Peter Beinart sums up the unreality of the current debate on Iraq in the latest TNR
There's nothing wrong with all these calls for dialogue. But it's hard to have a useful discussion when only one side knows what it thinks. And right now only one side does. Bush and most Republicans are arguing that the United States should go to war against Iraq; most Democrats are arguing that we should argue about it......
The Democrats don't need more information about war with Iraq. What they need is a theory about how post-September 11 international relations work Bush has a theory: preemption. His idea is that containment--the first hallmark of cold war U.S. foreign policy--won't work against terrorists and mad dictators who want to wreak havoc at least as much as they want to capture territory. And that deterrence--the second hallmark--won't work against fanatics who aren't fazed by the prospect of massive retaliation. So the United States must destroy them before they destroy us.
So far Democrats have quibbled with the details of Bush's Iraq strategy, but, because they haven't addressed the preemption theory that underlies it, those quibbles haven't been very compelling
TNR has a theory (which I share), which is that preemption needs to be supplemented with multilateralist projects such as nation-building. What exactly is the Dems theory? Has anyone heard from Joseph Nye recently? I know he thinks the answer lies somewhere in the middle - but where exactly does he think the middle is these days?
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