WWAKD? Who Cares?

Shorter Ann Althouse: Democrats must start answering the following question: “When will you stop being traitors?”

As Glenn points out, what’s particularly funny about this is that Althouse, Reynolds, Peretz et al. seem to be of the conviction that the taunting rhetoric of despots and terrorists should 1)be taken at face value, and 2)should govern the conduct of American foreign policy. This would seem to be the same kind of nuttiness that produces Althouse’s conviction that once you’ve started a war you can never end it no matter how ill-conceived it was or how badly it’s damaging national interests or how many people are being pointlessly killed because otherwise it would provide “information” to America’s enemies that would somehow destroy its capacities. For example, the fact that the United States ended the Vietnam War without achieving its objectives is what led to the Soviet Union’s triumph in the Cold War. (This is Rob’s department, but arguments just don’t get more theoretically implausible and empirically indefensible than “we need to keep counterproductive wars going to demonstrate ‘resolve.'” Enough already.) Anyway, I have no idea what Iranian leaders actually think about the elections or why I should care, but I do know that the disastrous war in Iraq has ended up advancing the interests of the Iranian state while it’s undermined those of the United States.

…I should also note explicitly that some more honorable conservatives have repudiated this line of non-reasoning.