National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has been getting e-mails very much along the lines I do. To wit: If you quibble with any aspect of conservative-Bush orthodoxy, you’ve gone “left.” This is, of course, moronic. A realist critique of President Bush’s foreign policy interventionism is not left wing. Is Brent Scowcroft left? A small government criticism of mounting deficits is not liberal. Is Alan Greenspan a liberal? A defense of states’ rights against the Bush Justice Department is not left wing. So Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were part of the counterculture? Now, you may agree with the Bushies on all these issues – but the notion that all disagreement is “liberal” is loopy. It comes, I think, from the moronic Sean Hannity-style conservatism that has essentially degenerated into high-school name-calling of anyone who dares dissent. “Liberal” means nothing to them but a term of abuse. Of course, in many ways, the best strain in contemporary conservatism is the last resort of old-school liberalism. But that would just confuse the demagogues, wouldn’t it?

They Knew

I’m in the middle of reading all the gruesome documents related to the Abu Ghraib fiasco for a book review. Now we read this story from the Washington Post: “Until now, U.S. military officials have characterized the problem as one largely confined to the military prison at Abu Ghraib – a situation they first learned about in January 2004. But Herrington’s report shows that U.S. military leaders in Iraq were told of such allegations even before then, and that problems were not restricted to Abu Ghraib. Herrington, a veteran of the U.S. counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam, warned that such harsh tactics could imperil U.S. efforts to quell the Iraqi insurgency – a prediction echoed months later by a military report and other reviews of the war effort.”

Brutality and torture were unofficial policy, as they also have been at Guantanamo. “Everyone knows about it,” an intelligence officer told Stuart Herrington. And Mr. Herrington was no hand-wringer. He’s a veteran of counterinsurgency methods in Vietnam. Mr. Herrington also noticed counterproductive sweeps of the general Iraqi population, overcrowding in detainee centers, the “disappearing” of prisoners, and taking female relatives hostage to get suspects turned in. Do the Bush people really expect us to believe, after all we now know, that Abu Ghraib was a one-off event caused by a handful of underlings? The terrible truth is that it was anything but. And no one in this administration will ever be called to account.

FAIR on Oil-For-Food

A reader finds a classic piece of anti-war flimflam from before the Iraq war – exonerating the United Nations oil-for-food program from criticism that it was corrupt and ineffective. Yes, it’s from “Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting.” Money quote:

“The summer of 2001 saw a revival of long discredited claims that sanctions are not to blame for Iraq’s suffering, but that Saddam Hussein bears sole responsibility – an argument put forward in a State Department report issued shortly after the UNICEF report on the deaths of children. Seizing on the fact that infant mortality had decreased in northern Iraq, which is under U.N. administration, while more than doubling in the rest of the country, where the government of Iraq is in charge, the State Department accused Baghdad of wide-scale misappropriation of funds from Iraqi oil sales earmarked for humanitarian purposes.

“Michael Rubin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who spent nine months as a private citizen in northern Iraq, has pushed this argument in at least eight op-eds…These op-eds follow the same basic theme: Since conditions in the north of Iraq are much better than the rest of the country, Saddam must be taking oil-for-food money and using it to buy weapons; Iraqis don’t want sanctions lifted, they want Saddam out; the U.S. should sup port the overthrow of Saddam. In fact, oil-for-food money is administered by the U.N., and disbursed directly from a U.S. bank account to foreign suppliers, so direct misappropriation of funds is impossible. Allegations about misappropriation of goods on the other end have repeatedly been denied by U.N. officials administering the program in Iraq, a fact that has garnered virtually no media coverage.”

Should have believed the U.N., then, shouldn’t we?

Derbyshire Award Nominee

“To devout Muslims, what Europe offers is godless materialism and hedonism, a life devoid of meaning and purpose, save pleasure and self-indulgence. They prefer to do Allah’s bidding in this world to ensure they share his paradise in the next. Undeniably, Islam is rising. And, like all rising faiths, it is intolerant. Disbelieving that all religions are equal – ‘There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet’ – Islam does not believe all faiths should be treated equally. Why should they be? If one has God’s revealed truth, why should one tolerate lies that lead to the damnation of the faithful? In its new constitution, the European Union has declared Christianity a dead relic. What Islam is saying – with its militancy, its soaring birth rate, it steady replacement of dying Europeans with young Muslim immigrants – is: ‘Christianity may be your past, but we are your future.’ My money’s on the true believers.” -Patrick Buchanan’s latest column.

I’ve been waiting for the social right in this country to start sympathizing with Islamic theocracy. Mr. Buchanan also calls Theo van Gogh the “Michael Moore” of Holland. But there is a difference between Mr. Moore’s anti-Western lies and van Gogh’s pro-Western truths and between recognizing the power of Islamic fundamentalism and envying it.

Mr. Sullivan writes every day for www.andrewsullivan.com.