One point many liberals make in these emails is that they would be “hard” on terror if it weren’t for either Bush’s “botching” of the Iraq war or the Iraq war in general. This strikes me as another way of ducking the issue. If you agree with the premise that the war on terror is an existential threat, why would the Iraq war make you soft on the war on terror? FDR surely botched many things in the fight against Nazism but why would that make you soft against Nazism? (And I don’t know any historian who doesn’t think he lied repeatedly in order to move America into the war). Besides, the fact that so many liberals don’t see Iraq as part of the war on terrorism merely highlights my earlier point: there’s a huge divide between how conservatives and liberals see the world. Indeed, even if you thought Bush was wrong to go into Iraq, I’m at a total loss to understand why you couldn’t see that the conflict there now is central to the war on terror.