The Nation's Ari Berman has at the national security Democrats, for their not unambivalent support of the Iraq war:

Owing to their distinction, the Democratic strategic class, consisting of the party's leading foreign policy thinkers, could have provided a powerful check on a reckless Administration intent on rushing to war. Instead, it bears partial responsibility for the war's costs: more than 1,800 American fatalities, thousands of maimed and wounded US soldiers, many more dead Iraqi civilians, spiraling worldwide anti-Americanism, surging world oil prices, a new breeding ground for Al Qaeda, multiplying terror attacks abroad and mounting economic insecurity at home.

At the same time, talking tough on Iraq has been a disastrous moral, tactical and political miscalculation for Democrats. A recent Democracy Corps poll found that Iraq tops the list of factors motivating voter discontent toward President Bush. "This is a country almost settled on the need for change," political consultants Stan Greenberg and James Carville write. Yet Democrats will only prosper if they pose "sharp choices," something the strategic class has been unwilling or unable to do. A few small progressive think tanks, helped by the dissident establishment, have tried to pry open badly needed institutional space for a bolder national security policy. A few courageous elected officials are attempting to drum up Congressional support for withdrawal. Thus far, the hawks have drowned them out. Unless and until the strategic class transforms or declines in stature, the Democrats beholden to them will be doomed to repeat their Iraq mistakes.

Shaped especially by long experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo, I am pretty much a card carrying member of the national security Democrats, the group being condemned by Berman. That said, I don't necessarily disagree with him that the position of what he calls the Democratic "strategic class" on Iraq didn't help the party resolve its dilemma - was it saying it could do Iraq better? Or that we should never have gone in the way we did, or both. Go read.

Posted by Laura at August 12, 2005 11:37 AM