Nobody expected a kinder, gentler Iraq debate. So it was no surprise when President Bush's decision to send 21,500 additional troops to the war-torn country triggered stinging criticisms and impassioned defenses from editorialists, syndicated columnists, and sundry bloggers throughout the country. Hawks and doves mostly dug in behind their respective positions, with an opinion-monger's stand on the war in the first place being an excellent predictor of whether he now supports the surge.
"Want a little tough truth with your morning coffee?" John Podhoretz
asked on The Corner before Bush's speech. "McCain can do this, and Rudy can do that, and Romney can do the other thing. But if tonight's speech doesn't herald the beginning of a serious turnaround in Iraq that is plain to see by spring of next year, the Risen Christ could be the Republican nominee in 2008 and He wouldn't be able to win against Al Sharpton."
The change in tone from persistent optimism to gallows humor was evident in the weeks before Bush's anticipated new policy. Hawks no longer were making confident predictions of victory; more than a few were conceding that there were in fact serious flaws in the planning and execution of the whole Iraq enterprise.
Yet war supporters on the right aren't alone in doing some soul-searching in the face of changing circumstances in Iraq. Liberals and doves have been engaging in a spirited debate over the likely consequences of withdrawal.
Irking his betters in the left-punditocracy, Joe Klein
opined that "those who oppose the war now have a responsibility to (a) oppose it judiciously, without hateful or extreme rhetoric and (b) start thinking very hard -- and in a very detailed way -- about how we begin to recover from this mess." At the
New Republic, Jason Zengerle
worried about "the cavalier way in which some liberal opponents of the surge talk about withdrawal."
Even the
Nation's Katha Pollitt, in an otherwise crabby column,
exhorted her readers, "Be honest. Withdrawing from Iraq may be the right thing to do, but it won't mean peace, at least not for the Iraqis."
Some of this rethinking is undoubtedly opportunistic -- pundits, no less than politicians, like to be able share credit for American victories and avoid blame for policy disasters. Our intervention in Iraq has gone poorly; our withdrawal could easily be a humanitarian catastrophe. But this new burst of nuance may also capture the ambiguous feelings of many who tell pollsters they are among the anti-surge majority -- people who are skeptical that staying the course or escalating will do much good yet ache at the prospect of American setbacks (full disclosure: this group would include the author).