Iran Reveals Extent of BDS

From the unlikeliest of places - liberal foreign policy analyst George Packer - we have the bullet-quote of the day.

Packer notes that it's remarkable how difficult it's been for writers of various persuasions to call Iran's reprehensible police-state brutality "shameful":

The reason, of course, has everything to do with the wars of the Bush years, at home and abroad, which have left so many thoughtful people incapable of holding onto the most basic thought. But it’s a mistake to let your attitude toward historic events be shaped and deformed by the desire not to sound like a neo-con, or to sound like a neo-con reborn. Trust the evidence of your eyes.

Note the tricky nuance here: Packer comes very close to blaming President Bush for the inability of radical leftists to denounce the horrors of the Iranian regime. No wait, Packer WANTS to blame Bush for the left's derangement over Iran. But he pulls up short of that total condemnation. He has to pull up short! He ends up putting responsibility for the sickness squarely on the observer, because there's nowhere else it can go! And yes, sure, President Bush was a catalyst, but the utter demonic rage against the foreign policy of the Bush years had been simmering since the Vietnam era of the 1960s. A quick skim over Fred Baumann's "Our Fractious Foreign Policy Debate" demonstrates unimpeachably the building hate-based postmodernism that was unleashed by the unbinding of American foreign policy during the Bush years.

Packer, naturally, waxes on President Obama's "calm eloquence," which indicates that he remains enthralled by the Obameister's wicked spell of hope-and-change appeasement. And that makes the fact that he's been attacked by the likes of Spencer Ackerman even more spectacular. There are few as unhinged by BDS than is Spencer Ackerman. The guy's up there with Andrew Sullivan, and of course his flop-house buddy, Matthew Yglesias.

These folks are as bad as they come, and I should note with special reference to Sullivan, no amount of hyper-voluminous Iran-blogging can rescue these folks from the darkest depths of scurrility. We have seen the enemy at home. It's an menacing, ugly sight, but witnessing leftist Geoge Packer point it out is a rare but valuable thing to behold.