I don’t usually do politics on this blog, but the war in Iraq is so much a part of all our lives that you really can’t avoid it; it’s a part of our culture now, like it or not. I have not been impressed with the shrill exchanges between the Democrats and the Republicans regarding the war, but I was impressed by Gen. Wesley Clark’s recent op-ed piece in the New York Times. Clark disagrees with both President Bush and the Democrats positions on the war:

While the Bush administration and its critics escalated the debate last week over how long our troops should stay in Iraq, I was able to see the issue through the eyes of America’s friends in the Persian Gulf region. The Arab states agree on one thing: Iran is emerging as the big winner of the American invasion, and both President Bush’s new strategy and the Democratic responses to it dangerously miss the point. It’s a devastating critique. And, unfortunately, it is correct.

The complete piece is posted on the Securing America blog, along with questions for Clark, and Clark’s responses to those questions.

There’s a cultural point in all this, too: it feels to me as if Americans of all political persuasions are increasingly isolating themselves from how other countries perceive America. I cannot think that’s a good thing. I believe Gen. Clark offers us a useful new, non-isolationist, direction for American discussions of our place in the world.

I also note in passing that religious liberals have a long history of a bias towards taking an international perspective, which is part of our religious understanding that all human beings are linked beyond the narrow confines of national identity. We used to call it “world brotherhood”; now we call it “the interconnected web.”

Thanks to first cousin once removed Abbie for the link to Securing America.