Quote of the Day

"I've concluded that it's a mistake to entrust the cause of American idealism and Arab reform to a movement led by people who plainly loathe Arabs (Palestinians 'behave like lemmings' wrote [the New Republic's Marty] Peretz two weeks ago before observing last week that Iraqis now lack 'even the bare rudiments of civilizations') and couldn't care less about their well-being except insofar as pretense to caring is a useful club with which to batter domestic political opponents.

As an approach to intra-punditocracy one-upsmanship this seems to work out okay, but as an approach to foreign policy it's moronic. In that realm, what actual foreigners actually think actually does matter, whether or not you care about them or agree with their opinions. And what Muslims think about the United States is that we don't give a damn about their interests or welfare. They are, therefore, very skeptical of schemes that involve giving the United States more control over the fate of the Muslims -- be it conquering Iraq, strong-arming Arab regimes with economic pressure, or efforts to maintain the principle that the Non-Proliferation Treaty is sacrosanct when Iran wants to break it but not when the United States or Israel or India wants to.

Under these circumstances, democratization -- the shared passion of many Republicans and Democrats alike -- is doomed to fail."
--Matthew Yglesias in the American Prospect on why he stopped supporting this war