Guess who wrote this?
Lieberman's honorable, if mistaken, support for the war has curdled into demagoguery. Senator John McCain has taken a similar path, calling those who would vote for the resolution "intellectually dishonest." He suggests the "honest" path for surge opponents would be to go ahead and cut off funds for the war. But the Senators who favor Warner-Levin are pointedly opposed to immediate withdrawal from Iraq. So who's being intellectually dishonest here? It is sad to see McCain and Lieberman disgracing themselves this way. It is tempting to say, "Shame on you," and leave it at that. But I had a conversation with two colonels last week--very smart guys, very much aware of the dire situation in Iraq--and their attitude was much the same as McCain's and Lieberman's: the politicians were undermining the mission.
Answer here. I'm warming to Klein, who is, I think, becoming a better version of himself through engagement with the left. I don't know that his substantive opinions have changed, but which ones he emphasizes has. It's worth remembering that, for years, the only thing these quasi-liberal columnists heard was how biased, out-of-touch, and incomprehensibly progressive they were. So they began tailoring, consciously or not, their work to defend against those criticisms. The reawakened left does quite a service when it intercedes on behalf of reality and shatters the pundits' own impressions of themselves and forces them to recalibrate how much of their liberalism they really express.
