The saving grace of ideologues is that they (we ?) are so rigid that we drive other people away. It is particularly unwise to reject someone who is coming around by demanding that he eat all of his words in one sitting. So there are some comments about Andrew Sullivan's thoughts on Abu Ghraib which should not be made in public.

Fortunately so few people read this blog that I don't have to consider it public.

Basically Sullivan is saying he was fundamentally wrong about Bush and therefore may have been wrong about the wisdom of sending Bush's team into Iraq. Roughly he is conceding that Jacques Chirac may have been right all along. Nonetheless, he still insists that Chirac must have been a fool or a knave to disagree with Bush. He writes "It is Osama's dream propaganda coup. It is Chirac's fantasy of vindication. It is Tony Blair's nightmare. " linking Chirac with Osama Bin Laden and contrasting him with Blair. To Sullivan, even if Chirac might have been right, he couldn't possibly have been an ally who was sincerely warning us that he thought we were making a mistake.

Also, like many conservatives, Sullivan argues that the Bush team has made error after error, that we as citizens have to decide what we can do to get a more effective strategy and, finally, that we should avoid partisanship, that is, ordinary citizens should avoid influencing the policy the only way they can, by voting.

I can't remember hearing that argument before this year. I would never have dreamed of it. Sullivan (and others) are saying that we should avoid finger pointing and blame assigning when deciding whether to re-elect an incompetent president.

I would be much harsher with Sullivan if I weren't fairly sure that he is going to vote for Kerry (he is naturalised isn't he?).