By PETER BEINART

A few weeks ago, Armando did something I appreciate: He read my book. And to make matters stranger, I agree with a good part of his response, since it reiterates a point I make on the book's fifth page: I was wrong to support the Iraq war. Armando goes on to note that others, including Wesley Clark, were wiser than me in foreseeing some of the problems that would arise. Agreed. They were.

Where we part company is in our analysis of where liberals are more generally in the struggle against jihadism. After quoting me as writing that John Kerry lacked "a vision of national greatness in a threatening world, something liberals have not had for a very long time," Armando retorts "Sez who Mr. Beinart? Karl Rove?"

I don't know if Karl Rove is saying that, and I don't particularly care. One of the most self-defeating tendencies among liberals today, in my view, is this idea that if conservatives are attacking liberals for something, we have to deny we have any problem, so as not to play into our opponents hands. That's a great recipe for intellectual paralysis. In the late 1980s, conservatives said the country didn't trust liberals to fight crime. Bill Clinton didn't deny the problem. He acknowledged and solved it--not only defusing an issue that helped sink Michael Dukakis, but creating a "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" synthesis that helped create safer cities. . . .

Reply by Armando

I thank Peter Beinart for his response to my post on his book, "The Good Fight."

While other commentators have chosen to focus on the need for Beinart to wear his hairshirt for a longer period of time, I said my piece on that in my post and focus now on the substance of Peter's remarks here.

Peter writes:

Where we part company is in our analysis of where liberals are more generally in the struggle against jihadism. After quoting me as writing that John Kerry lacked "a vision of national greatness in a threatening world, something liberals have not had for a very long time," Armando retorts "Sez who Mr. Beinart? Karl Rove?" I don't know if Karl Rove is saying that, and I don't particularly care. One of the most self-defeating tendencies among liberals today, in my view, is this idea that if conservatives are attacking liberals for something, we have to deny we have any problem, so as not to play into our opponents hands. That's a great recipe for intellectual paralysis. In the late 1980s, conservatives said the country didn't trust liberals to fight crime. Bill Clinton didn't deny the problem. He acknowledged and solved it--not only defusing an issue that helped sink Michael Dukakis, but creating a "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" synthesis that helped create safer cities.

Beinart makes a fundamental mistake in not caring about the politics (my Rove metaphor is about the politics) of national security. For it is the politics of national security which has hamstringed reasoned debate on national security not only among Democrats, but in the country as a whole. Why were the voices of principled Truman-like reason crowded off the stage in 2002, including by a large number of Democrats? Why was General Wesley Clark not heard? It is because of the politics of national security.

. . . In order to gain an authentic voice for a Democratic liberal foreign policy, Democrats must master the politics of national security. Peter would focus solely on policy as if there really is a wide divide between his vision of a liberal foreign policy and that articulated by Democrats. I simply don't think there is. Peter's book and the policy he outlines reflects, in my opinion, the thinking of the Democratic Party today on national security.

Kevin Drum remarked:

I read The Good Fight a couple of weeks ago, and Beinart is pretty clear that he now believes he was wrong about a whole host of things back in 2003. He was wrong about WMD, wrong about containment, wrong about the need for international legitimacy, etc. etc. If he had it to do over again, he wouldn't have supported the war. . . . In other words, I think he could give the keynote address at YearlyKos and not really say much of anything the audience would disagree with. If Beinart really is the standard bearer for a new incarnation of liberal hawkishness, then we're almost all liberal hawks now.

I think Kevin gets it exactly right. I believe the disconnect remains in the area of the politics of national security.

Beinart writes:

I highlight this problem because I believe it is only when liberals see fighting jihadist totalitarianism--an ideology that enslaves women and non-Sunni Muslims, and murders gays and lesbians--as our cause--not Bush's, ours--that this struggle will be won. It is our values, more than his, which are at stake. It is our tradition--not his--that recognizes that America wins when it leads by persuasion, not command. That recognizes that in foreign policy, legitimacy is power. That recognizes that it is only when we act democratically--when we struggle for freedom at home--that we can truly champion democracy around the world. That's our heritage and our mission, I think. But we can't fulfill it if we decide the anti-jihadist struggle is a Bush concoction in which we have little stake. And that tendency is growing, according to the polls. Which is partly why I wrote my book.

I think most do see it as our cause. I think what Peter is missing is that what most liberals object to is the view that we must "stand with Bush" in order to fight for a liberal foreign policy against Islamic jihadism. Many of us believe the opposite. Many of us believe that Bush has been a disaster in the struggle against Islamic jihadism. Many of us believe that the Iraq Debacle was one of our biggest setbacks in the struggle against Islamic jihadism.

Indeed, many of us believe that those who most protest that we must take the struggle against Islamic jihadism seriously are the people doing the most damage in that struggle because they make it difficult to critique the disastrous Bush policy. Why is this the case?

Because of the politics of national security. You can't take the politics out of politics, as Ed Kilgore wrote. And you can't take the politics out of national security. Peter forgets this.

Anne Marie Slaughter also forgets this.