Selective Amnesia

Andrew Sullivan first published an email from a reader, which offers a fully substantive critique of the Bush-Cheney approach to fighting terrorism, and a way a successful progressive strategy could go. And it's a pretty good one:

The first response to your complaint that liberal bloggers don't offer alternatives is to quote your hero Sir Winston: "The opposition is not responsible for proposing integrated and complicated measures of policy. Sometimes they do, but it is not their obligation."

Beyond that I'd say a perfectly responsible liberal take on the war is this: The best weapon we have against the Islamic extremists in the long haul is the soft power of modern culture - its comforts, its freedoms and, well, it's enlightenment. Modernization is appealing, and will win, if given half chance. But if by our clumsy, aggressive behavior we cause moderate, ordinary Muslims to confuse modernization with American aggression, with torture, with greed for oil, and with uncritical support for Greater Israel, then by that behavior we deprive ourselves of our greatest strategic advantage.

The right policy after 9/11 was to pursue the actual terrorists to the ends of the earth, but at the same time to have the nerve and maturity to do our best to avoid actions that would alienate the moderates and young people who would otherwise find modernity appealing. Bush of course did exactly the opposite.

To believe all this is not to believe the conflict is unimportant, as you charge, it is to believe that Bush's frat-boy bravado and general incompetence is everyday worsening our long-term prospects. And that winning control of at least one house of Congress in November is the necessary first step on the long road back to an adult foreign policy.

This is pretty much what I've been advocating for the past five years. The war on terror is a war within the soul of the moderate Muslim in Pakistan. Many warbloggers think that person doesn't exist. Bush often uses the straw man argument that "Some people say Muslims don't want to be free." The only people saying that are those on his side. We are clearly not giving a palatable path to freedom for the vast majority of the Muslim world, and by sullying our own image we damage the seductive power of modernity and freedom for those who have not achieved it, as the emailer says.

Now, here's where it gets amazing. After publishing this substantive email, Sully acknowledges it, and argues that Bush's rhetoric wasn't about invasion and brutality but to "create a beachhead of democracy in Iraq." I guess the difference is that liberals realize you can't give democracy through a gun barrel, while Bush uses the words as a mere rhetorical flourish. Sully was tricked and he's feeling bad.

But then he busts this out:

But, for all Cheney's and Rumsfeld's flaws, they are at least proposing something serious, however ineptly carried out. I have yet to hear anti-war voices on the left propose a positive strategy for defeating Islamist terror at its roots, or call for democratization of the Arab Muslim world.

Let me direct you to the first paragraph of your own blog post, genius! Sully negates the entire "Democrats have no ideas" critique, and then USES it again!

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to be that stupid.

UPDATE: The Poor Man crew give a better answer.

1. First, find an empty beer bottle.

2. Next, I want all Republicans and Republican media mouthpieces like yourself, Sully, to start telling everybody that this empty beer bottle is actually full of terror! When people question whether there is really any terror in the bottle, deride them as unserious, or as being terrorist sympathizers, traitors, anti-Semites, or whatever. When pressed to prove that the bottle is actually full of terror, admit that, well, maybe you can’t meet every nit-picky courtroom standard of proof on this, but terror can’t be defeated unless we understand about unknown unknowns and all that. I mean, maybe the bottle isn’t really 100% full of terror. But here’s the thing: CAN WE AFFORD TO TAKE THAT CHANCE!?!?!

Go there for the exciting conclusion.