caught between Scylla and Charybdis

I promised I would fade away for a while and leave you to your Festivus and/or Lefitvus activities. But I can’t resist making one gratifying (in a Schadenfreude kind of way) observation—that in the wake of the Iraq Study Group’s report, the mewling “not in our name” narcissists, pacifists, and isolationists of both the left and the right (an alliance of very uncomfortable convenience) now find themselves squeezed between their twin enemies: evil neocons and old school realist WASPs.

Exhibit A is Glenn Greenwald, who claims that the neocons have been totally repudiated by the realists but fears for his country, because “dangerous” neocon ideas about spreading freedom and democracy have not been eradicated:

As I argued immediately after the election, the disaster of the Iraq War and the resulting rejection of Bush-Republican policies presents a real opportunity to isolate, and relegate back to the fringes, the neoconservatives and more generic crazed warmongers who have dictated our foreign policy over the last five years — the Bill Kristols, Rush Limbaughs, John McCains, Charles Krauthammers, Joe Liebermans, American Enterprise Institutes and Rich Lowrys, who have an insatiable appetite for endless wars that degrade America’s credibility, resources, strength, security and national character.

At a time when most Americans have recognized that this war is a disaster and want to withdraw, this group of radical warriors continues to insist not only that the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do, but that we need more of it — more troops, more fighting, more threats, less diplomacy, less concern for world opinion, more regime change, more wars. …Although the media has yet to realize it, this group is already on the outer fringe of our political spectrum.

On that last point: I doubt it—America hates losing, and is contemptuous of losers. The antiseptic “withdrawal of choice” recommended by the ISG seems pretty unrealistic to me, given the depth of America’s sacrifices to date (unacknowledged by both the anti-war left and the cold-hearted realists of the right) and the nature and stated aim of the enemies the ISG wants us to appeal to.

Greenwald also notes, with growing alarm, that the anti-war crowd’s vision of our nation as a Disneyfied bloodless AmericaLand, where dialogue and compromise and mediation can resolve all thorny “issues,” hasn’t exactly won the day, either. Bush, he remarks, shows no signs of having curbed his appetite for succeeding in Iraq.

Yesterday, the President — jarringly enough — petulantly provoked an argument with Dick Durbin by making clear that he sees himself as Harry Truman, pressing forward with our grand, important wars even in the face of a lack of resolve on the part of Americans.

Good.

The resolve of Americans is, of course, the big question mark in the Iraq war—and in foreign policy. The presidential campaign of 2008 will reveal a great deal about that. And so will events, my dear boy, events.