Arianna gets religion

Actually, Arianna gets huffy…with her readers. In a very interesting couple of posts, she chides her gang to quell their bloodlust. Yesterday, she wrote:

…I’m much more interested in the way bloggers on my side of the political spectrum (including some of my favorites, and some who are good friends) initially reacted to the news that Newt had altered his stance on the war.

It wasn’t pretty. Matt Stoller at MyDD labeled him “another cowardly rat jumping off the Iraq ship,” an “impotent rotten apple,” and urged readers to find and post their “favorite warmongering quote from Gingrich on Iraq prior to his jumping off the ship.” Think Progress gathered a “gotcha!” collection of Gingrich’s greatest pro-war quotes. And Jane Hamsher opened up with both barrels: …

“Newt should not be allowed to assume the status of visionary hero for seeing the light. Newt is a guilty fucker with blood on his hands and no amount of apostasy is going to wash that off… No. Fucking. Prisoners. We had to live through this war because nobody put a stake through the heart of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gingrich, etc. the first time around…Every one of those bastards must be made to wear this war, the war of their own making, around their necks…”

But while I absolutely understand and share their anger, and adore the passion (indeed, I called Jane this morning and told her so), I have to ask if this is really the way we want to respond to pro-war people who change their position?

I agree with Arianna (regardless of her motives, and I don’t claim to know what they are) and have written about this here and here and here).

Her readers, by a wide margin, disagreed. The comrades demanded self-criticism: Turning against the war isn’t enough! They must apologize! They must repent! There’s nothing they can do to repent! et cetera, et cetera. For example:

No. Bloody. Way.

Nothing these people (war-mongers) say excuses them from their previous actions and words.

God may forgive, but my standards are higher than that.

People like Hillary and Newt made a political calculation (dismissing the suffering this was sure to inflict on others) to keep their future political options open.

By far this group of war-mongers are the lowest of the low. They knew and did nothing to stop this from happening. They kept supporting this war crime (enabling Bush to win re-election) and now want what?

Damn them all to hell!

Today, Arianna came out forcefully on the side of doing the right thing (as long as the other side repents, that is):

the initial reaction to the news that Gingrich had changed his stance on Iraq should be looked at as a test case for how bloggers and the anti-war movement respond to those who actually do change their position on Iraq.

It’s a test I think we failed.

(And notice that I said change their position — not change their minds or change their hearts. These conversions might not include either of those. They may simply be a change of public posture. And that’s okay, too.)

But launching a full-scale, dig-up-all-the-old-dirt attack on those who publicly change their position on the war seems counterproductive — at least in the cases where the change is accompanied by an admission from those making the change that they were wrong before and by an expression of regret (if not remorse) over their old position. (See Andrew Sullivan for an example of how this could be done.)

She then goes on to describe the experiences of Francis “The End of History” Fukuyama after he changed his mind about the war in Iraq (which I talked about here).

Arianna isn’t afraid of a fight–she is a shrewd and effective political operative, tough, seemingly impervious to criticism, and with a healthy dose of self-confidence. When she goofed with the Clooney blog post, she immediately took steps to control the damage–took the hit, blamed herself. This new brouhaha is an interesting Sister Souljah moment for her.