After all, regardless of how clever and cleverly spoken Ferguson and Krauthammer may be, they're almost completely full of shit. It should be the work of a moment to mortar their addled, neo-imperalist arguments into smoking rubble.
But after listening to the debate (and thanks to Seth for the link - <http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/>) it hit me: liberals -- and 'cruise missile liberals' in particular -- are at a serious disadvantage when arguing with conservatives on "defense" issues. The problem is that they agree with their quasi-opponents on the basics: the 'need' for US supremacy , the 'it's a dangerous world therefore we need lots of carriers' trope, the perfection or near perfection of "American Values", Iran as five-minutes-away-from-nuclear-weapons threat to world safety, etc.
Given the premises, which support ideas more honestly stated by conservatives but which liberals try to sweeten by clumsily pressing the word 'humanitarian' into service, it's inevitable that the more direct and logically coherent (if not morally or tactically sound) presentation would sway opinions.
Ferguson and Krauthammer used to their advantage the idea that the "surge" is working and that al Q is "on the run". The Iraq war is being won one "fragile" metric at a time, they said, and we're prevailing in the War on Terror (or Long War, or War Against Extremism or,). Considering the way US media outlets (and maybe Canadian too) have repeated this White House talking point -- demolished on the info-margins by non-bubble journos such as Nir Rosen, Patrick Cockburn and Pepe Escobar -- they were cruising down a well paved road.
Power and Holbrooke never seriously challenged these assertions. And how could they? Questioning the success of the surge requires examining the occupation's daily workings. Once you do that, you're forced to consider the innumerable abuses that go on week after week, abuses which fuel ongoing political and armed resistance within Iraq and no doubt Afghanistan as well.
There was also a lazy, unfocused quality to several of Power and Holbrooke's statements complicated by the goofy moderator's many subject lane changes.
The entire 'debate' occurred within a constraining box of supremacist ideology. It was barely a debate at all but an exchange of competing imperialist fantasies about how best to manage 'American leadership'.
A better debate would've been between the eXile's Gary Brecher -- aka the "War Nerd" -- and the cons. While no liberal (thank Ares), he could've shown how inept and destructive these clowns are. In other words, he could've dealt with them on their own terms and shown that even by their own standards, they're bullshitters.
.d.