Wednesday, 2 March 2005 - 4:17 PM CST

It's called "an honest debate." When you won't make an honest debate on a decision in the first place, you don't get to take credit for the good consequences that accrue because it is presumed that they are all unintentional. Wasn't it Wolfowitz who said that there were at least 4 good reasons to go to war but that the WMD reason was the only one good enough to hook the public? Maybe this was one of those good reasons. Maybe it wasn't. Becuse it wasn't an honest debate, we'll never know. Anyone who brings it up in defense of the war is a goalpost-mover. Anyone who brings it up in opposition of the war is a sour-grape-eater.

I hold no brief for Soderberg. I picked up that interview at about the point you did and so I don't really even know what the book is about. I do know that the worst Soderberg and Stewart can be accused of is really not wanting to be proved wrong. That's a far cry from the kind of anti-humanitarian motives with which you seem all too willing to label the left. Again, are we going to have an honest debate about this, or are you going to pick two sentences out of a comedy show and claim that this is your opponent?

And finally, I happen to think that this is all very premature and that the ultimate results of these overtures towards democratization will be very, very different from these first moves. As such, you and I would both do well to withhold judgment until we actually see what happens. For instance, will you be happy if the people of the Middle East shake off their shackles and freely vote to be put right back in them by fundamentalist leaders? Do you think protesters will be allowed to camp out in Cairo like they did in Kyiv? I don't know, but I'll wait and see...

Wednesday, 2 March 2005 - 8:05 PM CST

Well, I didn't see the interview in question, but based on your transcription, it sounded to me like what Soderberg meant was:

"There's always hope that this [fearmongering intended to trick the country into pointless, costly, and deadly wars with Iran and North Korea] might not work."

Which sounds like a perfectly reasonable mentality, be you on the Left, on the Right, or anywhere in between.

Thursday, 3 March 2005 - 8:16 PM CST

Thanks for the very thoughtful comments.

I don't buy the admonition that we should reserve judgement of these steps forward until everything is resolved. That isn't a reasonable expectation. People get swept up in the present and in the possibilities to come without regard to how History will judge them or their predictions or hopes.

As for Soderberg and Stewart, I didn't actually see the program, remember; I only read the transcript. But I don't think I took anything out of context. Go check out the portion provided by Taranto; it goes on like I characterized it for quite some time. Soderberg was clearly trying to mitigate the "problem" of Bush being right about democratizing the ME through what others might call destabilization.

Thursday, 3 March 2005 - 8:21 PM CST

Please! It's clear that Stewart was experiencing exactly what he said he was: cognitive dissonance. How can he and people like Soderberg "save the appearances" (to use an old Ptolemaic term) when faced with the awful possibility that Bush's efforts and the presence of our military in the Middle East might actually be paying off? That's what they were dealing with ---and not some more of your projected notions of what our foreign policy is supposedly costing us, be it economically or diplomatically.