Kaplan in TNR

Lawrence Kaplan gives the Democrats a little harsh medicine -- in their own book! Here's the start of his TNR article:

The war in Iraq has generated, among other things, a new tradition in the media. Every time former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft criticizes the war--and he has done so on nearly a dozen occasions--the press advertises his latest gripe as evidence of a split in conservative ranks. Not surprisingly, then, his latest fusillade, delivered a few weeks ago in a New Yorker article by Jeffrey Goldberg, was once more touted as breaking news. It wasn't. Far more telling was the chorus of leading Democrats, liberal columnists, and left-leaning bloggers--that is, voices that once could be counted on to condemn Scowcroft as the second-rate Kissinger he is--who emerged to applaud the octogenarian devotee of realpolitik for his candor. Which brings us to a second tradition produced by the war: liberals against liberalism.

Lest there be any confusion about the inclinations of the former general with whom so many "progressive" voices have found common cause, his approach to foreign policy resembles that of a man who, on seeing an elderly woman being bludgeoned on the sidewalk, crosses to the other side of the street. This is the man, after all, who toasted the architects of the Tiananmen Square massacre not six months after they perpetrated it. Who found it "painful to watch Yeltsin rip the Soviet Union brick by brick away from Gorbachev." Who counseled sitting on the sidelines as Saddam Hussein massacred the very Shia his administration had encouraged to rise up. Who says that "some people really don't want to be free." And who rightly calls himself "a cynic about human nature.'

Cynicism, alas, is enjoying a vogue in the party of Woodrow Wilson. "Just as Scowcroft is doing," Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen points out, "it is the Democrats who often speak the language of realism that seems downright uncaring."

It doesn't let up (holler if you want me to email the whole piece). Here's the end:

What we have in their place is a crude and cheap version of realism, which, although ostensibly a method of analysis that eschews ideology, is rapidly becoming an ideology of its own. Unfortunately, its key tenets as laid out by the Gary Harts and Paul Krugmans of this world--non-interference, narrowly defined vital interests, a foreign policy scrubbed of idealism--provide no adequate response to the war of ideas in which we're presently engaged and will be long after the war in Iraq draws to a close. Nor do its proponents factor in the steep moral price bound to be exacted by trading in Woodrow Wilson for Brent Scowcroft. Is it really necessary to point out how deeply amoral U.S. foreign policy was during the Kissinger and Scowcroft years? If idealism has failed in Iraq, the solution lies in the realm of means, not in abandoning idealism--and certainly not in the cynicism of Brent Scowcroft.

Not in '06 and likely not even in '08, but someday, the soi-disant liberals are going to have to reconcile this cynicism and isolationism with their other principles. Those, like Kaplan, that is that have principles.

Freedom on the March Posted by John Kranz at November 23, 2005 11:02 AM