I’ve been a fan of Peter Beinert’s for some time (and may even forgive him for caving on Iraq).<\/p>\n
His recent book is on the list, and recently he went – I was going to say mano-a-mano, but it was described as ‘a pissing match’ and so that’s probably the wrong body part – with Michael Tomasky over at Slate<\/a>.<\/p>\n Go read the exchange, it’s kinda amusing to watch public intellectuals try and out-Jim Harrison each other.<\/p>\n But the telling quote for me was this, by Tomasky:<\/p>\n Is that will there now in either Democratic leadership or the American people? It is not. And the fact that it isn’t is not the fault of the “abject pacifists.” It’s the fault of the warriors. It’s because of Iraq. The war in Iraq is why we “missed” Darfur, a moral error that your magazine (under new editorship) recently lamented. And the war in Iraq looms over our national future. I fear that it renders the grand visions for liberal internationalism that you and I share useless nullities, for a generation, maybe more. That is the tragedy of Iraq; that’s why I dwelt, and dwell, on it. And I tremble with fear\u2014not for “my” side, but for the country and the world\u2014that, should a Bush administration and an Iraq come around again, we will have forgotten everything I just said.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This segues neatly into Mark Schmitt<\/a> at TPMCafe<\/a>, talking about Beinert:<\/p>\n I think that in the long run, getting worked up about the very few who say silly things about Islamic terrorism itself or reject use force is going to be seen as the equivalent of anti-anti-communism: fair, but a distraction from the big moral issue of the day. The big<\/b> moral question for our time, the one we have to get right<\/b> just as the postwar liberals had to get totalitarian communism right, is the Iraq War and the ideology that underlies it.<\/p>\n \n[emphasis in the original]<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n