There's been loads of talk here about Beinart's "A Fighting Faith" article that appeared in TNR last week. TNR has published a bunch of
letters they received responding to the article (no subscription required for once!)
The letters are all interesting. especially I thought the one from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union representative, but people here might be interested in the one sent in from Eric Davis of Democracy for Illinois:
I read Peter Beinart's thoughtful article. I wish to differ on one point--the implicit depiction of Howard Dean as being among what Beinart call the "softs." I can tell you that one of the first and principle reasons for my own nearly two-year support of his efforts was that his foreign policy was, among other things, essentially "Iraq No, Afghanistan Yes." In the run up to the Iraq invasion I was, well, screaming to anyone who would listen that if the United States massed 150,000 troops in Kuwait we'd be better off sending them on a sharp right turn to the north and borrowing the western half of Pakistan for awhile--to hell with diplomacy--until we shook bin Laden and his compatriots loose. This was essentially what Dean--who also supported the first Iraq war, by the way, which Kerry inexplicably did not--was saying.
Dean is no dove. The left embraced him--and the press never understood this--not because he said "no Iraq war" for no war's sake but because he was the only Dem willing to say "bullshit" to the Bush White House line and to keep saying it. He did turn out to be right, by the way. Iraq by late 2002 was not a threat, it did not have WMD, chemical, biological, or nuclear, and there was no link there to Al Qaeda--although there sure is now, thanks to W's mistake. Dean was not saying that war itself is a mistake, but that this war, at this time, for the reasons Bush gave, was a mistake. It was the press that ignorantly and incessantly concluded that someone who said "no" to one war was opposed to all war.
Howard Dean is, I submit, the closest thing Democrats have had to Harry Truman since, well, Harry Truman. Having gotten to know the man somewhat by this time I can tell you he would have dropped the bomb if it was truly necessary, something that is anathema to "pure" antiwar liberals. Liberals knew what they were getting in supporting Dean--ask anyone who had to argue with Kucinich supporters if you need more proof.
But the thoughtfulness of your article is, in any event, much appreciated.
I don't know if this letter was written before TNR published its "Scream 2" anti-Dean-for-DNC-Chair article or not, but it's a fascinating letter nonetheless and representative maybe of how diverse Dean's following actually is.
What do people think of the letter? Is it an accurate portrayal of Dean?