But while Fred Barnes deserves all the ridicule he’s getting, is his position really all that different from that of a lot of the Beltway community, even now?
Look at a typical lineup on the Sunday talk shows, discussing the war: you very rarely see an “expert” on the issue who wasn’t pro-war. Look at a recent panel at Brookings, advertised as representing a “uniquely broad” range of views on Iraq — from liberal hawks all the way to conservative hawks.
The fact is that in our national discourse, at least in DC, you’re still considered “not serious” if you were right about Iraq. And you’re also considered extreme and shrill if you were right about Bush.
This is true. For awhile I was doing an "against the war" count of Sunday show guests, a delightful feature I should probably resurrect. Needless to say it was pretty rare for anyone who actually opposed the Iraq war to be on any of them, and rarer still for such a person to actually discuss Iraq.