February 1, 2007 -- 10:10 AM EST // // Post a Comment
HEAD-SPINNING INCOHERENCE FROM DAVID BROOKS.
Reading The New York Times's David Brooks can be awfully confusing sometimes. In today's column he argues that the failure of the Iraq war isn't turning the American people isolationist the way Vietnam did, assuring readers that the public's desire to use American "might" abroad will remain alive and well. To make this case, he argues that the Democrats who are "important" aren't doves, and have been hawkish on matters other than Iraq:
There hasn’t even been a broad political shift in favor of the doves. The most important war critics are military types like Jack Murtha, Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb, who hate this particular war but were superhawks in other circumstances.
Brooks points to Murtha and Webb as a sign that dovishness and isolation aren't driving opposition to the Iraq war, that America is "not a country looking to avoid entangling alliances, "not a country renouncing the threat of force," and "not a country looking to come home again."
But at other times, when Brooks has wanted to argue that opposition to the Iraq war is driven by isolationism and a reluctance to use force abroad, he's pointed to the very same Democrats to make his case.
Here's Brooks on Murtha in November 2005:
In his heartfelt cry of agony, Jack Murtha didn't stop to consider the consequences of an immediate U.S. withdrawal. But this is where his policy leads. If the Democrats become the party of withdrawal, this is what they will have to live with. Are they really going to become the Come Home America party of George McGovern once again?
And here's Brooks on Webb only four days ago:
The Democratic approach, as articulated by Senator Jim Webb -- simply get out of Iraq ''in short order'' -- is a howl of pain that takes no note of the long-term political and humanitarian consequences. Does the party that still talks piously about ending bloodshed in Darfur really want to walk away from a genocide the U.S. is partly responsible for?
So when Brooks wants to say that the Iraq war hasn't turned the American people against military action abroad, he points to Webb and Murtha, who, because they aren't reflexively opposed to the use of force, demonstrate that aversion to force isn't driving opposition to the Iraq war. But when Webb and Murtha call for withdrawal from Iraq, it reflects the fact that opposition to the war -- that is, Democratic opposition to it -- is driven by the party's wholesale and reflexive aversion to the use of force abroad. Dems are on their way to becoming the peacenik "party of George McGovern" again. The "Democratic approach" is born of nothing more than a "howl of pain," an instinctual desire to flee war.
So, do Webb and Murtha represent the American people's innate hawkishness, or the Democrats' instinctual dovishness? Which is it? Really, life gets so much simpler when you relieve yourself of the obligation to show even a semblance of coherence.