What really strikes me about Will’s break from the right on this issue is that he’s being attacked in the same way many who opposed the Iraq war were — he’s being told he wants to “surrender,” that he wants to “appease” terrorists, that he has “lost his nerve.”

These sort of attacks were very commonplace during the Bush era, but part of me had felt that the national consensus was that the war against Iraq was a terrible disaster and had sort of cleansed us — at least for a while — of the element of the national debate that says those who disagree with US foreign policy are actually on the terrorists’ side, that they’re cowards, etc.

As Katrina vanden Heuvel says quite eloquently during the roundtable discussion, the neoconservatives have “no credibility, [and] they should be held accountable for the Iraq debacle” by simply not being taken seriously anymore. Will offers a very intelligent and measured critique of the Administration’s policies, and attacking him with such vitriol is completely out of line. We need a real national debate, not one where those who dissent are accused of appeasement and cowardice.