Don’t Make Trouble Part XXIV

by digby

Jacob Weisberg was only four years old in 1968 and yet he is manifesting a severe case of hippieitis. Apparently the trauma runs deep even for those who were little children at the time.

I wonder if it has occurred to any of these people that their obsession with events of 38 years ago logically requires that Democrats go along with any war the Republicans ever propose? I had assumed the party would be bleached of the horrible stain of New Left counterculture when we boomers shuffled off our mortal coil but I fear there is no statute of limitations on this. If people who were practically still in diapers at the time can’t let go of it, we’re in for at least a few decades of craven warmongering.

Weisberg admits that Iraq is a terrible mistake just as Vietnam was, but opposing both of those wars makes Democrats look like wimps who don’t understand islamofascismtotalitarianwhatever and that spells doom for the Party. Again, what this means is that if somebody wants to wage a cynical, immoral, useless war for no good reason, Democrats simply have to go along with it if they want to be taken seriously. Why that should be, I don’t know. It seems to me that people who recognize when something is immoral, useless and stupid should be the ones taken seriously. But apparently that’s not how this works.

It’s true the Democrats split back in the day. It’s also true that there were many factors including race and the counter-culture. But when it came to the war there is one blindingly obvious fact that nobody seems to think is significant: the Vietnam War split the Democrats because it was run by Democrats. The Pentagon papers didn’t indict a bunch of Republicans, after all. It was lieberman-Lamont writ very, very large and with much bigger consequences.

The fact is that most Democrats, not being natural authoritarians, don’t put up with this crap from their leaders, of either party. They hold them accountable. Now I realize that for some twisted illogical reason that means they are seen as unserious and irresponsible in American politics, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the right thing to do. When your country is engaged in dangerous wars based on lies and obscure reasoning, it is immoral to say nothing simply because you are afraid it will make you look bad. I’m proud of the history of Democrats standing up and opposing these two wars.

In 2006, despite all the hyperventilating in the press, the party is not split at all, and it’s easy to see why. This is a war that was relentlessly hyped by the Republicans who ruthlessly bullied anybody who even thought about opposing it. That war is now a proven disaster. Today’s polling shows that nearly 90% of the Democratic party want the US to withdraw from Iraq and believe it was a mistake. Sixty percent of the nation as a whole feels the same way with a fair number of Republicans in that group. This is not a fringe position and there is no reason to fear that the Democratic Party will be seen as unrepentant hippies unless the press insists on repeating this narrative ad nauseum.

But it isn’t just Iraq, of course. It’s what people like Weisberg assume opposition to Iraq “really means.” He beats the hell out of a leftwing strawman who thinks that terrorists are no threat:

The problem for the Democrats is that the anti-Lieberman insurgents go far beyond simply opposing Bush’s faulty rationale for the war, his dishonest argumentation for it, and his incompetent execution of it. Many of them appear not to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously. They see Iraq purely as a symptom of a cynical and politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11, as opposed to a tragic misstep in a bigger conflict. Substantively, this view indicates a fundamental misapprehension of the problem of terrorism. Politically, it points the way to perpetual Democratic defeat.

I’m getting really tired of this. I would really like to see some evidence. This assertion misrepresents the far more complex view that many of us have that challenges the the GOP’s silly neocon manicheanism. If Weisberg wants to endorse Bush’s absurd formulation that’s his privilege. But it is not the only valid way to look at it.

First of all, there can be no debate that there was a “cynical and politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11.” We’ve seen Karl Rove’s power point presentation and we’ve been through two elections. The result of that is that we now have a government suffering from “cry wolf” syndrome in which nobody knows whether you can believe what they say. That is a very dangerous and stupid thing to do.

Most of us take the threat of Islamic fundamentalism — indeed fundamentalism of all kinds — far more seriously than the Republicans with their comic book and paint ball approach to complex problems. I think most of us feel that Bush has exacerbated the threat to such a degree that we are in vastly more danger today than we were before he undertook his absurd neo-congame. Again when you are actually right about something for some reason these elites consider you a fool and therefore you can’t be taken seriously on national security matters. With that kind of thinking we’ll be lucky to avoid blowing up the planet.

If Weisberg and the rest of Karl Rove’s bitches would like to know what a typical “Lieberman insurgent” thinks of Bush’s performance in dealing with Islamic fundamentalism, maybe this from Wes Clark today will suffice:

You see, despite what Joe Lieberman believes, invading Iraq and diverting our attention away from Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is not being strong on national security. Blind allegiance to George W. Bush and his failed “stay the course” strategy is not being strong on national security. And no, Senator Lieberman, no matter how you demonize your opponents, there is no “antisecurity wing” of the Democratic Party.

One of the hallmarks of liberalism is its belief in empiricism. When things aren’t working we try to figure out why and solve the problem. Despite our unfounded reputation for starry-eyed naive belief in human perfectability, we are the practical thinkers who are looking to the future and trying to figure out a way to make things better. It is a grave misreading of the current sentiment to assume that we don’t care about national security. The reason we are trying so hard to change things is because we do care about it. I don’t think I’m the only who feels much less secure than I once did knowing that we have alienated half the world out of some misplaced faith in machismo as a diplomatic strategy. The world stage isn’t high school and I’d like to see something a little more sophisticated than locker room psychology brought to bear to solve these problems. In case nobody’s noticed, the middle east isn’t looking so good right now and the Republicans are shrieking like banshees in ever more hysterical terms. Far be it for me to object, what with the need to live down the summer of love and all, but that just doesn’t seem like a good situation to me.

Perhaps it’s fashionable to adopt Weisberg’s disdainful pose, but it’s completely worthless on both a political and policy level. It’s as if they are living in an endless feed-back loop and haven’t thought a new thought in decades. I doubt that even winning a majority will convince these timorous chatterers that objecting to Republican national security policy isn’t a death wish, but it won’t matter. The only thing that matters is that the Democratic party stops listening to them.

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