I think that Josh Marshall is extremely useful. He can't be beat as a barometer for what the position of the Democratic Party leadership is on any given issue (just as Marshall Wittman is for the DLC).

Many of the sane Left are pro-war (like the folks at Harry's Place) or pro-war but harshly critical of the Administration (like the folks at Liberals Against Terrorism). How about the folks at Crooked Timber?

But neither Harry's Place nor Liberals Against Terrorism tend towards explanations and reasoning, instead generally focusing on short pieces (sometimes short pieces wrapped around long quotes) that express their opinion, but seldom going into depth on their reasoning. (There are exceptions.) I am looking for someone to convince me I'm wrong, and that means that they need to reason me through their world view. (LAT, I should note, has been in my blogroll for quite a while; both Harry's Place and LAT are fine, fine blogs in their own right.)

Josh Marshall is useful, as Hugh Hewitt is useful, but neither of them impresses me as "reasoning" in any sense of the word. More like instinctual partisan echo chambers, really. (Though Hugh Hewitt often gets fantastic interviews.)

I would be remiss, by the way, if I did not mention Kevin Drum, who (though extremely partisan) can open minded and is usually very willing to subject his evidence and reasoning to debate. While I don't agree with him, for example, on the whole "peak oil" hypothesis, I admire his intelligent argument and extensive citations and discussion of evidence.

Oh, I forgot to respond on Crooked Timber. Also a decent blog, by obviously intelligent bloggers. But again, not so much into explaining their positions as stating them.

How about Lance Mannion. I think he's one of the blogosphere's better essayists (although I agree with him on almost nothing). He's a yellow dog Democrat; he's pretty double plus good duckspeak. But he does write well. Sort of a left-wing Gerard Vanderleun.

Thanks, I'll check him out.

Jeff,

At best, now that all of the excuses for entering this confrontation have been shown to be lacking, Iraq is a single (and in my opinion misguided) battle in the War On Terror (WOT). No valid debate can occur if this battle is treated as if its absolute victory is necessary in order to win this war. The fact that the current administration is taking this stubborn stand is the very reason that the American people have given those against the war (from the center to the far left) there current elevated status.

The reason that more and more Americans are giving a favorable ear to these dissenting voices (possibly even including your ears) is because having "failure is not an option" as a battle plan is no longer good enough - not after three years and thousands of deaths. What the American people are beginning to realize is that they want leaders who can effectively adapt to whatever reality the enemy creates in this particular battle and in the many future ones which will inevitably occur. Leaders who can innovate toward a victory that, if necessary, is good enough to make progress in the WOT. Leaders who are creative in the way that they use existing American assets and in the way that they develop new ones.

The dilemma for America is that at the very time that we need an adaptable, innovative, and creative president we find that we only have a stubborn and stay the course one. A president who puts loyalty above performance and stubbornness before rationality.

The real scope of this debate goes beyond what needs to occur with respect to the single battle in the WOT that is Iraq. It really is a debate about the kind of leaders that America needs to ultimately win the WOT. The one thing that I know for certain is that with each of their stubborn inactions I become more and more aware that our current leaders are not those leaders.

Lance Mannion is an excellent find.

Jim, your comment is a little off topic, and might be better addressed on a post actually about the war.

That said, I'll note that persistence is a virtue; otherwise nothing difficult is ever accomplished.

Granting your assertion that the President is incompetent (actually, I don't agree, but I don't want to argue it at the moment), he is still undeniably the President and as such is the Commander in Chief. It is his responsibility to fight the war. The fact that he won the election last year indicates that the people at the time it mattered had confidence in his ability to fight the war: it was the primary issue in the campaign, and the "real scope" of that debate was in fact engaged. Whether Bush is doing the right or the wrong thing, that is not a reason to have 535 other people start trying to steer the war strategy; that just leads to disaster.

Jim:

The reason that more and more Americans are giving a favorable ear to these dissenting voices (possibly even including your ears) is because having "failure is not an option" as a battle plan is no longer good enough - not after three years and thousands of deaths. What the American people are beginning to realize is that they want leaders who can effectively adapt to whatever reality the enemy creates in this particular battle and in the many future ones which will inevitably occur.

Well, count me in. I'm just not sure I want someone who can pre-adapt to defeat. Yes, we'd still win even if we lost in Iraq. But instead of a cost of five thousand lives think five million, or fifty million. And what really bothers me is that there are apparently people willing to entertain that option, but insufficiently honest or cognizant to say so.

Leaders who can innovate toward a victory that, if necessary, is good enough to make progress in the WOT. Leaders who are creative in the way that they use existing American assets and in the way that they develop new ones.

At some point we will have to leave Iraq, and we'll have to do so in a way that doesn't appear to be a total victory or a qualified defeat. That's because the real objective isn't to defeat the insurgency, it's to establish a democratic nation able to sustain its own legitimacy with its people. That's a kind of alchemical transmutation of dross into gold. And that's exactly what's happening in Iraq, as far as I can tell. That's certainly what Michael Yon depicts in his dispatches.