One of the perennial mysteries of modern liberalism is its apparent indifference to the virtues of sacrifice for a greater good, in particular when it comes to victory in war.  Many contemporary commentators have pondered under what circumstances liberals generally, and Senator Obama specifically, would risk their lives for a profoundly vital goal, and their list is rather short.

Add to this conundrum Jeffrey Klein, writing in today's Huffington Post, who goes to great length to demonstrate that McCain is a war president, which is only to say, a commander-in-chief determined to complete a war that the vast majority of Democrats supported just a few years ago.  Leave it to a liberal to craft an argument that provides a cynical justification for voters to vote for McCain:

McCain's entire war strategy relies upon Nixonian political logic:  Americans will vote for the candidate who won't countenance defeat not because they're attached to the country we're liberating, but because they can't accept that many American lives may have been lost without purpose.

 In their world of distorted logic, the goal of victory in Iraq, with the indisputable by-product of a less inflammatory, more stable Middle East, is not something Americans can hang their vote for McCain on.  What Klein and his ilk seem incapable of grasping is that the cause in Iraq was just and remains so, and therefore, the lives that have been lost weren't in vain.  Indeed, that's why Obama's military and foreign policy credentials are being questioned by mainstream Americans--he seems to glibly wend his way through flash-points such as Iran, convinced that his approach will be successful where all others for the past 30 years have failed.

Perhaps most despicable is Klein's argument that McCain's endorsement of American exceptionalism is tantamount to the zeal the terrorists bring to their own cause:

McCain calls withdrawal from Iraq a "morally reprehensible abandonment of our responsibilities."  His faith in America's transcendent moral destiny is a mirror image of the terrorists' paranoid nihilism, and hence a boon to their cause.

 This is at once an abhorrent assertion and a dark glimpse into the bleak moral soul of liberalism, a polity that so thoroughly disdains America's unique moral standing in history that it is compelled to liken it to the savages that slaughtered 3,000 innocents on 9/11.

The deeper gloss on this contorted piece is that it conveniently overlooks or implicitly denies the existence of the scourge of radical Islam, a plague that's infecting susceptible nations worldwide.  Indeed, he smugly ends his piece with the left's horror scenario:

If he's elected president, he'll surely find no shortage of wars he is dying to win.

It's a prospective irony lost on liberals that the "aggressive diplomacy" that Obama champions for Iran will never produce the advances he is apparently convinced it will.  In light of the fact that Iran is likely to obtain a nuclear weapon within twenty-four months, Americans are correct in asking exactly what this eminently untested man would do?

In that regard, having a "war president" at the helm is positively virtuous, especially when compared with a half-term senator with a checkered history as a community activist.

It's easy to forget that within the substrata of all wars rages another battle, that of ideas.  Although the adversaries are typically seen as champions of good or evil, the rationale for going to war is usually far more mundane.  Recall that a prime cause of the Franco-Prussian war was a memorandum that Otto von Bismarck altered to appear insulting to the French.  His motivation was to establish the German Empire, a goal he realized, along with picking up the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

Indeed, whether it's trade routes and economic hegemony, as was the case in the Punic Wars, or seething ethnic hatreds, as in the recent case of the Balkans, ideas predicated on the proper role of the state, of the measured application of power, as well as the rights of man, are in constant battle.

Writing in the New York Sun, James K. Glassman, under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, provides a persuasive argument that real power projection can only be successful when case-hardened by a cogent assault in the arena of ideas.  He outlines the framework for the battle, its tactics and tools, and then states its goal:

A world in which the use of violence to achieve political, religious, or social objectives is no longer considered acceptable; efforts to radicalize and recruit new members are no longer successful; and the perpetrators of violent extremism are condemned and isolated.

He uses recent successes in Iraq to illustrate the ways in which raw violence can be marginalized, indeed, stigmatized.  He notes Lawrence Wright's recent piece in The New Yorker which describes how Dr. Fadil's erstwhile radical Islamic beliefs ultimately gave way to a deeper understanding of his faith, which has materially advanced the cause of non-violence among mainstream Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Among other weapons in this war are the "credible Muslim voices" that Glassman argues are crucial to sanitizing the noxious influences of radicalism in the Islamic world.  At the local level, the truth and efficacy of this methodology is evident in numerous examples, from public service announcements that encourage desired behavior and inhibit undesirable behavior to the positive influences of movies that portray morally uplifting values.

If there's anything in this formulation that gives pause it's the element of idealism, one steeped in the notion that people are instinctively drawn to goodness, which, in a world of radical Islamic hatreds seems quixotic indeed.  Yet, as Glassman notes, violence as an answer to our problems inevitably depends upon a decision, a choice, and it's equally idealistic to believe that human nature is deterministic and therefore immune to reason and entreaty.  

But it's also true that this initiative is dependent upon the confidence that our ideas are superior, and therein lies a serious problem:  To wit, although we all agree that freedom is a universal, self-evident right, the consensus begins to fray when notions of American exceptionalism are included, because they have the taint of imperialism and economic hegemony, as propagated by liberals uncomfortable with America's global pre-eminence.

The truth, of course, is that we have no choice but to attempt to win the proverbial hearts and minds of those willing to listen, and despite the fact that some Americans are inconstant allies in the war of ideas, it's a wholly worthy cause and a vital tool to inhibit violence and encourage peace.