I guess this is becoming self-serving, but here’s an email that makes me happy. It’s odd that many emails I’ve received have said that I’ve helped people who were very conservative to see some good things about some “liberal” positions – like marriage rights, or torture, or fiscal balance (yes, the latter is now a “liberal” position!). And the other half are from liberals saying that this blog helped them see some “conservative” truths, like the need to liberate some people from tyranny when we can and when it also serves our national security interests. The “eagle” mix, I suppose. Anyway, one last email from you:
When I started reading you a few years ago during the run-up to the war, I was, at that point, a 23 year-old Democrat who had never really thought much about foreign policy, the U.S. role in the world, etc., but who was fairly strident in his partisanship and thus reflexively hostile to any idea stemming from the Republican party, particularly George W. Bush (to illustrate my zealotry, I cried on election day 2000, when the big issue was prescription drugs, and when I was 21 years old). Naturally I supported the war in Afghanistan, as did most of my fellow Democratic friends. But when the debate over Iraq was starting to simmer and those around me instinctively became indignant, fuming about a war for oil, praying at the altar of multilateralism, pointing always to the supposed efficacy of the UN sanctions regime, I just didn’t feel it. I thought at first it was because I was a relative amateur when it came to foreign affairs and my views weren’t sufficiently developed, but deep down I felt that something was missing from the Democratic “line” this time. I know this sounds extremely hyperbolic, but reading your postings on Iraq were truly transformative for me. In the narrow sense they gave voice to my repressed and muddled thoughts on an incredibly complex and consequential debate, maybe the defining debate of our generation. But they also highlighted what seemed to be “missing” in the rantings of my friends (and Democratic leaders) — values, reflection, and foresight — three things that I had always associated with Democrats and liberals. This time, they were the ones who seemed reactionary. And from this minor revelation — maybe simply because I stopped hating Bush and deifying Democrats — I no longer saw other issues through a hyper-partisan lens. So thank you for that, but above all thank you for having the guts to write about big ideas during these weighty times.
Cheers.
The Dish 