Everyone's favorite Democrat pundit who bashes his party regularly, Peter Beinart, has a
spotlighted column at WaPo saying the Democrats "pander and run."
What utter bullshit.
The dissection begins after the jump...
Beinart comes out swinging below the belt:
After years of struggling to define their own approach to post-Sept. 11 foreign policy, Democrats seem finally to have hit on one. It's called pandering. In those rare cases when George W. Bush shows genuine sensitivity to America's allies and propounds a broader, more enlightened view of the national interest, Democrats will make him pay. It's jingoism with a liberal face.
Democrats have had a plan for over a year now. They've had several plans. John Murtha has clearly articulated a real plan for Mideast policy. And Bush NEVER shows sensitivity to our allies, and has not one iota of enlightenment. Witness the handling of our current crisis with Israel and Lebanon. No ceasefire, and now Condi's going to play the piano. Not to mention the neocon faction in the adminstration who is ready to exploit this to invade Iran. There's enlightenment, all right.
Moving on, more bullshit:
How, exactly, publicly humiliating Maliki and making him look like an American and Israeli stooge would enhance his "leadership" was never explained in the missive. But of course Reid's letter wasn't really about strengthening the Iraqi government at all; that's George W. Bush's problem. It was about appearing more pro-Israel than the White House and thus pandering to Jewish voters.
It's fine if Maliki wants to take his own views on this issue, that's his perogative as the duly elected leader of his nation's parliament. I've said for months we need to talk to Hamas and not shut them out, after all, they were democratically elected. I just think we don't need to host him in our Congress while he's ripping our allies. That's Reid's point, jackass.
And, oh yeah, this gem:
The Bush administration, playing against type, argued that America's long-term security required treating Arab countries with fairness and respect, especially countries, such as the UAE, that assist us in the struggle against jihadist terrorism. One might have thought that the Democrats, after spending years denouncing the Bush administration for alienating world opinion and thus leaving America isolated and weak, would find such logic compelling. But what they found more compelling was a political cheap shot -- their very own Panama Canal moment -- in which they proved they could be just as nativist as the GOP.
Beinart's ignorance of the UAE's role in sponsoring terrorism and funding bin Laden is stunning, especially for someone who is supposed to be well-educated. And, honestly, if the best Bush can do to not alienate is to let a nation that funded terrorists run our ports, places that are extremely vulnerable to terrorism, then I'd rather take the isolation, thank you very much. It wasn't racist or nativist, jerk. It's looking at the facts.
And Beinart also blames us for the collapse of amnesty:
Then, in June, the media reported that the Iraqi government was considering an amnesty for insurgents, perhaps including insurgents who had killed U.S. troops. Obviously the prospect was hard for Americans to stomach. But the larger context was equally obvious: Unless Maliki's government gave local Sunni insurgents an incentive to lay down their arms and break with al-Qaeda-style jihadists, Iraq's violence would never end. Democrats, however, rather than giving Maliki the freedom to carry out his extremely difficult and enormously important negotiations, made amnesty an issue in every congressional race they could, thus tying the prime minister's hands. Once again, Democrats congratulated themselves for having gotten to President Bush's right, unperturbed by the fact that they may have undermined the chances for Iraqi peace in the process.
Incentives are fine, but they shouldn't include those who kill our soldiers. How do we tell their families that? "I'm sorry, your son died and his killer was set free so Sunnis would have an excuse to make up with the Shiites."
There's a lot of other incentives they could've used, but Maliki poked us in the eye with that, and we got upset.
Finally, back to this old meme:
The Democratic Party's single biggest foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing, that they have no principles beyond political expedience.
I leave you all with this question: Why do people mispell George W. Bush as Democratic Party so often??