Hey, it's The Nation, where the articles are tucked away among the poetry commemorating the battle of Stalingrad.

That the writer considers Iraq a "strategic blunder" akin to that comitted by our participation in World War One shouod tell us al we need to know. He undoubtedly would consider the Mexican and Spanish-American wars "strategic
blunders" also.

Sorry, Tovarische, taking down the major regional power, thereby convicting the spiritual jailhouse of its military incompetence, was no more a blunder than the geopolitical brilliancy of smothering the Kaiser, or, for that matter, shoveling your motherland into the ashheap.

Responding to my claim that "There had been nothing like [the recent "tough liberal" cheerleading for the Iraq War] since John Dewey and The New Republic supported America's entry into World War I to 'make the world safe for democracy'--a liberal intervention that won militarily but unleashed humanity's darkest disasters," Orrin Judd retorts:

"Or at least nothing like it since WWII and the Cold War?"

I'm not sure what to say to anyone who can't tell the difference between World War II and World War I, which CAUSED World War II. Or the difference between Cold War containment, which we practiced, and liberal intervention, which we were wise enough not to practiced. Some day, some of you may actually notice that we won the Cold War without undertaking a hot one, except for the Vietnam War, which, I hope you will notice, wasn't the thing that helped us win the Cold War.

And, after all, what does the inDecent Left care about a hundred million dead Chinamen or two million Cambodians or the fifty year enslavement of Eastern Europe and so on and so forth.

Of course Wilson botched the end of WWI by not forcing decolonization and liberalization. How did FDR and Truman not commit the same sin? At least Wilson tried to liberate the Russians, if in too desultory fashion. FDR and Truman didn't even liberate all of Germany.

The notion that you can differentiate WWI from WWII would be risible if the butcher's bill weren't so high.

I take it that by "unleashed humanity's darkest disasters," the author is referring to the rise of Soviet Communism which was a disaster for uncounted millions and still holds intellectuals in its thrall.

Or, bizarrely, he thinks the disaster ended in 1944-45.

"still-unfolding disaster" to Harry 'the war is lost' Reid and to caveman Osama.

Jim Sleeper:

When Bill Clinton told the Democratic convention that we had persevered in the struggle against communism, Ronald Reagan asked a good question: Who is this "we"?

That's still a pretty relevant question. If Iraq works out and we wind up with some kind of (possibly scaled-back) republicanism in Iraq, we'll see if you guys are honest enough to avoid pretending that you supported it all along.