There's a fight broken out across the water over whether pro-war liberals are still entitled to describe themselves as liberals. Oliver Willis has a view about that, and so do Jeff Jarvis, Michael Totten and Armed Liberal.
No prizes for guessing where my sympathies lie in this debate. It seems to me closely to mirror the discussion of the question as to whether pro-war leftists are still really on the left - on which I've expressed my view several times. I did so most recently in responding to Ken MacLeod; and before that, on the old normblog site, in Blog's dreckfest (September 19), Left divided (December 2) and What's left? (December 4).
There was every reason for liberals to support the liberation of Iraq, as there was every reason for socialist democrats to do so, and I think, as I said in the September 19 piece, that anti-war liberals and socialists who say different need (at the very least) to pronounce clearly the following statement: 'It would be better if Saddam Hussein were still in power in Iraq'. Or: 'It would be better if the torture chambers and all the other paraphernalia of murder and oppression in Iraq were still in place'. Otherwise, it's not clear why they should see support for the war as a basis for denying the relevant labels to others.
