Eric Alterman: What do the Weekly Standard's Kristol and Barnes think now?

Now that the Baker-Hamilton Commission is ending this country's long national acid trip, I am struck by the fact that, save possibly Donald Rumsfeld and Christopher Hitchens, no one's intellect, analysis, and honesty have been more profoundly undermined by the results of the Iraq war than the editors of The Weekly Standard. Remember when William Kristol was separating loyal liberals from the traitorous kind? Kristol wrote:

The Gephardt liberals are patriots. They supported the president in the run-up to this war, and strongly support the war now that it has begun. [...] 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 John Ashcroft so much they relish the thought of his Justice Department flubbing the war on terrorism. 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.

Yeah, well, now that Rumsfeld's strategy has been, um,"vindicated," have they changed their tune?

Not much. Look at this review by Fred Barnes of a book on the Copperheads:

Weber's highly readable account of the short life span of the Copperheads is especially valuable because it redresses a historical oversight, and also points intriguingly to a current political struggle. The oversight was to give Copperheads short shrift by minimizing their role in the Civil War and the trouble they caused Lincoln. The analogy with today is between the Copperheads and Democrats who oppose President Bush on Iraq and are critical of the war on terror.

Weber draws no analogy with Democrats today. She sticks to history. But I think the analogy is inescapable -- not that Democrats are unpatriotic or treasonous. But like the Copperheads, antiwar Democrats have grown in numbers as victory in the war -- in Iraq now -- has faded from sight. They've weakened the president's tools in combating terrorists and made that effort more difficult. And Democrats today have offered no real alternative, merely a seemingly irresistible impulse to retreat from Iraq.

Barnes is still where Andy Sullivan was when he wanted to round up those of us he now admits were right and send us to Gitmo. He is also the author of what may be the single stupidest sentence ever written by a Bush acolyte. At least it's my nomination, here.

Barnes explained that Bush's second inaugural address had triumphantly ended the centuries-long ideological conflict between foreign policy idealists (meaning Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan) and realists (George Kennan and Hans Morgenthau)."Boom!" wrote Barnes,"The wall between the two schools is gone, at least in the president's formulation." As he explained,"The policy of idealists will lead to the goal of realists," because Bush had declared that"America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one."

To say more would give me heartburn ...