No rest for the Bush Haters:
Katrina vanden Heuvel has lobbed a grenade at Bill Kristol. First, here's what the Weekly Standard editor wrote (after slamming the media's war coverage as "idiocy"):
"American liberalism is in the process of dividing again, into the Dick Gephardt liberals and the Dominique de Villepin left. . . .
"The Gephardt liberals are patriots. . . . The other group includes the Teddy Kennedy wing of the Senate Democrats, the Nancy Pelosi faction of the House Democrats, a large majority of Democratic grass-roots activists, the bulk of liberal columnists, the New York Times editorial page, and Hollywood. These liberals--better, leftists--hate George W. Bush so much they can barely bring themselves to hope America wins the war to which, in their view, the president has illegitimately committed the nation. They hate Don Rumsfeld so much they can't bear to see his military strategy vindicated. . . . They hate conservatives with a passion that seems to burn brighter than their love of America, and so, like M. de Villepin, they can barely bring themselves to call for an American victory.
"It would be bad for America if this wing of American liberalism were to prevail."
And vanden Heuvel's response:
"William Kristol's April 7 editorial in The Weekly Standard denouncing critics of the war on Iraq as 'anti-American' is startlingly reminiscent of the menacing directives issued for decades by the Soviet Communist Party's Department of Ideology. . . .
"Now Kommissar Kristol lays down the line that all critics of the White House's war are guilty of holding 'anti-American' opinions. . . . No doubt Kristol, with his censorious, antidemocratic instincts, would have risen high in the apparat of the old Soviet Communist Party. . . .
"Conservatives claim to learn from history. Kristol's outburst--one of many such dissent-is-unpatriotic statements issued by pro-White House cheerleaders in the media--is more evidence that the people who now control America's national security policy are not really conservatives but extremists."
Who's over the top? We report, you decide.
