Why I am no longer a Republican

http://news.yahoo.com/why-am-no-longer-republican-062500099.html

Snip:

Why I am no longer a Republican
By Damon Linker | The Week – 7 hrs ago.. .


It has a lot to do with the Iraq war.


This week has been filled with Iraq War recriminations and re-evaluations. While official Washington was strangely silent about the 10th anniversary of the start of the conflict, journalists and intellectuals have been (predictably) more vocal. Prominent neocons have reaffirmed, with minor caveats, their support for the war. Some (erstwhile) liberal hawks have issued full-throated mea culpas. Other liberals, meanwhile, have tried to have it both ways, denouncing the war they once supported while praising its outcome. And of course, lots of people who opposed the war from the beginning, on the right and left, have declared vindication.

My own position on the war fits into none of these categories. Ten years ago, I was working as an editor at First Things, a monthly magazine that's aptly been described as the New York Review of Books of the religious right. (And no, that's not oxymoronic.) The magazine strongly supported George W. Bush's original conception of the War on Terror, and so did I. In his speech to Congress and the nation on September 20, 2001, Bush stated that the United States would seek to decimate al Qaeda as well as every other terrorist groups of global reach. To this day I remain committed to that goal and willing to support aggressive military action (including the use of drone strikes) to achieve it. But thanks in large part to the Iraq war, I no longer consider myself a Republican or a man of the right.