Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Robert Kagan/Joe Lieberman Edition)

The Washington Post continues to give air to the vastly overrated Robert Kagan, who calls Joe Lieberman "the last honest man":

The Last Honest Man: If Lieberman loses, it will not even be because he supported the war.... Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn't recant. He didn't say he was wrong. He didn't turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn't claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn't try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn't claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn't go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted "public intellectuals."

These have been the chosen tactics of self-preservation ever since events in Iraq started to go badly and the war became unpopular. Prominent intellectuals, both liberal and conservative, have turned on their friends and allies in an effort to avoid opprobrium for a war they publicly supported. Journalists have turned on their fellow journalists in an effort to make them scapegoats for the whole profession. Politicians have twisted themselves into pretzels to explain away their support for the war or, better still, to blame someone else for persuading them to support it...

Guess Kagan didn't get the memo.

Joe Lieberman is no longer the old Joe Lieberman who attacked Jack Murtha, saying: "We undermine the President's credibility at our nation's peril."

Today we have a new Joe Lieberman, who has no problems undermining George W. Bush's credibility: "I supported our war in Iraq but I have always questioned the way it was being executed. This administration took far too many shortcuts. We continue to suffer the consequences, as do the Iraqi people."