Couldn't believe my eyes this morning with his
column. With all due apologies to Atrios for the "Wanker of the Day" designation, this is just unbelieveable. He -- and so many others -- just don't seem to get the fact that what happened in Connecticut wasn't anti-war, it was anti-Iraq War/anti-Shrub/anti-Corrupt Congress all rolled into one big, angry fist. I hope that we're indeed seeing the awakening of the slumbering giant, and if so, I'd stay out of its way.
More thoughts on the column below...
From the column:
But the larger conflict that defines our times -- war on Islamic radicalism, more politely known as the war on terrorism -- will continue, as the just-foiled London airliner plot unmistakably reminds us. And the reflexive antiwar sentiments underlying Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut will prove disastrous for the Democrats in the long run -- the long run beginning as early as November '08.
That's it -- keep telling that meme and folks will eventually believe it, right? The magic potion is wearing off, dude, no matter what Rove's talking points may say.
Apart from the Carter success of 1976 -- an idiosyncratic post-Watergate accident -- the "blame America first" Democrats were not even competitive on foreign policy for the rest of the Cold War. It was not until the very disappearance of the Soviet Union that the American citizenry would once again trust a Democrat with the White House.
It took the Democrats years to dig themselves out of that hole, helped largely by such pro-defense, pro-Gulf War senators as Al Gore and Joe Lieberman. It is all now being undone by Iraq. The party's latent antiwar fervor has resurfaced with a vengeance -- in Connecticut, quite literally so.
Let's be really clear here: the 1990-1991 Gulf War DOES NOT EQUAL the current fiasco in Iraq. I spent 11 years in the National Guard (although never overseas), and I had the same friends who willingly went to Iraq the first time tell me later that even they couldn't see a reason to go back. But that's besides the point. One had good intelligence, one didn't. One had real international backing, not a "coalition of the willing." One had a distinct, limited aim, while the other didn't (at least publicly). Perhaps most importantly, one was a response to a clear agressive action by one state taken against another sovereign state, not a thinly-disguised campaign against an unconventional war tactic. Believe me, many here can offer other examples.
Lamont said in his victory speech that the time had come to "fix George Bush's failed foreign policy." Yet, as Martin Peretz pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on Iran, the looming long-term Islamist threat, Lamont's views are risible. Lamont's alternative to the Bush Iran policy is to "bring in allies" and "use carrots as well as sticks."
Yes, the WSJ is a bastion of common sense. Don't get me started there. Regardless, I think that the strategy Lamont is advocating worked pretty darn well for several decades and across several Administrations. Essentially, he -- and his ilk -- are missing the larger point: we have made more enemies with our current international policies than we started with, much like the mythical Greek Hydra. We didn't become the aspiration of the world by attempting to become the world's class bully, but by stressing our ideals such as adherance to the rule of law. Would you have been won over to the side of the United States if your cousin, brother, father were in Gitmo? The family member of a high school classmate? Your fellow parishoner?
Vietnam cost the Democrats 40 years in the foreign policy wilderness. Anti-Iraq sentiment gave the antiwar Democrats a good night on Tuesday, and may yet give them a good year or two. But beyond that, it will be desolation.
I hope that saying this made you feel better. It just made me more certain of your delusion. Every time you beat that terror/war drum, you more clearly define yourself as unable to grasp that there's much, much more to what happened with Lamont than that one issue. Your friends had their time, and guess what, they screwed the pooch. Big time. With the federal budget. With civil liberties. With belief in the good of science, technology, and reason. With the need to make everything only about the political bottom line. Simply put, we're ready for the grown-ups to be back in charge.
Oh, and remember: don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.