Recent comments

There are more kinds of lefties than you think. I for one favored intervention in Afghanistan in the 1990s. After 9/11, I thought it was a mistake to conflate the two - terrorism & Afghanistan policy, and especially with everyone so emotional and whipped up - but I still fundamentally supported tackling the Talibani nutcases. Invading Iraq is still stupid, according to this logic, monumentally stupid in a way that invading Afghanistan is not. I mean, one is a failed state, the other just a repressive but fully functioning state. The difference could not be more clear and a calculus of intervention should treat them separately. You may not like this logic, but I have noticed it is somewhat widely spread among liberals, and it was explicitly endorsed by Obama. Don't suppose people were fooled - many knew exactly what they were voting for. I did. And those who question his commitments to pacifist causes - I think you have no idea how difficult it is to reverse a major foreign policy commitment. Being president is not about "I believe this so let it be so" - no, being president is about sustained commitment to public persuasion and coordinating public policymaking. Governing is delicate regardless of the topic but no topic more delicate than war. Rather than judge on an all-or-nothing basis, look for incremental dismantling of the Iraq war infrastructure and foreign policy groundwork to blunt this sort of thing from happening in the future, to the extent that it is possible.