Let you and him fight Democrats kind of pathetic
The truth is that Democrats who are also proponents of a continued military presence in Iraq and who view terrorism in the abstract as more important than Iraq in the specific, have now clearly sunk to the point where they have to try and convince people that they still represent a significant wing of their own party. Really, it is kind of pathetic. Hawks like Greenberg and Diehl are now writing columns that are basically trying to convince people that there is still a divide in the Democratic Party on this issue, and that their viewpoint on Iraq has not been completely defeated. This is why the hopefully classify all opponents of a continued American military presence in Iraq under a single classification.
In reality, there are not two kinds of Democrats when it comes to Iraq policy these days, one supporting continued occupation and one opposing it. Instead, there rather several different types, one supporting continued occupation and every other type opposed. Overall, while there may be a divide within “progressive” think tanks and Democrats in DC on Iraq policy, there is no such divide among the Democratic rank and file. To use an analogy from another recent event for which the netroots have been blamed, I seriously doubt right now that if their was a national convention of Democrats, those supporting keeping all of our troops in Iraq could even reach the 15% threshold required to make the ballot. Given this, for Iraq hawks like Diehl and Greenberg, convincing people that the discussion isn’t over and that they are somehow still relevant is all they have left.
Now what Chris is too polite to mention is that these hawks like to portray themselves as principled, independent and tough, standing alone against a tide of what they call emotional, irrational and irresponsible anti-war activists when in fact they hold the position on the war for at least 90 percent out of misguided domestic political considerations. Beinart and his ilk don’t really believe the War on Iraq is a good thing, they want to stay in the good graces of the Republican machine, they’ve bought into the received wisdom that Democrats are weak on defence and are trying to sound tough for the voters, in short, they’ve internalised the Republican propaganda about their own party.
And now they see what everybody outside the Beltway knew back in 2002, that actually, the great majority of Americans did not want this war, that if they had not been lied to by the Bush administration and the Democratic hawks alike they never would’ve supported it and that those pesky anti-war activists were actually right then.
But at this point they can no longer do anything else but continue to support the war and smear those within their own party who have learned better. They’re so immoral, so without honour that they’d support an occupation which is killing hundreds of their fellow Americans a year, not to mention tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, just to avoid facing up to their error. They are despicable and should be kicked out of the party sooner rather than later before they do more damage.
Read more about:
war on Iraq,
Democratic party,
netroots,
Vichy Dems