And frankly, it is almost impossible to plug an intelligent person into a single pigeonhole. I do get a little annoyed with some people who believe that Noam Chomsky is a moderate.
From the article, Berman obviously proudly defines himself as a member of the Left. The point he is making (as well as the other leftists I have mentioned in my other post) is that what currently passes for much of the "Left" in this country--marked mostly by a ravenous hostility to the United States and the West in almost every area of controversy, and a worship of the goals of Marxism--is not the Left he grew up with--the Left whose goals of independence, freedom, human rights, and individuality he admired.
A good interview with Berman can be found here. (you have to watch an ad to read it.)
It is interesting to read his opinions back as the war was about to start. Unfortunately, like many on the Left, his objections to Bush seem to be visceral more than based on any specific action Bush was taking or had taken.
it's just tragic that the United States is led by such an inarticulate and intellectually confused and unattractive figure who personally makes me cringe...
He apparently has contempt for Bush because he has to. Maybe it's just part of the official checklist. He describes Bush in derogatory terms throughout the interview, yet he rarely connects this hostility to a specific mistake or error. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard "It should have been done differently," from people who have no bloody idea on Earth what "differently" would actually have entailed. "Well, the U.N. should have done it," is about as far as they are willing to take the thought process. "How would they have fared differently?" is a question that usually gets simple hostility in return.
I would have loved to add some followup questions here.
As near as I can figure it, he faults Bush primarily for not doing enough to convince the Left and the world that moving on Iraq was a good idea. Go figure. I had no trouble at all picking up from Bush's statements last spring that the removal of Saddam was an important step in bringing freedom to the Middle East as a whole.
His points on multiculturalism need to be pounded into a lot of heads with a five-pound sledge. The core of our problems is a sickness at the heart of Islam, where all who are not of their body must be converted or destroyed. The Christian church had such a sickness for hundreds of years. Somehow we got past it for the most part. There is no Christian analog in modern times of radical Islamism, other than maybe a few tiny cults. If I was more of a historian, I would probably know how this was managed.