Facing the facts

Conservative Andrew Sullivan challenges blogger Glenn Reynolds on his inability to challenge Bush on massive Iraq failings. Sullivan could be talking about virtually every pro-war commentator in Australia and the US. Somehow the culture wars are more important to these people than speaking truth to power. Go figure:

"Maybe Bush is horrible as a war-leader. Has that occurred to Reynolds yet? Maybe if he'd had the balls to point that out last year, instead of cowering behind the "Kerry-is-worse" meme for months on end, and hyping the Swift-Boat attacks, we'd have had more pressure to change course. For the record, it is not unpatriotic to call this president on the mistakes he has made - the grotesque recklessness of invading a country with no serious plan for the post-invasion, the wrecking of the United States' reputation for humane treatment of prisoners, the debunked intelligence on which he relied (oh, sorry, we're not supposed to criticize the guy who assured us that there were stockpiles of WMDs as a fact, because others were wrong as well). Reynolds simply won't criticize the president for the mistakes for which this president is responsible. Worse, he's arguing that anyone who points out that, yes, Bush is horrible as a commander-in-chief is somehow unhelpful or unpatriotic. One day, denial and distraction from reality will finally collapse at Instapundit. And it won't be pretty."

For the record, Sullivan still supports America's interventionist foreign policy, but at least he has the intellectual rigour to question the talking points parroted by little empire-builders.