Wow. I see Judith Klinghoffer is up to her old tricks.

I remember it like it was only yesterday. Klinghoffer and I had both been talked into appearing in a symposium on, ugh, Crazy Davey's FrontPage Mag website. It was in April of 2003.

It's an awfully interesting exchange. Klinghoffer is in full gloat about the IraqWar Part II (it seemed at the time) victory. Boy, so much of what I said looks sagacious now. And much of what she said looks damned foolish.

Go read it for yourself. Here's my favorite passage from my part:

Spencer: Dr. Klinghoffer, since when am I "the left?" And when did I mention anything about communist regimes? You don't know a damn thing about me and I can't believe you'd make such bizarre generalizations about me based on so little evidence. I do assume you don't make historical arguments that have this little evidence behind them. Please address my arguments and cease making these sweeping and irresponsible generalizations about my supposed "leftist" tendencies.

Oh yeah. I forgot. It's this sort of junk that passes for reasoned argument in right-wing circles these days. I thought we were in the symposium portion of this website, not the rather irresponsible home page here that includes ad hominem attacks on liberals and leftists in every other story.

What Dr. Klinghoffer is trying to pass off as an argument is perfect evidence of the astonishing disconnect between the rhetoric that many conservatives use and the actual political reality in the United States that probably helps to explain the strange questions that started this forum. She can't believe that someone who was against this war isn't a "leftist" or even a "communist" or a "Saddam-lover" of some kind. That's where she and W go wrong. They can't seem to understand that there are perfectly reasonable people who are against this war on principle and have good arguments against it. In their minds this is impossible so we have to be appeasers and apologists of course. It certainly makes the world a simpler place if you can view your opponents that way, doesn't it? By the way, get off your high horse about how we've helped the women in Afghanistan. It appears that outside of Kabul, women are being treated just as they were before our invasion -- of course everything in Afghanistan outside of Kabul is essentially back to how it was before the invasion, except much more chaotic. Even in Kabul we have to guard President Karzai 24 hours per day to protect him from assassination.

I supported the invasion of Afghanistan but the short-attention-span folks that make up this administration long ago forgot about it as much of a priority. They left aid to Afghanistan out of the last budget after all. We really should be working a great deal more to secure Afghanistan than we are.

The same folks in Iraq who cheered us were the same people who also, I'm afraid to say, were demonstrating against us a couple of days later and, in some places, already demanding an end to our occupation. So much for that point of yours too.

You clearly should read more and get your news somewhere other than the Faux News Channel. That way you'd find out a lot of your statements aren't holding much water and that the world is an awfully messy place that isn't so easily reducible into the battle between "good" and "evil" and the "left" and the "right" as you try to make it. In short, the world isn't the simple morality cartoon that W and the boys are selling to the public on a daily basis even though it's apparent you work really hard to see it that way.

Klinghoffer is a living cartoon, folks. She and Crazy Davey deserve each other.

Really, it's only folks like Glenn Reynolds who take her seriously.

Move along. Move along.