Wizblog had some thoughts on the need for Dems to buy-in to the war on terror as well. He also offers this bit from Robert Kagan which I’d forgotten about:
The Democrats need to take ownership of American foreign policy again, for their sake as well as the country’s. Long stretches in opposition sometimes drive parties toward defeatism, utopianism, isolationism or permutations of all three. What starts off as legitimate attacks on the inevitable errors of the party in power can veer off into a wholesale rejection of the opposition party’s own foreign policy principles…
….Eight years of Bill Clinton brought the Democrats mostly out of their post-Vietnam trauma and revived liberal interventionism. But the George W. Bush years have driven many back. Buffeted between the administration’s failures and their party’s left-wing critics, the Clintonites either disavowed what they once believed or kept their heads down. Lately they’re starting to show signs of life and could still take the reins again if the right Democrat won in 2008. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing….
…The case for electing a Democrat is not only to save the party’s soul, though that’s a worthy task, but to pull the country together to face the difficult times ahead.
But, again, I’m not buying this argument so much as airing it out.