There once was a political subspecies known as the liberal Iraq hawk. These were liberals who saw American interests and ideals at stake in the future of Iraq, and who believed in presidential leadership in waging war. Relatively few in number, the liberal Iraq hawks nonetheless tended to be opinion leaders. Some worked in think tanks or at policy journals, and wrote articles and books in support of the war. Some served in Congress, and voted to authorize and finance it. Democrats in the broader electorate paid attention to the liberal Iraq hawks, and when the war came, and America invaded Iraq, support for intervention among Democrats stood at more than 50 percent.
Not for long. The American-led coalition toppled Saddam's regime only to discover there were no weapons of mass destruction. Baathists, assorted Sunni insurgents, and soon al Qaeda in Iraq began attacking American troops. Saddam was still missing. The Iraqi democratic process was stalled. Back home, the 2004 presidential campaign was underway. The liberal Iraq hawks started moving away from the war, criticizing the decision to fight and the Bush administration's incompetence. And the public followed the liberal Iraq hawks' lead. Support for the war among Democrats plummeted, and even the capture of Saddam on December 13, 2003, failed to revive it. In March 2004 it stood at around 30 percent. By September 2004 it had dropped to around 20 percent. It was all downhill from there.
One by one the liberal Iraq hawks died out. They backed away from Iraq,
inch by inch, until they could no longer support an American presence in that embattled country. In November 2005, Jack Murtha, who had voted for the war, pronounced that it was lost and that American troops should return home as quickly as possible. In 2006 the most prominent and consistent liberal Iraq hawk, Joe Lieberman, lost his state party's primary to antiwar challenger Ned Lamont. So far in 2007, Congress has passed an emergency defense supplemental appropriation bill mandating that troops begin withdrawing from Iraq by October 1. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has said Murtha is right and America has lost in Iraq. The most famous liberal Iraq hawk, British prime minister Tony Blair, has announced he will retire from office on June 27.
Meanwhile, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, refuses to apologize for her vote to authorize the use of force. But she, too, has discarded her willingness to continue the fight. She's joined antiwar senator Robert Byrd in calling for the repeal of the congressional authorization for war. And on May 16, 29 Senate Democrats, including the formerly pro-war Clinton, Reid, Christopher Dodd, Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Chuck Schumer, voted to end debate on a motion to cut off funding for the war by March 31, 2008.
The liberal-Iraq-hawk intellectuals are no different. As the war went on, they grew tired of conflict and death. They began to see America as the problem in Iraq, not the solution. Pundits who had written books calling for Democrats to embrace an assertive foreign policy suddenly penned columns defending George McGovern. Columnists who had advocated the invasion of Iraq said the situation was hopeless and began stressing the looming dangers of global warming. The advocates of American power to stop genocide in the nineties argued that the lessons of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo were inapplicable to the sectarian conflict in Iraq.
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