Never Question The Premise

by digby

I don’t know the name of the CNN week-end freakshow (CNNWFS )who hosts “This Week In Politics” but whoever he is, he’s been very attentive in Village brainwashing class:

CNNWFS: The Democratic Party comes out swinging with ad ad this week hitting very hard on this issue of Iraq

Video:

Voice: President Bush has talked about out staying in Iraq for 50 years

McCain: Maybe 100. That’d be fine with me…

CNNWFS: Chris this ad is very hard hitting and a lot of people would say it is very unfair. McCain has explained over and over again what he meant. You know what he meant and I know what he meant, he meant a military presence for a hundred years. Should your party be doing this? Does it make him look bad or you look bad?

Chris Kofitis (Democratic strategist):Listen John McCain has chosen to bear hug George Bush in the war. You just saw this week that he was for withdrawal, now he’s against withdrawal. His problem, I think is that he is supporting a war that the American people one, clearly believe should not have been fought and two, is incredibly unpopular and is costing this country every day an enormous amount of lives

CNNWFS: Your party has lost traction on that issue though. This makes it look like you’re trying to extend it to something that’s untrue and say let’s argue on something we really have a lot of traction on, let’s raise something that he’s already explained.

Chris Kofinis: Yeah, but in fairness what he said, the 100 year argument was the notion of presence. He made the analogy to Korea,and also Germany and Japan as well, Here’s the problem, in the post war period, after the so-called Mission Accomplished in those specific states, there were no casualties, there was no insurgency. We’ve lost 3900 lives since …

CNNWFS: We’re not opposed to … Leslie jump in here

Leslie Sanchez (GOP strategist): I think the Democrats are trying to appease their anti-war movement to keep them engaged, it’s an unfair characterization of what John McCain said, third party entities have come out and said that, the really interesting part is the only piece of ammunition, if you can use that word, that the Democrats seem to do, is that they’re trying to tie John McCain to George Bush even though we know he’s independent, even though we know he talked separately about the surge. It’s not a realistic argument, but it’s an emotional one.

I realize that’s a fair amount of gibberish from everyone. The CNNWFS is particularly incoherent, obviously forgetting the details of what he overheard somebody say in the men’s room earlier. But I question the Democratic strategist’s answer as well.

Why aren’t Dems just saying, “Why should Americans stay in Iraq for a hundred years under any circumstances? Let’s assume McCain meant that we should stay there indefinitely once the violence has ceased. What right would we have to do that? Aren’t they a sovereign nation? Why should Americans pay for that?”

This Germany and Japan argument is going to take hold unless Democrats begin to make the proper arguments. As much as the keyboard commandos would like to pretend they are fighting the War Of All Wars, it isn’t. It’s a colonial war like Vietnam, not WWII. And as one of the main forces behind normalizing relations with Vietnam the past decade or so, McCain must know that if we had stayed there it would be violent still.

Colonialism left its awful mark on that country and there was a terrible fallout after the US left, but staying wouldn’t have helped matters, it would have made it worse. Just as staying in Iraq will make it worse. Maybe this time, we can do a little bit better and normalize relations with the country in a reasonable amount of time after we leave it in flames. But the truth is that if you make a mistake like we made in both Vietnam and Iraq, you have to leave. You will not be forgiven. Your presence prolongs the war. No self respecting native will allow an invader to occupy their land indefinitely.

Once the “liberation” fantasy was exposed for what it was, the idea of permanent military presence was no longer operative. Republicans should not be allowed to shift into that argument. A hundred years in Iraq is a hundred years in Iraq — spending billions of American tax dollars while they tell us we can’t afford universal health care here at home and people are dying of starvation in other parts of the world. Is it too much to ask that they consult us about whether we think it’s actually something we want to do? And explain what its purpose is?

In fact, in a culture where reason was held in even the slightest esteem, we would also be talking about whether we should be keeping those bases in Germany and Japan after 60 years. Did Americans know they were signing on to permanent military empire even after the cold war ended? I don’t think so. Why is the fact that we are still in Japan and Germany used as a perfectly reasonable example of American foreign policy in the first place?

How about we invade Denmark next time and stay there for a hundred years? I really love those butter cookies.

Meanwhile, back on The Week in Politics:

CNNWFS: later we’ll talk about Hillary Clinton’s brewing problems over coffee and president Bush’s burger bash…

Update: I just found out that CNNWFS’s name is Tom Forman.