Finally.

Sam Rosenfeld and Matthew Yglesias hit one out of the park. Just read it all. It looks like finally Matt’s begun to get it. Whew! I dunno what prompted this. Perhaps Sam and Matt simply faced reality. Perhaps they sensed a genuine worry that the compelling arguments from longtime war opponents might lead to a sea change in power centers amongst liberals, affecting their career prospects if they didn’t openly acknowledge that some of our most important objections were correct. Perhaps both. Whatever. They have done good. But if they want to write for the New Republic anytime soon, they may not be getting their phone calls returned right away…

My only serious bone to pick, which is fairly minor given the extent of the insight and about face exhibited, is that Sam and Matt still privilege, albeit critically, an Isolationist/Realist dichotomy. This was never a good way to frame foreign policy debates, and is not terribly relevant anymore. We need better, more “realistic” – in the sense of closer to how the world works – models and as far as I can tell, no good alternatives are around. (I’ll take a pass on Walter Mead’s Jacksonians, Jeffersonians, et al. As Schlesinger once got Mead to admit, according to Walter’s definition Jackson himself wasn’t a Jacksonian.)

Finally, finally Yglesias is beginning to get it. They even addressed the cynical careerism in the liberal hawks’ position (although bizarrely, they appear to find little wrong with that; their writing is quite unclear on this). I’ve been saying most of this stuff for three years now and I was truly beginning to despair, not that I personally wasn’t getting anywhere: political punditry and analysis is not my career and I don’t care to make it one. I’ve just wanted to see some sanity in the present discourse where there has been very, very little. So in all seriousness, I’m very glad – relieved– something somewhere has finally started to permit some smart folks, whose grasp on consensual reality seemed quite fragile for a while, to start the long road back to clear-eyed sanity.

Go thou and read.