Uppity-Negro.com

This week's This American Life, "Why We Fight," mentions an article from the New Yorker, The War On What? by Nicholas Lemann.

To the extent that the supremely confident hawks take seriously anyone who disagrees with them, it wouldn't be the multilateralists, whom they regard as sentimental and naïve, but old-fashioned foreign-policy realists, people who think of themselves as being hardheaded enough to conduct their discussion of American foreign policy on the ground of practical matters like national interest and balance of power. Moral campaigns to remake the world don't cut it with the realists. To them it's the hawks who are sentimental and naïve, and also dangerously incautious, because they overestimate the extent to which the United States can impose its will abroad without suffering unforeseen consequences. For the past year, the realists have been the dog that hasn't barked. (There is a left-wing argument against the war on terror, which proceeds from a suspicion of American power; it counts as a loudly barking dog because commentators who object to it have given it so much publicity.) The realists are practically reverential toward American power, but, unlike just about everybody in Washington—Administration hawks and moderates, Democrats and Republicans in Congress—they don't think there should be a war on terror.

Which I'd figured was very old news I'd somehow missed-- it was posted September 9th -- but according to blogdex, it wasn't discussed that much at the time.

No reason to start now, I expect. What with gearing up for attacking Iraq and all.