Tim Carney has an article going after David Frum, William Kristol, Max Boot, and others. Carney concludes that the neoconservatives “tell us to abandon the culture wars at home and instead to find more overseas battles.” His evidence: Frum is “devoutly pro-choice” (which is not, I think, quite the phrase that Frum himself would use), and Boot says conservatives should not fight same-sex marriage. Never mind that few writers have argued as much against same-sex marriage as Frum has, or that Kristol has been a leading voice against embryo-killing research. Kristol supports the FMA, too.

On Carney’s account, Frum denounced conservative opponents of the Iraq war as “unpatriotic” in the spring of 2003. I don’t think that’s a fair reading of the article, but draw your own conclusions. Anyway, Carney defends his boss, Robert Novak, from Frum’s charges–but the defense is misleading.

Carney writes, “Frum accused Novak of ‘terror denial’ for saying al-Qaeda is more dangerous than Hezbollah. Novak was guilty of ‘espousing defeatism’ for writing, ‘The CIA, in its present state, is viewed by its Capitol Hill overseers as incapable of targeting bin Laden.’”

Carney continues: “First, how is saying one Islamic terrorist organization is a bigger threat than another ‘denying’ anything? On the second charge, Novak is called unpatriotic for quoting sources who judge that the CIA is in bad shape and will have trouble catching bin Laden (both judgments are evidently true and now universally embraced in the Republican Party).”

Now read Frum’s actual article, or just the passages about Novak. On Hezbollah, what Frum actually suggested was that Novak should not be taking its word that it has done nothing against Americans when it has in fact killed Americans. Carney also omits the context of the CIA quote, which makes it clear that Frum was hardly criticizing Novak for trashing the agency. Frum wrote that Novak had “predict[ed] that any campaign in Afghanistan would be a futile slaughter: ‘The CIA, in its present state, is viewed by its Capitol Hill overseers as incapable of targeting bin Laden. That leads to an irresistible impulse to satisfy Americans by pulverizing Afghanistan’” (emphasis added).

Carney’s version of Frum, like his version of Novak, is distorted.