it's tempting to cling to the few you do have, but at some point you just gotta let it go Petey.