Christian Hawks No Longer Soaring

The reaction of the blogosphere's "Christian hawks" to the Valerie Plame affair reveals a new uncertainty and even disillusionment among those who looked to George W. Bush to "restore honor, dignity and integrity to the White House.

Responses to the revelations of the past few days fall into four categories:

Ignore the whole thing:

Catholic blogger Chris Burgwald writes a lot at Veritas about the alleged negative skewing of media coverage of Iraq, but as of Wednesday morning, there was not a word discussing the Plame scandal.

Protestant Mark Byron attacks Paul Krugman's blistering tone about Bush corruption in today's New York Times, but avoids mentioning the most recent accusations made against the administration.

Wait and see:

Joshua Claybourn links to Jeff Cooper and urges readers to learn more about the case without offering his own view yet.

Jeffrey Collins specifically endorses the "wait-and-see" approach while he counsels the White House to avoid the temptation to stonewall.

The guys in Fly Over Country think it's a serious enough matter to bring down Bush, but are reserving judgment and counseling patience until more facts are in.

Agonize about it.

Donald Sensing is obviously torn. He had seen Joseph Wilson at a foreign relations seminar and initially wrote this about him:

I happen to have been a seminar attendee in 1993 in which Wilson was a speaker one day. There were only about two dozen attendees, some of us military and others civilian government factotums from all branches of government. So we had very informal and engaging discussions with the daily speakers. I found Wilson to be expertly knowledgeable on the Middle East and quite sober-minded. I rate his credibility extremely high, so I find the charges he has made very credible and very disturbing.

As the comments from his conservative readers piled up, Sensing began to back off. Finally, he joined the "denial" crowd:

Bill Hobbs posts that Plame's "secret identity" probably wasn't ever really secret to begin with, and that Wilson is less balanced and sober-minded than he seemed to me to be 10 years ago, writing in The Nation that under Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness." So now I am starting to think that the whole doth stinketh of manufactured scandal.

This position, of course, ignores the substance of the formal request for investigation made by the CIA:

CIA lawyers followed up the notification this month by answering 11 questions from the Justice Department, affirming that the woman’s identity was classified, that whoever released it was not authorized to do so and that the news media would not have been able to guess her identity without the leak, the senior officials said.

Sensing has been transformed into the fourth category:

Engage in denial:

By this morning, Sensing was deeply immersed in denial and citing Robert Novak's careful phrasings to prove that no law had been broken.

It must be difficult for these people. The Plame Affair reveals the very heart of this administration. While they have claimed to put the security of the nation above all else, even to the point of dragging us into a war with little international support, it is now becoming clearer day by day that the national security is far less important to them than their own political power. Honor, dignity and integrity have vanished like so much mist. Some of us knew it was a mirage all along.

UPDATE: Chris Burgwald has posted here in response to my entry. I'll leave it to you to "classify" his views. Also, my apologies to Chris for initially misspelling his name and my thanks to him for his politeness in drawing my attention to it.

FURTHER UPDATE: Josh Claybourn has also posted in response, and basically maintains his position and his open mind. Someone commented on Calpundit's link to my post in a way that seemed to say I was criticizing the "wait-and-see" position. I'm not. It's quite reasonable at this point for those who support Bush and the war to take their time, see what facts come out, and digest all this.

FURTHER UPDATE: First, I owe Mark Byron an apology. He had mentioned the Plame matter in a posting about a number of matters over the weekend and I just missed it. He has now posted two extended discussions and recommends an independent counsel and jail cells for higher-ups if they ordered subordinates to leak.

Posted by Allen at September 30, 2003 08:54 AM