I blogged at some length a while back on Fukuyama's new book and his rejection of his fellow neocons for their support of the US invasion of Iraq. Point being to issue an invitation and a challenge to the liberal hawks to do some reassessing of their own. But now, with Seymour Hersh getting everybody focused on Bush plans for an attack on Iran, the challenge becomes all the more pointed. It's time for Tom Friedman to give FlatWorld a rest and come out with his position on Shock and Awe II. Christopher Hitchens has, I believe, been consistent and sincere in his rationale for supporting Bush--he is convinced that the threat of Islamo-Fascism justifies that war and he's been willing to shoulder the polemical burden of defending its mismanagement. What's his judgment on this one? Paul Berman has criticized the anti-war left for its fuzzy refusal to seriously confront the problem of Islamist terrorism in an age of portable WMDs--and I think that, on balance, he's got a point there. Just because Bush has used the threat of terror so shamelessly doesn't mean the threat isn't real. But will Berman be waving the flag if we launch yet another "pre-emptive" strike on yet another Muslim nation, maybe even with bunker busting nukes of our own?
Gee, I hope they work. I mean that they, you know, actually stay in the bunker. Because stuff happens. By golly, it surely does.
Friedman and Hitchens and Berman and the rest of the liberal hawks know history. They know that this is the very nature of escalation. You go in for a nickel and then, well, you've gone that far, so you take the next step, and then, before you know it, the dialectic has turned you inside out like a sock, and you've become the opposite of what once you were. And this whole "broader middle east situation" is starting to feel like the mother of all escalations to me--I mean the build-up to the first world war--not in the details, obviously, I'm talking about the mood. There's a feeling in the air, the feeling of an inexorable momentum toward catastrophe, the feeling that attaches to the logic of an age gone by when it fastens its grip on an age yet to come and enables a few deluded men with gargantuan power and impenetrable moral clarity to lead a world into madness and millions to extinction.
I want to hear from the liberal hawks on this prospect...