Sunday, July 23, 2006

Nedrenaline!

There's much that's annoying about Joe Klein's latest, but even he is starting to get it just a little bit...




The real problem with Lieberman's position on Iraq isn't overweening civility, however. It is that he has abandoned his native moderation for utopian neoconservatism. His support for the invasion wasn't reluctant, nuanced or judicious; he saw a better world coming. Before the war, he told me that he hoped Saddam's fall would touch off a wave of democratic reform in the region. Given that the entire Middle East seems ready to collapse into chaos this summer, it might seem an appropriate time to revise or extend those remarks—to regret his naivete or defend his long-term vision or slam Bush for carelessly betraying that vision ... or something. But the Senator isn't doing that. Indeed, it sometimes seems his position is more reflexive than thoughtful. He still insists that progress is being made in Iraq. "What progress?" I asked. "There's an elected national-unity government," he said. "I don't want to overstate it, but we're beginning to reach out to the Sunni insurgency."