The narrative in action

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman has an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal today. The closing line is:

However tired, however frustrated, however angry we may feel, we must remember that our forces in Iraq carry America's cause--the cause of freedom--which we abandon at our peril.

That's the basic narrative that Michael Vlahos talks about in his piece in the American Conservative that I wrote about yesterday. In the rest of his OpEd, Lieberman basically accuses Democrats of "undermining General Petraeus before he has been in Iraq for even a month" and argues that Congress shouldn't talk about Iraq until this summer, by which General Petraeus says he'll know whether or not success is possible.

In terms of Lieberman's credibility, it's useful to compare his recent piece to his November 29, 2005 piece, also in the Wall Street Journal. Glenn Greenwald sums it up:

How can Joe Lieberman claim today that we previously lacked sufficient troop strength to hold neighborhoods after they were cleared, when he insisted a year ago that we were holding neighborhoods -- he saw it himself -- and that we were therefore on the verge of success?

The same basic question of credibility can be asked of a majority of columnists and pundits today, from Bill Kristol to Tom Friedman.