The Atlantic's resident thoughtful apostate conservative Conor Friedersdorf published a piece this morning arguing that progressives who furiously fought against Bush's "war on terror" have internalized many of its central tenets, now that it's being waged by Barack Obama. Friedersdorf says liberals made various critiques of Bush's foreign misadventures -- that they caused "blowback," that they were an abuse of executive power, and that they implied a forever war without any possibility of an ending -- that they are now largely not making against Obama, even though all those arguments still apply.
The reason for this, according to Friedersdorf, is that everyone hated Bush and knew he was incompetent, but people like Obama because he's clearly smart and conscientious, which causes people to defend actions they would have criticized under his predecessor:
