The denial of history has always been a threat to humans, in large part because it consigns them to repeating it.  The latest disease in this genus of cultural pathologies is less a matter of denial than ignorance.  A prime example is the left's response to the senate's approval of the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) law, which governs the communication intercepts known as warrantless wiretaps.

Most Americans correctly understand that when faced with asymmetrical warfare in the form of Islamic extremists, a shadowy, omnipresent enemy sans uniforms, special measures must be taken to safeguard the nation.  Stipulating that there are checks and balances in the law, we can be reasonably assured that the measures will enhance our protection while not compromising the rights of innocents.  Yet the left has become apoplectic over this, confident as they are that civil rights are being routinely abridged.  Writing in Salon, Glenn Greenwald characterizes the Democrats who supported the bill as cowards and turncoats.

For those who have waded through these tiresome diatribes, one theme is always apparent:  Without so much as a scintilla of evidence they make sweeping and politically self-serving accusations and smugly conclude that the president is exceeding his authority, and that our government is compromising our rights.  He then excavates the Church hearings back in the early 70s which the left predictably trots out to showcase an example of government abuse.

For Greenwald and his liberal soul-mates evidence of wrongdoing, no matter how slight or incidental define the norm which progressively recalibrates their regulatory reflex such that it's on permanent hair-trigger.  Since the scent of conspiracy is congenital, they smell it everywhere which blunts their judgment and therefore their credibility.

It's a fascinating study in paradoxes when these people become exercised over non-issues such as warrantless wiretaps and celebrate habeas corpus rights for alien combatants on foreign soil, but sleep-walk their way through the fact that then nation hasn't been attacked in seven years.  Credit, you see, is filtered through their refined political bias which is on autopilot, relieving them of the burden of making informed decisions concerning public policy.

Excoriating President Bush is a facile exercise, a parlor game to entertain like-minded liberals.  That it's an intellectually hermetic process is conveniently ignored, because the goal trumps the truth.  There's a reason a number of moderate Democrats voted for this bill and that's because they understand this threat is real and that modest concessions that include measures to obviate encroachment into the lives of innocent citizens is reasonable and, indeed, necessary.

Would that the Greenwalds of the world had the common sense to grasp this, but that's yet another virtue that's rapidly moving from endangered to extinction.

Although living in an information vacuum would be a novelty, for a member of the House of Representatives it's hardly a badge of honor.  Yet, when it comes to U.S. foreign policy, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), writing in the Huffington Post, is a textbook example of someone who appears hopelessly naive, ignorant, or both.  Like so many of his colleagues on the left, and their minions in the media, they seem to have forgotten that for the past two plus decades, the U.S. and its allies have made numerous attempts to leverage Iranian cooperation, using every tool at their disposal.

Indeed, Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State, is a seasoned diplomat and a tough negotiator, yet for years his efforts have yielded no measurable progress.  Now Wexler is apoplectic about House Concurrent Resolution 362, which he fears might put the U.S. on a track to war with Iran because it "expresses the sense of Congress regarding the threat Iran's nuclear pursuit poses to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States."  Talk about going out on a limb.

He prefers his plan, which is to "...urge the Bush administration to pursue a policy to place additional economic, political and diplomatic pressure on Iran as part of an international endeavor to prevent Tehran from moving forward on its nuclear program."  He quotes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the adroit and inveterate dove, who argues, "When you have leverage, talk.  When you don't have leverage, get some -- by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore.  That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran."

Policy differences aside, how can otherwise intelligent people argue that the U.S. hasn't aggressively worked to create incentives for Iran, dating, in fact, to the Clinton years.  The problem, as anyone with a modicum of knowledge about this conundrum understands, is that Iran has never demonstrated a susceptibility to incentives, regardless of whether they're "too tempting or frightening to ignore."  Indeed, the opacity of their thinking, immunity to commonly understood incentives and disincentives, and indifference to traditional forms of dialog, renders the normal mechanisms of diplomacy and sanctions effectively useless.

It's Wexler's kind of anemic strategic thinking that, if followed, will lead to a protracted and unproductive process which will allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.  We've seen what dilatory measures produced in the twelve years of Hussein's flouting of the 17 U.N. Resolutions and Wexler and his liberal brethren appear poised to reprise that dark chapter in our history. 

It may astonish you, but many liberals are convinced that the world is less safe without Saddam Hussein lording over Iraq.  You see, the appeasement gene is hard-wired in liberals and so the thought that a free Iraq might be a stabilizing influence in the region, that it might actually make Iran easier to deal with, is undermined by their demonstrable love of laissez-faire policies.  In their view, it's best to just let dictators be dictators, which is why so many in the State Department are enamored of Castro.

We can only hope that the hard left continues its march into political oblivion, because it's clear that most Americans understand Iran is a pernicious threat, and that given Europe's uniquely unhelpful behavior vis a vis sanctions, the only language Ahmadinejad understands is the kind backed my the threat of military action.