A few years ago, you could have imagined any number of movies for the liberal hawks to watch. "The Battle of Algiers." "Dr. Strangelove." "Hearts and Minds." It wouldn't have occurred to many to add in the slightly dark, slightly goofy, Zach Braff vehicle, "The Last Kiss." But, increasingly, that movie's message appears most relevant. In particular, the liberal hawks should pay attention to a scolding Tom Wilkinson gives to the solipsistic Zach Braff. "What you feel only matters to you," he spits. "It's what you do, to the people around you, that matters. That's all that matters."
This shouldn't be necessary to say, but increasingly, it seems like the only point worth making to the commentariat. American politics isn't about you. It's not about your ideas, or your personal vision of the world, or your purity. Contemporary politics is not a landscape awaiting your morality plays and exhibitions of ethical decisiveness. It is not yours.
It is the impact of your ideas, and your commentary, that matters. That's all that matters. Yet years after their sustained dance of personal regard and self involvement helped blind the liberal hawks to the reality of George W. Bush's war, one of them, Roger Cohen, is retreading the same ground, wondering why his continued advocacy for war, (or at least continual attacks on its opponents) is folded into the critiques of the neocons.
Here's why: Roger Cohen is not president. George W. Bush is. And until Roger Cohen's foreign policy vision integrates itself with an understanding of American power, and how ideas interact with the current administration, he is, effectively, a neoconservative, or, worse, an enabler of the neoconservatives who's able to advocate for their policy agenda without needing to answer for their failures.
