Saving Face

Matt Yglesias hit a nerve:

The truth of the matter is that most pro-war liberals seem willing to privately admit that they were mistaken about the war (I was), but don't want to publicly say so lest their credibility take the hit that necessarily comes with admitting you were wrong about a very important issue.

How could ANY layperson have made a correct decision to support going to war in Iraq, or not, when so much of the information on which the decision was based was (necessarily) classified, and thus not open to debate? That's the basic problem of running a democracy in an information void: bad decisions get made! Bush and company opportunistically took advantage of the dearth of reliable, public information to get their little war.

No liberal's credibility is going to take a hit by admitting error. For example, I reluctantly supported going to war, but I renounced that position almost immediately, as soon as no WMD were discovered.

Persistent refusal to admit error, in the face of continued failure, and with the example of Vietnam in mind, speaks of mulish pride. A liberal who admits mistakes can't lose credibility, only a liberal who can't. The longer the warmaking liberals wait, the more credibility they lose. Need an example? Just look at The New Republic these days!