Keep Your Eyes On the Lies: David Michael Green

[Demeter]

Here's something from Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review. In his column, Lowry reviews the recent Democratic National Committee meeting, which was packed with presidential contenders trying to get a little attention here and there.

Lowry has decided that the Democratic Party is hopelessly liberal, isolationist, defeatist and worse because they don't seem to cotton to George Bush's adventure in Iraq:

The Democrats are in the throes of a full-fledged Vietnam flashback. Even if the Bush “surge” works, Democrats will stay committed to ending the war — just as Democrats cut off the war in Vietnam in the mid-1970s, even as it had been put on a more sustainable footing. The party has regressed all the way to its McGovernite roots. The centrist Clintonite interlude of the 1990s is almost entirely washed away, with the Clintonite candidate — Hillary — trying not to get washed away with it.

This McGovernite tendency is pacificist and isolationist. Even as Democrats give way to it, they still style themselves idealistic internationalists. Calls to end the genocide in Darfur were applauded here, although no one said how it was going to be done, nor why ending the savagery in the Sudan is such a priority when it is fine to abandon Iraq to its near-genocidal furies.

The Vietnam Syndrome made Democrats allergic to the use of force for two decades. The Iraq Syndrome will be a reprise. Anyone who, like Rahm Emanuel, wants to see the Democrats occupy the sensible center must be dismayed. Howard Dean, however, can only be pleased. He’s chairman of this party for a reason.



What's Wrong With This Picture?

The whole accuracy thing is increasingly problematic for even the less nutty folks on the right. Facts have become woefully inconvenient for them, so they being jettisoned as quickly as they can be jammed through Dick Cheney's shredder.

I hate to break up this little party at the asylum, but it might be useful to remind Mr. Lowry of a few usefully problematic empirical observations which render his theory as, shall we say, rather challenging – at least this side of the Kool-Aid dispenser.

Let's start with the major wars of the last century. All were launched by Democrats, except for the two in Iraq, and one of those was only major in terms of the number of troops briefly deployed. World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam were all brought to us courtesy of Democratic presidents, often over the resistance of Republican isolationists.

Ah, well, you're thinking, Vietnam was a long time ago! Now the Democrats are the party of McGovern! One could only wish that Democrats had McGovern's combination of the courage to go to war when it is necessary (as McGovern, Gore and Kerry did, but Bush and Cheney did not), and the wisdom to know when it is not necessary (ditto). At least they get a lot closer to this ideal than the Scary Party.

But let's not forget that it was a Democratic president in the 1990s who sought (very late, unfortunately, but it could have been even worse) to stop the genocide of Balkan ethnic cleansing, while the carping harpies of the Republican Party at that time made it as difficult to do so as possible. It was also the Democrats who, during the presidential transition, told the Bush people to worry a lot about Osama bin Laden and terrorism, while Condi and crew snorted and focused instead on their jones for Saddam. And remember how Democrats violently opposed the invasion of Afghanistan following 9/11? Actually, you don't, because they didn't.

Here's the truth, Rich, and sorry if this hurts, but truth sometimes does. For all their manifold failures, contemporary Democrats are neither pacifists or isolationists. The key distinction between them and Republicans is that they have greater wisdom and greater honesty about which wars are necessary to advance the values we all say we subscribe to, and which wars are not.

That's a pretty big deal, as we've all learned the hard way now.









It's a regressive world out there. Sign-up here for your Weekly Antidote.Keep your eyes on the lies.

[Demeter]

1. morning kick

[Martin Eden]

2. That was a good de-framing ...

... of the false frame the rethugs have been hanging on the Dems for the last 30 years.