Credibility Gap

Kenneth Baer says that the Democrats should have a robust, public debate about foreign policy and then people should pick a side and fight it out in the primaries in 2008 — as opposed to what is happening now which he characterizes as this:

The argument within the party has been played out through blog posts and random quotes in newspapers across the country. But while there is contentiousness, there is hardly a debate. There is a vocal group on the left who is angry — at the Democratic establishment and the foreign-policy establishment. Yet, the establishment is relatively quiet in its response. In many ways, this silence only magnifies the perceived influence and power of the Democratic left (which, while possessing its own unique power, has yet to prove the hold it purports to have on the zeitgeist of the Democratic rank-and-file: beat a more hawkish Democrat in a primary or win a general election, and then you’ll have some weight behind your claims.)

Well, he has a point. Although it would be much more powerful if the Democratic establishment could boast of winning any elections lately either.

And I would have to say that he would have an even better point if the Democratic foreign policy establishment hadn’t enthusiastically signed on to the greatest strategic cock-up in American history. If it’s credibility we’re talking about, I think the establishment needs to walk a little bit softly right now. It isn’t the left who fucked up this time.

It’s not that there is no desire or ability to compromise, strategize or agree on tactics among the various factions. But, for those of us who have been bellowing until we are hoarse for the last four years about the magical thinking about Iraq, it is ineffably galling to still be treated as if we are the starry eyed hippies when in it’s the allegedly sophisticated savants of the foreign policy establishment who have behaved as if this war could be won by clicking the heels of Laurie Myleroie’s ruby slippers.

We are the ones who pointed out the fact that Bush’s delusional PNAC/TeamB/CPD braintrust had been wrong about everything since the dawn of time and were the last people who should be trusted with a pre-emptive war doctrine. We’re the ones who noticed that you didn’t have to be a nuclear scientist to see that the “evidence” of Saddam’s arsenal had a bit of a comic book flair to it. (The drone planes should have been a tip-off.) We’re the ones who understood that people tend to not like being invaded by foreign troops even when they despise their own leaders.

It was the sophisticates of the establishment who bought every bit of snake oil the administration was selling, not us. And yet we still have to be condescended to from the people who were flat out, 100% wrong?

I am not a pacifist. And I never said that we should not respond to the threat of global terrorism. But I disagreeed with the way this administration and the Democratic hawks went about doing it — especially this enormous mistake of invading a middle eastern country for inscrutable reasons, at this time, in this way. And I was right. I don’t know if I represent the zeitgeist of the rank and file, but I do know that I and others of “the left” who saw this debacle for what it was have earned a little fucking respect.

.