{"id":309,"date":"2007-02-07T11:25:54","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T15:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=309"},"modified":"2007-02-07T11:25:54","modified_gmt":"2007-02-07T15:25:54","slug":"tell-me-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=309","title":{"rendered":"Tell me why"},"content":{"rendered":"

This tidbit from E.J.Dionne’s latest<\/a> illustrates a point we’ve been making for a while:<\/p>\n

>The impatience of the administration’s critics is entirely understandable. But it would be a shame if impatience got in the way of a sensible long-term strategy to bring America’s engagement in this war to as decent an end as possible as quickly as possible — even if not as quickly as they’d like. The anti-surge resolution is a necessary first step, which is why those who are against a genuine change in our Iraq policy are fighting so hard to stop it.<\/p>\n

There isn’t anything wrong with this as far as it goes (or as far as we could tell). But we’ve long complained that the “liberal” columnists differ as a group from the conservative ones. The most prominent conservative columnists make ideological combat the centerpiece of their writing, thinking perhaps that that’s what the op-ed page is for. I’d be inclined to agree with them. That’s how it should be. Outside of Krugman<\/a>, however, the liberal columnists largely don’t argue in the way their conservative colleagues do. So, while people like Krauthammer<\/a> and V.D.Hanson<\/a> argue in forceful (but erroneous terms) for the position that the Iraq war has gone swimmingly (but for the Iraqis), Dionne takes it for granted that it’s been a disaster and talks instead about the parliamentary process of bringing it to an end. It’s not wrong that he does this. It’s just a poor match for his more strident conservative colleagues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This tidbit from E.J.Dionne’s latest illustrates a point we’ve been making for a while: >The impatience of the administration’s critics is entirely understandable. But it would be a shame if impatience got in the way of a sensible long-term strategy to bring America’s engagement in this war to as decent an end as possible as … Continue reading Tell me why<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ejdionne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}