The Good Fight: Why Liberals---And Only Liberals---Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again [Hardcover]

I have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1988. Peter Beinart would probably consider me a "conservative." It may therefore surprise anyone reading this review that I have given his book five stars. It may also surprise you that I voted for Walter Mondale in 1984, the first time I ever voted in a presidential election.

I am a product of working class liberals from Cleveland, Ohio. I viewed the arms race as dangerous and needlessly expensive. So Mondale got my vote. Then I spent a year in Europe. Being on one of the front lines of the Cold War transformed my thinking. Totalitarianism, and the threat it posed, was real. The Cold War needed to be fought, and it needed to be won. Reagan's policies gave us a chance to win it. I became a hawk.

At the same time, I learned a little about WWII and the ensuing Cold War. I came to realize that Republicans were not the original hawks. They were largely isolationists. To my surprise, Democrats were the original hawks. From WWII into Vietnam, the Cold War was fought by Democrats. What happened to the Democrats between Vietnam and 1984, and then into the present? Where did Reagan come from?

If you have any curiosity about these questions and their answers, Mr. Beinart's book is a must read and earns five stars on his treatment of these historical issues alone. Mr. Beinart is a "liberal" partisan, so kudos to him for criticizing "liberals" where criticism is due and recognizing "conservatives" where recognition is due.

But Mr. Beinart did not write a book just to tell the history of the Cold War. He writes to persuade us that the war on terror is every bit as real as the Cold war and, perhaps more importantly, every bit as important to fight. In the process, he offers a fair assessment of why the war in Iraq might not advance, and may actually hinder the war on terror, just as the war in Vietnam did not advance, and probably hindered the Cold War. If Vietnam caused a generation of "liberals" to abandon the Cold War, Mr. Beinart is concerned that Iraq may cause "liberals" to abandon the war on terror. He has good reason to be concerned. He reports that "only 59 percent of Democrats - as opposed to 94 percent of Republicans - still approve of America's decision to invade Afghanistan."

As a "conservative," it is refreshing to hear a "liberal" voice speak honestly and directly about the dangers facing America today and about the need to confront those dangers using all available means, including military means. To the extent anyone, "liberal" or "conservative," needs reminding that the war on terror is real and worth the fight, again Mr. Beinart's book warrants five stars. To the extent anyone, "liberal" or "conservative," wants to critically assess what the war in Iraq means for the war on terror, his book will give any staunch (if open minded) "conservative" something to think about. After all, even George Will concedes that Mr. Beinart may have written "one of those rare books that turns a political tide."

Mr. Beinart would like to turn the tide for "liberals" and his partisanship on this issue is not subliminal: the subtitle to his book declares that only liberals can win the war on terror and make America great again. The subtitle is unfortunate if it serves to dissuade "conservatives" from reading the book because the very history Mr. Beinart elucidates without bias tells us that someone in either the Truman or Reagan mold can lead America to win the war on terror. Only diehard partisans care whether that person is a "liberal" or "conservative." The rest of us just hope that someone emerges as a leader because Mr. Beinart convincingly persuades that the "good fight" is worth fighting, which makes the "Good Fight" worth reading no matter your political stripe.

"Good Fight" is quite possibly the best work of liberal intellectual history since Schlesinger's The Vital Center. It really is that damn good. Beinart knows his stuff. If all you're interested in reading is another empty-minded polemic on the Iraq War, don't buy this book. "The Good Fight" isn't about the War. It's about a historical narrative spanning 60 years. In the age of mind-numbing hyperpartisanship, books like these are becoming increasingly hard to find.

In 2004, Peter Beinart wrote an article for the "The New Republic" calling on Democrats to reject the pacifists in their party - such as Michael Moore - and to toughen up in the fight against Islamist totalitarianism. Beinart was trying to rally the Democratic Party around the so-called "liberal hawks."

In the past two years much has changed. Although he is still trying to enlist Democrats in the good fight, he admits that he was wrong about Iraq in several ways. One, of course, was the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, but the other, more importantly, was the failure to realize the limits of American power and legitimacy. Borrowing from Rheinhold Niebuhr, he now believes we would do well with a little humility.

That said, Beinart still believes that liberals are uniquely equipped to fight global jihad. He supports his argument by drawing on the Cold War era and the Truman administration. Centrist liberals from the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rejected communists and communist sympathizers at home as well as abroad. They set the Democratic Party on a centrist path and became mentors and supporters of the Truman administration. The policies of deterrence and containment advocated by Dean Acheson, George Marshall, George Kennan, and Paul Nitze served this country well up until the presidency of JFK.

In his potted history of this period, Beinart is trying to draw parallels between the fight against communist totalitarianism and today's Islamist jihad. There are, however, important differences. Osama Bin Laden is no Josef Stalin. Providing support for loosely connected cells of terrorists is much different than commanding the government of the Soviet Union and its nuclear equipped army. Moreover, demonizing communism in the 50's and 60's was one thing, but demonizing Islamist jihad, and by extension Islam, one runs the risk of inflaming a clash of civilizations that is already in danger of becoming full-blown. Even the Bush administration is tactful enough to call it simply a war on terror.

Fact of the matter is, Beinart doesn't need to draw on the Cold War era and the Truman administration. (Bush has already done that.) He should be paying more attention to Francis Fukuyama's latest book "America at the Crossroads." Fukuyama like Beinart agrees that the war on terror must be fought more agressively and more intelligently. And, if it is to be successful, it must be done multilaterally and through international institutions.

In the current chastened environment, Beinart is correct in noting that humility is in order. He tells us that when America recognizes that it too is capable of evil it will then be in a better position to determine the fates of others. This is why he believes Democrats will be better able to fight the good as opposed Republicans who believe in American infallibility and who confuse American interests with universal values. It's time to start leading more by example and consensus than by force, more by negotiation and less by confrontation. This will be the tone of the next administration whether it is Democratic or Republican.