. . . but that doesn't mean they don't invite ridicule with their use of strawmen.

Here's Thumper's six assertions, in order:

1. The left find Bush so repulsive it blinds them to reality.

2. The left blame America for all the big problems in the world.

3. The left believe any sort of anti-colonial movement most be admirable or acceptable.

4. The left think Arabs like to live under grotesque dictatorships and aren't capable of anything else.

5. The left "have succumbed to anti-Semitic fantasies about the cosmic quality of Jewish crime and cannot get their minds to think about anything else."

6. The left are "willfully blind to anti-Semitism in other cultures."

And people think this is a good argument? LOL. Thumper conveniently omitted some other reasons the left opposes the war:

1.The left believes the administration should be focusing its resources on Al Qaeda instead of Iraq.

2. The left doesn't buy the administration's rhetoric about Iraq being an gathering threat to the U.S.

3. The left believe it was a preventive, not pre-emptive war, and sets a foolish and dangerous precedent.

4. Having learned the lessons of Vietnam, the left doesn't believe trying to democratize a foreign country through force is worth the cost in lives and treasure.

Berman can write something like "Apart from X, Y, and Z, whose left-wing names you know very well..." and be reasonably confident that his reader know he's talking about Chomsky and the usual suspects.

Chomsky and/or the usual suspects blame America for all the big problems (famine, AIDS, over-population, etc.) in the world? I doubt you or Berman could cite examples showing this to be true.

However I do not approve of Marxist intellectuals. They tend to be very clever people with a nasty political agenda, who are good at pulling the wool over people's eyes.

People would have to be extremely gullible to buy the swill Thumper's peddling.

I suggest doing a Google on "Paul Berman" and reading his other essays. He writes well. Learning to read him critically is a useful exercise.

Critically reading anyone's intelligent argument is a useful exercise. Thumper's argument was a caricature of the left's opposition to the war. Was that Berman's intent?