A TNR editor writing an op-ed in the Washington Post isn't outside the limits, just like we see the occasional Weekly Standard or National Review piece linked or posted here.
How would you define him being "strong left wing" - by what standards?
Peter Beinart
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peter Beinart (born 1971) is a journalist and editor-at-large for The New Republic, having served as editor of TNR from November 1999 until March 2006. He is a 1993 graduate of Yale University. Beinart won a Marshall Scholarship (declined) and a Rhodes Scholarship for graduate study at Oxford University and received a master's in international relations in 1995.
He has been a vocal supporter of the war in Iraq (a position he renounces in his book, The Good Fight), often chastising liberals and Democrats for failing, in his eyes, to adequately recognize the threat from Islamic fundamentalism and develop an alternative response to conservative and Republican policies. At the same time, however, Beinart has been critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war and its aftermath.
For the December 13, 2004 edition of The New Republic, Beinart wrote an article entitled "A Fighting Faith: An Argument for a New Liberalism," in which he compared the situtation facing liberals and Democrats to that faced by their counterparts in the early years of the Cold War. He argued that liberals should advocate a tough-minded foreign policy like that embraced by Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy, including increased federal spending on military personnel and foreign aid. Beinart also criticized Michael Moore and MoveOn, comparing them to Henry Wallace in his Progressive Party days.
Beinart's first book, entitled The Good Fight: Why Liberals---and Only Liberals---Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again, is currently on bookshelves.[1] He wrote the book, expanding on "A Fighting Faith," while serving as a guest fellow at The Brookings Institution. In the book, Beinart admits that, if faced with the same decision to go to war in Iraq and knowing what he knows now, he would have chosen not to go to war. He argues, however, that liberals should be careful not to adopt non-interventionism in the wake of the war, but instead should rely more heavily on international institutions. |
