Yglesias Award Nominee

"And yet, much as I'm reluctant to agree with him, Weisberg has a point: aside from kvetching about Bush's policies, the liberal blogosphere has chosen to almost unanimously sit out any substantive discussion of the fight against radical jihadism and what to do about it. Emphasis counts, and this widespread silence makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that liberal bloggers just don't find the subject very engaging," - Kevin Drum today.

He's absolutely right. I've been a ferocious critic of Bush, but primarily because I believe this war is extremely important, and that he has been grotesquely inept and immoral in his conduct of it. The threat, as we were reminded this morning, is as grave as ever. Bush's incompetence has compounded it. When DailyKossers simply decide to ignore, say, the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in favor of domestic Democratic in-fighting, they are telling us something. They're telling us they still have no clue about the struggle we are in. (That goes for Mickey Kaus, as well, by the way: unable to muster anything but the odd, dyspeptic splutter about the great struggle of our time.) The Kossites are telling us that if they control the Democratic party, the Dems will not take the threat seriously enough. That's the Kos message on the war: we don't just refuse to fight Bush's war, but any war. Not all of them think that way, but a serious minority do. Maybe those who understand the threat on the left can now take on their comrades who put the "war on terror" in quote-marks. The corpses of 9/11 did not have quote-marks around them.