Conservatives vs. conservatives on Iraq

If you think conservatives are mean to liberals who have voiced opposition to war in Iraq, you should see how mean they are to other conservatives.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz notes in his column today that there’s a bit of an “uncivil war” going on among several right-wing journalists who disagree about the wisdom of invasion of Iraq. As Kurtz, who almost always leans right himself, notes today, some conservative journalists are accusing of fellow conservatives such as Bob Novak and Pat Buchanan of “hating America,” a slur generally reserved for liberals.

The piece notes that leading the pro-war conservatives is David Frum, a journalist for National Review who served as a Bush speechwriter in 2001. He apparently ratcheted up the rhetoric this week by saying Novak and Buchanan “began by hating the neoconservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country.”

In return, Novak and Buchanan respond that Frum is just whining because they gave bad reviews to Frum’s Bush-praising book, “The Right Man.” (Novak wrote a review of the book in Buchanan’s magazine under the headline “Axis of Ego,” mocking not only Frum personally, but also him claim to have originally coined the “axis of evil” line.)

It’s almost amusing to see the right tear each other apart for a change. It distracts them, at least temporarily, from attacking the rest of us. It also reminds me just how silly Bush’s claim of being a “uniter, not a divider” truly is. For those keeping score at home, Bush has divided the country, Congress, NATO, the U.N., and now fellow conservatives. That’s quite a feat in a presidency that only started two years ago.