The Fighting Faith -- Does It Exist?

It's great to see so many columnists and bloggers have pitched in with opinions regarding Peter Beinart's essay "A Fighting Faith" in The New Republic. As I noted, it's important to have liberals understand and fully enlist in the War on Terror -- especially because without their support, the more anti-war elements of the party will alienate the vast majority of Americans who believe ina dn understand the need for military action. Put simply, it's perfectly reasonable for liberals to oppose the War in Iraq, but to declare it an evil enterprise ignores the reality of what we have accomplished, and to stand against the War in Afghanistan -- as done by MoveOn and the radical left -- defies reality.

However, it appears several liberals still question the basic tenets expressed by Beinart. One of them, Kevin Drum, is one of the better writers on the Web, and one of the few liberals I'd link to in any case. Drum has actually spent significant time responding to Beinart, here and here and also here. His responses are educational, but also dismaying. Jonah Goldberg explains why, in a superb column...

Now, because it's always the case that criticism from your own side gets more reaction than criticism from the opposition, I was curious to see what the response from Beinart's fellow liberals would be. After all, in a broad sense there isn't that much that is new to his argument; the novelty is the source more than the content. Conservatives have been saying that the Left is making the Democrats too dovish for a very, very long time. After 9/11 this became a standard refrain in most of the relevant conservative analysis. And, typically, the response from the knee-jerk Left and liberals was, "How dare you..." How dare you question my patriotism! (Kerry himself offered up that one quite often.) How dare you question my commitment to defense! How dare you assume that conservatives are better at foreign policy! Etc.

One regular source of this sort of complaint was Kevin Drum, the in-house blogger of The Washington Monthly and something of a clearinghouse for smart liberals on the web. He's normally sober-minded, but sometimes he sounds like he's lined up too many fallen soldiers on his airline tray. I still remember when John Ashcroft warned — presciently — that al Qaeda might try to influence the U.S. elections as it had in Madrid. Drum responded, "What a despicable worm. What a revolting, loathsome, toad." The upshot was that Drum took some modest offense at the suggestion that Democrats would be any less resolute in their fight against America's enemies.

So, I was particularly intrigued by Drum's initial response to Beinart's cri de coeur: "What he really needs to write," harrumphed Drum, "is a prequel to his current piece, one that presents the core argument itself: namely, why defeating Islamic totalitarianism should be a core liberal issue." He continues later on: "That's the story I think Beinart needs to write. If he thinks too many liberals are squishy on terrorism, he needs to persuade us not just that Islamic totalitarianism is bad — of course it's bad — but that it's also an overwhelming danger to the security of the United States."

Okay hold that thought.

By my very rough guess, since 9/11 National Review Online and National Review have run probably 500 articles from serious scholars to folks like me on why the threat from "Islamo-Fascism," "jihadism," or whatever you want to call it is real, serious, and likely to endure for a very long time. We've come at it from every angle, too — from narrow arguments about weapons proliferation to deep, sustained, philosophical treatises about the Islamic or Arab worldview and our own.

Of course, NR is not alone. Similar articles or articles on similar themes have proliferated across the mainstream media and the Internet. Whole categories of bloggers — the "war bloggers" — have sprouted up. The op-ed pages have groaned from the weight of serious people explaining how the battle against Islamic fundamentalism will likely be known as World War IV. Countless books from liberals, leftists, many, many conservatives, and a few allegedly "nonpartisan" whistleblowers have been written expanding these arguments. There've been campus debates, symposia, and course offerings. There've been international conferences, speeches, lectures, documentaries. Whole new chairs have been established at think tanks and universities, and there've even been new think tanks established, dedicated to defending democracy against this "new" form of totalitarianism. Two Cabinet positions have been created — with bipartisan support in response to this threat. Both presidential nominees staked their campaigns in large parts on their ability to fight and win the war on terror, a sometimes-clunking euphemism for Islamic fundamentalism.

But, what Kevin Drum thinks liberals need is a really good argument explaining the threat from jihadism. Where has he been these last few years?

...If Drum needs another argument to be persuaded about the threat, he is flatly unpersuadable. Indeed, if Beinart could surf back on the space-time continuum, he could have used Drum's response as an example of exactly his complaint: that the Democrats don't care enough about fighting Islamic totalitarianism.

But that's not even the annoying part. For the last two years, the main thrust of criticism from Democrats has been that Bush hasn't been doing enough to fight Islamic terrorism. Drum was a big fan of Richard Clarke's book. Well, Clarke's book was a criticism from the right. Bush didn't do enough. The whole "wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time" mantra was shorthand for the argument that Iraq was a distraction from the real threat of Islamic totalitarianism.

Read the whole thing, and also note the position taken by someone who's relatively libertarian, Andrew Sullivan, an unabashed supporter of the War on Terror who's been very critical of Bush in Iraq. Sullivan's no lefty, but liberals could stand to learn from his ability to seperate his distaste with several Bush Administration policies and the GOP in general from his ability to zealously support the War on Terror. Beinart may understand the lesson. It appears several others still need to learn.