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Two months ago, I postulated "Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary":

No liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the President's justifications for the War in Iraq at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive

Andrew Sullivan adds evidence to my theory in today's posts.

He notes the radical inconsistency of many opponents, as exemplified by Maureen Dowd:

Here's Maureen Dowd on March 9 of this year:

The case for war has been incoherent due to overlapping reasons conservatives want to get Saddam. The president wants to avenge his father, and please his base by changing the historical ellipsis...[snipped]...

And on June 4, only three months later, we discover that

For the first time in history, Americans are searching for the reason we went to war after the war is over... Conservatives are busily offering a bouquet of new justifications for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq that was sold as self-defense against Saddam's poised and thrumming weapons of mass destruction."

So what was it? An incoherent set of multiple reasons or a single, crude one, i.e. self-defense against the "imminent" threat of WMDs? It doesn't really matter to Dowd, of course.

Read the whole thing (actually two posts); it sums up not only the problem with the opposition to the liberation of Iraq, but the problem a conservative faces in so many arguments with the left (including the ones I'll be talking about later, in re the St. Paul School Board election).

Posted by Mitch at October 16, 2003 06:28 AM