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Saturday, December 04, 2004

# Posted 11:51 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

YOU WON'T SEE THIS IN THE NYT: Consider as a whole the four columns that appeared on the WaPo op-ed page this past Friday morning. One of them is the Henry Kissinger column mentioned below. The rest were written by columnists on the WaPo stuff.

Two of the three columns were written by staunch liberals -- EJ Dionne and David Ignatius. Both of them know how to think outside the box in a way that Dowd, Krugman and Herbert simply can't.

Dionne's column is a response to the 3rd Circuit decision that allows law schools to expel military recruiters from campus without risking their access to federal funds. Like Dionne, I fully support the open integration of homosexuals into the United States military.

Yet Dionne argues that law schools should voluntarily allow the recruiters back on campus because
Liberals especially should be worried about the growing divide between the armed forces and many parts of our society. They should acknowledge that if liberals stay out of the military, their chances of influencing the military culture are reduced to close to zero...

The best way to change the military and to create greater fairness in sharing the burdens of defending our country is to embrace the call to service, not reject it. By opening their doors to recruiters, our universities can strengthen our democracy.
I agree.

Ignatius' column consists of a description rather than argument, yet is also demonstrates an impressive ability to transcend the conventional wisdom of the liberal left. The subject of Ignatius' column is the tremendous but unheralded success of our military logistics officers in Iraq, who have kept our frontline soliders in the field in spite of constant attacks on our supply chain.

Finally, there is this column by Charles Krauthammer. Unsurprisingly, it contains the expected measure of Europe-bashing that one might expect from certain neo-conservatives (although not necessarily Robert Kagan). Yet Krauthammer also asks that we "all join hands in praise of the young people braving the cold in the streets of Kiev."

That sort of identification with a popular revolts is not your everday brand of conservatism. Now that David Brooks has replaced William Safire as the voice of the right at the NYT, Krauthammer may not be alone. The question is, when will Bill Keller decide that the liberal dinosaurs on his staff should go the way of their conservative colleague?
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