Reading Walt Whitman and the Conservative National Security Critique Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Over at bloggingheads, Eli Lake and I debate Iran policy, Israeli policy and Sudan policy (regrettably lots of violence in Sudan today, even more regrettably it's local group on local group in the south, taking advantage, if you can call it that, of the plethora of weapons left over from the two-decades' long civil war and the very limited reach of the state).

We find no shortage of things to disagree about, I think:  what's interesting is that many of the commenters seem to share the view of Eliot Cohen and one wing of the Republican party -- call them the "no difference" school. 

I'm always bewildered by the "there's no difference" critique, whether it comes from the left or right.  In my experience, the difference begins with how you see the world -- as a collection of other actors who also have legitimate rights and aspirations that have to be considered, even when they differ from our own, or as primarily objects to be acted upon.  Then there's the question of how you understand American power -- whether you believe it has either moral or practical limits and what you think those are.

Then it can be the case that two people, or two Administrations, can legitimately reach the same decision -- eg, that attacking North Korea is foolhardy, or that building a partnership with India is a good idea, to pick a couple of places that (almost) no one complains about policy continuity -- having started from quite different ideological and experiential premises.

The "no difference" critique from the right is particularly disingenuous, coming as it does from folks who resisted containing North Korea, drawing down in Iraq, engagement with Iran and other Obama initiatives for years of the Bush Administration when progressives proposed them.

Then, as NSN pointed out today, you get other conservatives saying that Obama policies are changing Bush policies that kept America safe.  Well, wait.  Either he's changing them or he's not.  Get your story straight, please. 

Anyway, it all sent me to Walt Whitman.  Reading all of Song of Myself beats heck out of reading competing foreign policy critiques, even mine.  Or "There Was a Child Went Forth Every Day" or "Who Learns My Lesson Complete?" from Leaves of Grass.  So in Whitman's spirit of inclusivity and love of his fellows, I send this verse to our critics:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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