Why the "liberal hawks" annoy me.

As someone who is a bit of a political news/blog junkie, I have been following the recent flare up in the blogosphere between the "pro-war" left and the "anti-war" left. At first I didn't think much of it.  But then I came across this Kevin drum post.  Right from the beginning, this article rubs me the wrong way:

If anti-war liberals were right about the war from the start, how come they don't get more respect? Here's the nickel version of the answer from liberal hawks: It's because they don't deserve it. Sure, the war has gone badly, but not for the reasons the doves warned of.

Ignoring the obvious absurdity of being told that the "anti-war" crowd doesn't deserve credit for being right, for whatever reasons, by the people who were wrong about the war from the get-go I wanted to address something else that bothers me about the pro-war turned anti-war liberals.

Oftentimes I hear people, especially politicians, say things like "If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have supported this thing."  But no one seems to ask a relevant follow-up:  Why?  What is it that changed your mind/position?  How has your mindset changed?

The position that hawkish liberals are taking isn't that the Iraq war was a bad idea, but rather that the problem was the leadership, handling and execution of the war.  For example, Drum says:

After all, Iraq didn't fail because it was preemptive (though that didn't help); it failed either because George Bush is incompetent or because militarized nation building in the 21st century is doomed to failure no matter who does it

You see, as someone who was against this war from the beginning, I hear these types of late game repudiations and I think:  Well, it's easy now to say the war was a bad idea.  Everything has gone to crap. The country is in a civil/sectarian war, the body count is quite high (both ours and theirs), and terror attacks seem to have become an everyday occurrence.   If anyone knew that the Iraq war was going to turn out like this in advance, of course they would have opposed the war.  Being opposed to the war now is a no-brainer.  (Unless you are Joe Lieberman or a member of the cult of Bush)

But what if things had gone better?  What if the handling of the war hadn't been so inept?  What if the plans were a little better?  What if we were still occupying Iraq, but it was more peaceful and the factions were working together politically?  If this were the case, I would imagine that many of the pro-war faction that are now repudiating the war would be penning articles and giving speeches about how right they were, wouldn't they??

Now I was opposed to the Iraq war for many reasons.  Some of them moral, other practical, and other tactical.   The primary reason, though, was that I don't believe in wars of aggression.  You see even if things would have gone swimmingly, that wouldn't have erased the fact that the US attacked and invaded a country that hadn't done anything to us and didn't pose any real threat to us.  To many, the ends, even if they were positive ends, wouldn't have justified the means.  The act of invading a sovereign nation that didn't pose a legitimate threat to us compromises the ideals of this nation and puts a real strain on the moral standing/authority that our great nation has established throughout it's history.  

It is this primary belief in the "wrongness" of the Iraq war that helps explain why I am offended by comments like "Sure, the war has gone badly, but not for the reasons the doves warned of".  This type of condescending attitude reinforces the notion that the war was just. Many of the "doves" weren't merely warning that the war would go badly, but they were arguing that the war is a bad idea to begin with, no matter what the outcome in Iraq.  

As it turns out, many of the "doves" were right.  There was no reason to invade Iraq.  They did not pose a threat to the US.  There were no WMDs in Iraq.  Iraq did not have a connection to 9/11, despite what the administration was telling us.  Iraq and the world is not necessarily better off with Saddam out of power.  And watching the ex-hawks attack those of us who knew better, from the beginning, as not "opposing for the right reasons" proves that these people haven't really learned anything from his fiasco.  They aren't serious people.  They never re-evaluated their core beliefs.  What they are doing is engaging in shameless Monday morning quarterbacking.  In their eyes, they weren't wrong to support invading Iraq, they were wrong for supporting an invasion by the Bush administration.  

Now these same people, whose judgment failed so spectacularly and continues to be failing with regards to why invading Iraq was wrong to begin with, have the audacity to tell "doves" that we don't deserve respect and that our position hasn't been vindicated?   I guess some people will say whatever it takes makes them feel better about their own mistakes.