Doing the Work

David Neiwert, in an extremely comprehensive (that means long, so set aside a few minutes) post on his blog Orcinus, details the dishonesty and self-serving tautologies of the warbloggers who simply can't imagine that bad execution or a flawed policy lost the war in Iraq. No, it has to be the liberals' fault - liberals like WIlliam F. Buckley, Brent Scowcroft and Bruce Bartlett - for opposing the war in the slightest. It's very good and very serious work - a compendium of what it was like to live in America and have this debate for the last four years. Newiert calls it an ideological conservative bubble, which protects them from having to shoulder any accountability or criticism. Here's a nice summation:

Perhaps, when considering whether Bush's critics "objectively hurt the war effort," it's useful to run a simple test of logic. Namely, tell us which has hurt us more:

-- An administration that ignored serious and well-founded concerns about the legitimacy of the invasion and the planning for postwar reconstruction, as well as an exit strategy, and proceeded to commit our troops to what has proven an inextricable disaster, worsened by its own outrageous incompetence.

-- The critics who raised all those concerns in the first place.

The favored tactic to "prove" that criticism has lost the war is by proclaiming that the critic simply "hates Bush" - then all can be dismissed. There's no such this in this worldview as reasonable debate, policy critique, or reality-based alternatives. If you're not 100% on board, you hate Bush. It stifles all debate on the topic, and allows the Cult of Conservatism to never have to come to terms with the disastrous policy wrought by this Administration. At some point, intellectual honesty has to take over if we're going to get back to any kind of rationality. I think the only way we'll get such wisdom in hindsight is if the Republicans get creamed this November. Until then, I'm not holding my breath.