If this proves true ...
The military campaign to destroy air defenses and establish a no-fly zone over Libya has nearly accomplished its initial objectives, and the United States is moving swiftly to hand command to allies in Europe
... will Obama's critics concede that his Libya engagement was never a "war"?
... will they concede that, once again, they lost their heads in what's come to be known as a kind of endearing panic?
... will they concede that for the equivalent cost of running the federal government for about two seconds, perhaps thousands of innocent Libyan lives were spared?
... will they concede that for the first time in his monstrous rule, Qaddafi is seriously teetering?
... will they concede that had Qaddafi triumphed in the face of international indifference, a troubling and powerful message would have been sent below by the latter? -- that, as a NY Times editorial put it affirmatively this morning, "If he is allowed to crush the opposition, it would chill pro-democracy movements across the Arab world"?
... will they concede that Obama has reasserted the smart supremacy of multilateralism and international accord and true coalitions of the willing?
... will they concede that the United States, which under Obama's judicious restraint nevertheless yielded critical assistance, is now looked on more favorably by Arabs throughout Middle East streets?
We'll see, but I doubt it. Virtually every member of the professionally hysterical left or right finds a position once taken a position forever defended, no matter the subsequent evidence. Opinions, among this mob, rapidly morph from the malleable stuff of human fallibility to concrete towers of absolute certainty; and for some reason that has always escaped me, their personal honor and self-esteem get themselves set in the concrete. They never learned the lesson of that "psychologist of high gifts," Mr. Mencken, who once observed that the "gentleman" of a national debate "carefully guards his amour propre by assuming that his opponent is as decent a man as he is, and just as honest -- and perhaps, after all, right."
Rare is the online voice worthy of Mencken's admonition, although rare, of course, doesn't mean absent. There are some voices out there capable of righting their opinionated course with good cheer and open apologies -- one thinks, for example, of Andrew Sullivan, who someday, I suspect, will cast his burdensome alignment with modern conservatism entirely off his shoulders in a primal scream of overwhelmed despair -- and my dark optimism persists in hoping for their online proliferation. Oddly enough (you may think, since I'm a man of the left), I see more of these reasonable voices arising from the spirit of old-school conservatism than contemporary progressivism, since the latter has emerged, so to speak, as hopelessly mired in a kind of schoolmarmish quixotism whose really annoying pedantry never allows, "We were wrong."
Should the above not prove true and should the critics be correct, I'll concede same -- and tomorrow, even in my world, the sun will nonetheless rise.