10 Years Ago on Power Line: Have Liberals Learned Anything?

[Valin]

Power Line:

Steven Hayward

June 1, 2016

 

 

Borrowing an inspiration from Glenn Reynolds looking back at old dispatches from Instapundit, I think it might be worth revisiting some old posts on this site from time to time. Ten years ago this month Paul took note of Peter Beinart’s argument that liberals—and only liberals—could win the war on terror. He wrote a book about the idea shortly thereafter, and then after Bush and the Iraq war become more unpopular, he recanted the whole thing in a 2010 book The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, which I reviewed in the Claremont Review of Books. I think Beinart needed to do this to keep his liberal street cred in the Age of Obama. Not sure it worked. Where is Beinart these days? He seems to have vanished more thoroughly than someone in the witness protection program.

 

Anyway, here’s Paul’s original post from June 28, 2006, CAN IMAGINARY LIBERALS, AND ONLY IMAGINARY LIBERALS, WIN THE WAR ON TERROR?

 

 

I admire pro-defense liberals like Peter Beinart who support shaking off liberalism’s post-Vietnam syndrome, waging a vigorous world-wide war against Islamic jihadists, and (within the constraints we face) promoting democracy throughout the world. I regard these liberals more as allies than as adversaries, whatever their position may be on tax cuts, health care, and gay marriage. Although in my view Beinart has very little chance of winning his struggle for the hearts and minds of contemporary liberals, it is pleasing to fantasize that our politics might return to the situation that prevailed for a time during the Cold War — bipartisan commitment to aggressively combating those who were trying to destroy us. In that environment elections would be contested primarily on the basis of domestic policy issues and (in presidential elections) also on the basis of which candidate can provide the best leadership within a generally agreed up policy framework.

 

However, one should not overstate the extent to which, even if Beinart’s thinking were to prevail, we would return to that happy state. For thing, Beinart is a gentleman warrior, which gives rise to serious disputes about how to deal with terrorism. He frets, for example, about the treatment of, and lack of process granted to, the Guantanamo detainees. Try to imagine Beinart’s heroes Harry Truman (who dropped the big one on Japan twice) and JFK worrying about this. I’m unable to conjure up that image.

 

(Snip)

 

 

I think after eight years of Obama we can see that the idea of any kind of hard headed liberal foreign policy reminiscent of Truman is a complete fantasy. Score one for Paul here.