Can we please stop portraying The New Republic as if it were The Nation? While TNR has certainly grown sour on the war in Iraq, they were one of the biggest cheerleaders on the left pre-invasion and for quite some time afterward. There are still folks at the magazine who think it was a good idea and think that we should stay there, including the freaking Editor-in-Chief. Ideologically, TNR is more like O’Hanlon and Pollack – folks on the left (and in this case, “the left” includes liberals, moderates and conservative Dems) who supported the war but are unhappy with the way the administration has handled the subsequent occupation. (kind of like many of the neo-cons) Spencer Ackerman (who supported the original invasion) was probably TNR’s loudest anti-Iraq War voice…and they fired him!
If Beauchamp lied in his stories, this is more like a second Stephen Glass – and the blame lies with both the writer himself and shoddy editorial/fact checking procedures and practices by TNR. But this was not some grand lefty “smear the troops so we can end the war” effort. It just wasn’t.
