Warning, this is not a thoughtful post. This is a cranky post.

In "Time for a Rethink?" praktike offers a review of positive comments and views from the liberal or "left" part of the American political universe on the encouraging signs of political change in the Middle East. Though he points out some of the continued weaknesses of the Bush Administration's policies, he calls on opponents of the neocon approach to Iraq to get behind those Bush policies we can support. Time to be constructive.

This is not a new theme for prak, and it's an approach I've consistently endorsed. I've advocated elsewhere that opponents of Bush's foreign policy nonetheless give vocal support to specific policies that are consistent with what we ourselves would be promoting if the Bush team weren't still running the show.

With those principles in mind, I have been supportive of the shifts being made gradually over the past six months by the military field commanders in both strategy and tactics. I have been supportive of the shift in approach which appears to have been adopted by the US embassy since the handover to the interim government at the end of June. My most recent endorsements of Bush policies have included supporting the Iraqi elections and the Administration's broad strategy toward Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. I have repeatedly cautioned against reproducing a domestic Vietnam-style polarization. To my way of thinking, an America polarized by foreign policy debates is a dangerous America for the rest of the world. But I have also vigorously opposed the disinformation campaigns that the Bush Administration waged as part of the presidential campaign or the gamesplaying with military budgets and force planning. So I want it understood that these comments are not an attack on prak's overall intentions which I share.

Two things have me seriously out of sorts. First -- and more on a personal level than anything I suppose -- I am quite resentful of the notion that somehow, as a vocal critic of the Bush policies regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I have something to explain or apologize for. I don't think I'm misreading the subtext, even coming from those who aren't engaging in the recent rounds of "traitors on the left" triumphantalist hyperbole. The suggestion seems to be that if as critics we "can't admit we were wrong," we're being partisan or we're somehow not for democracy and freedom. That it's our lot to accept the "olive branch" offered by the David Adesniks of a bipartisan policy based on "democracy promotion." Gracious in defeat, don't you know.

Sorry, if there is an olive branch to be offered by the victorious, it should in point of fact be extending the other direction, from those of us who have long advocated policies that the Bush Admnistration is only now begining to adopt. I am eager to be magnanimous in victory, but it appears quite unlikely that my branch will even be acknowledged by the Administration's supporters, let alone accepted by a foreign policy team that's never made a mistake.

This brings me to my closely related second source of crankiness. The so-called "left" is being diverted by the unnecessary self-justifying squawks that have been coming out of the liberal hawks. Those who opposed the first Bush Administration shouldn't be wasting time squabbling on who was more right or more wrong about the war. They should be joining together now be saying to the new Bush team, "Glad you guys have finally come to your senses. Nice to have you back on board." We should be looking forward, trying to make sense of this post-Iraq world that's starting to emerge, to see what we think about the current Administration's priorities and policies as they are starting to take shape.

As I see it, the Bush Doctrine and the Iraq adventure have represented a severe dis-continuity in American foreign policy, and we're now returning to something approaching our normal balance. This is an idea that requires a much longer and more developed essay that's still rummaging around in my brain. For purposes of this discussion, let's simply focus on the issues of political change (not other elements of global politics like NATO or environment, trade etc).

Ever since the decline of concerns about "communist takeovers" in the third world, the US has availed itself of opportunities to push for improved political and economic liberalization. More often than not, this has been done by leveraging up American influence and resources through tag-teaming with others -- as we did throughout the 90s in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia, as as we are continuing to do so with, just to pick a random example, the French and the French with us in Lebanon.

Contrast that approach, as competitive and sharp-elbowed as it sometimes has been, with for example the gratuitously high-handed fashion in which the Greater Middle East Initiative (under its various labels and so-called partnership incarnations) was handled. The political ground across the Middle East had already begun to shift well before the elections in Iraq this January, but not so as you'd know it at Sea Island. It was a US show -- with others supposed to sign where they were told to provide some of the funding and heavy lifting. Or take the fiasco as recently as December about the release of the UNDP-sponsored Arab Human Development Report. So now we're starting to get our equilibrium; policy and diplomacy are starting to come back together, and not a moment too soon.

I am not, however, suggesting that these are the beginnings of a return to the status quo ante. That's quite impossible. The implementation of the Bush Doctrine in Iraq has changed the nature of global politics -- both for good and ill -- in unpredictable ways that are only starting to be played out. I am suggesting instead that we're returning to American policies and policy-making style that have a great deal of continuity with what preceded Iraq -- more so than with the "revolution in foreign affairs" that Iraq represented.

I am delighted and relieved that the current Bush Administration appears now to be run increasingly by adults. I am pleased as punch they are pursuing a set of policies that in no meaningful fashion could be distinguished from those that John Kerry (or Bill Clinton) would be pursuing today with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Israel or Egypt.

That these opportunities are emerging in part because the Iraq invasion blew up the Middle East, is simply a fact, not a cause for celebrating the Iraq invasion. It simply sticks in my craw to call the cynical liars in the Bush Administration idealistic promoters of democracy -- which seems to leave the rest of us, by implication, anti-idealists or anti-democrats. Nor do I believe that I should somehow be obliged to tug my forelock because I would have preferred for someone else to implement US foreign policy after the abysmal track record of the first Bush Administration.

What the White House is particularly adept at doing is constantly shifting the goal posts while keeping its cheerleaders moving in parallel along the sidelines, all the while shouting the same cheers. The objectives identified by John Kerry a year ago as a positive political outcome for Iraq sound remarkably like the recent steps the Administration's supporters are hailing as a conclusive victory. Those are the same supporters who were castigating Kerry and the Administration's opponents from both parties as defeatists.

In the long run, we'll most likely find that Iraq turns out to be the exception -- that the Bush Doctrine is going to be abandoned tacitly over time. The second inaugural has already presaged a shift toward more expansive ends but less expansive means. And I doubt the vocal supporters of preemption -- other than those who greeted the West Point speech as as a handy rationale for their favorite parts of large military budgets -- will even note its passing from the scene.

What I'm really cranky about is having the neocons claim they own the labelling process. I reject David Adesnik's frame. I don't think "democracy promotion" a la Elliot Abrams (or David Adesnik or Robert Kagan) is more "idealistic" -- in the way that term is used in the vernacular -- than my own views on why American foreign policy should emphasize the long-term development of political and economic institutions. I would, however, agree that -- in their sense of the term -- I'm probably becoming less and less "idealistic" by the day.

I continue to find the "democracy promotion" notion impossible to use as a policy guideline. It certainly doesn't give very helpful directions on nuclear proliferation or missile defense -- or if it does, then I assure you I'm agin' it. What about environmental issues or the law of the sea? Not much guidance to Alan Greenspan or John Snow in navigating a soft landing for the dollar and the global economy. Trade, perhaps, could benefit from a bit of "democracy promotion" thrown in, as was the case for most of the Cold War. But as Fareed Zakaria has pointed out in his analysis of different forms of and conditions for freedom -- "democracy" may not be the most useful guide for selecting our policy priorities.

For those with a nationalistic bent -- whether of the realist or idealist variety -- "democracy promotion" all too easily segues into "regime change." Now that Afghanistan has held "successful elections," is America's interest limited to fighting terrorists and drugs? I think not -- but what does "democracy promotion" have to say about the matter?

And what does "democracy promotion" really mean a policy objective in the regions where we hope democracy does its magic. This is a topic that praktike explores repeatedly at Liberals Against Terrorism -- what does democracy mean relative to other aspirations in illiberal societies; what does it mean in practice where economic and social structures are so different from our own; and how do they get there from here?

As we've seen across Eastern Europe, in the proper circumstances, providing support for democracy proponents can indeed produce profoundly positive transformative effects. But this is just a first breakthrough step on a road that will take decades to reach a sustainable healthy political culture. I am personally a great believer in people power, whether in the Philippines or Ukraine -- both in its absolute sense but more important in its myth-making quality. Yet in other circumstances, focus on "democracy" can undermine the prospects for positive political transformation. The reformers in many Middle East countries continue to avoid the taint of association with US policy except in quite narrow ways. And as we've seen over decades of unproductive policies, "democracy promotion" is all too readily captured by US domestic political groups of exiles or immigrants, whose views and interests may not coincide with the population in their homeland.

All in all, I find the notion of "democracy promotion" at best mildly disingenuous, at worst the refuge of political con men to insulate their actions in the floss of virtuous cotton candy.

My refusal to accept the neocon definition of "idealism" does not mean, however, that I'm of the "narrow national interest" school or of the "pessimist" school. Or that I don't rejoice at the sight of the people of Iraq or Lebanon taking their futures into their own hands. Or that I don't think we should be combining with others to pressure Mubarak.

Nor does refusing to fit in the neocon frame mean that I don't think a top priority for American policy -- whether trade or aid -- should be to support the emergence of new leaders and new ideas, encourage new economic opportunities to be pursued, and promote new spaces for voices to be heard. (For some good examples of what others are doing to promote these goals, see our sidebars for Global Giving, Spirit of America's project to support Iraqi bloggers, and the recently formed international Committee to Protect of Bloggers.)

I agree with prak that opponents of the Bush Administration's previous policies should be constructive -- and that goes for Brent Scowcroft as well as Jimmy Carter. We should focus on the outcomes that are important. We should applaud when the current Bush Administration endorses goals we share and chooses sensible policies to pursue those goals - even though we may have to grit our teeth while doing it.

Equally important, It's time to start looking at the post-Iraq world as it's taking shape. That, my friends, is what this current Bush Administration is doing. We should stop fighting internal battles over Iraq and the Bush Doctrine -- or expend energy debating how we'd tinker with it at the margins to woo a few more voters in 2008. For those who are Democrats, take a hint from both Clintons. They long ago figured out that intramural fighting over the last war is worse than futile.

A certain Persian reminds us in his humorously biting manner that it's often hard to give up well-deserved rancor -- to acknowledge that an opponent may in fact be "doing the right thing" for once. Clinging to our resentments may be emotionally gratifying but self-defeating. He posits this damnably difficult question: Just what exactly might be a sensible "expiration date" on a grudge?

So I'm trying to take his question to heart -- even though I'm irritated almost weekly by another shift of the goal posts while I stay anchored in the same seat in the bleachers where I've always been. I'm really working to improve my generosity of spirit.

But in the meantime, please spare me the lecture on "idealism" because, frankly, I don't think I'm the one who needs it.