Bad Cop, bad cop…
The net’s been abuzz with commentary on the NYT’s pro-war op-ed from “liberals” O’Hanlon and Pollack, ‘A War We Just Might Win?’ As Salon’s Glen Greewald writes:
The Op-Ed is an exercise in rank deceit from the start. To lavish themselves with credibility — as though they are war skeptics whom you can trust — they identify themselves at the beginning “as two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq.” In reality, they were not only among the biggest cheerleaders for the war, but repeatedly praised the Pentagon’s strategy in Iraq and continuously assured Americans things were going well. They are among the primary authors and principal deceivers responsible for this disaster.
Then there was the notable absence of any focused anti-war events at the Yearly Kos conference which gave the Dem presidential candidates mostly a free pass on Iraq. It was left to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of the Center for Media and Democracy to organize Coffee with the Troops, a peripheral event unheralded by Kos organizers, that brought Garett Reppenhagen, Aaron Hughes and other soldiers who are the backbone of Iraq Veterans Against the War, IVAW, to meet up with the Kossacks. This from Stauber’s press release for the event:
With the Democratic Party’s Congressional victories in November 2006, the gates have been officially trampled. Many of the blogger barbarians are now comfortably ensconced in the castle, a power within the mainstream Democratic Party establishment. Nevertheless, the US debacle in Iraq drags on unabated. The Democratic Congress has funded the war with no strings attached, and Hillary Clinton who is seen by many as the Democratic presidential candidate for the 2008 has told the New York Times that “when” she is president she will keep US forces in Iraq but run a better managed, smarter war. How different is her position from the current Bush policy in Iraq enunciated in the Joint Campaign Plan that calls for US forces to impose “sustainable security” on all of Iraq over the next two years?
Why are the so-called Netroots slipping into the same kind of passivity that many liberals exhibit when it comes to the war issue? As Armando Llorens at TalkLeft explains, its not that they are against war resistance… they are simply too far up the ass of the Democratic Congress to allow Yearly Kos to be a platform to criticize them.
On the weekend of Yearly Kos, the Dem Congress is in the process of caving in on FISA.The tug in the Netroots is palpable. They do not want their big weekend ruined with this type of controversy. There is no real spark in their fight.
I think the core issue here is that people in the Dem establishment understand that America needs to secure Iraq. They won’t speak in Kissengerian terms in front of the electorate, but anyone who is involved in planning US foreign policy - or at least strategizing it - knows that what is happening right now is a global game of RISK. And in that context, it’s critical to get as many game pieces into the region, to be positioned for the next 50 years. At least, that’s how broad (bipartisan) thinkers like Zbigniew Brzezinski frame it. And that’s the point of my book. When it comes to securing America’s future, partisanship ends at the water’s edge (to quote Woodrow Wilson).
If the progressive blogosphere is going to play a meaningful role in the future of American democracy, it is going to have to wean itself from celebrity nipple of the Democratic party. If that doesn’t happen then we are going to zoom into 08 with the most influential leftist bloc on the net acting as a de facto adjunct of the establishment Democrats. In that capacity, MoveOn and DailyKos will simply limit the parameters of the debate and push for the most winnable candidates in a game of lesser evils that can only drive us further into the war-torn destiny of a declining empire.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:44 am
“I think the core issue here is that people in the Dem establishment understand that America needs to secure Iraq. They won’t speak in Kissengerian terms in front of the electorate..”
I hope they understand that. The Iraqi’s need a secure Iraq, and it would be reprehensible to abandon them prematurely. Just pulling out and forgetting about the country like it was never our problem in untennable. Because it is our problem. We enforced sanctions and no-fly zones since ‘91 that included a couple bombing campaigns.
I fail to see what is enamoring about this conservative isolationism. It’s not going to happen in practice. It’s as if a biologist demanded that evolution stop.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Right on, brother. As Noam says it’s not a 2-party system anymore. It’s a 1-party system, the property party, with 2 wings of it.
Sadly, it’s becoming clear that the Dems await their time-slot at the feed trough serving power, perks, donations and high-profile, high-pay jobs for spouses. Few of them are willing to stand up and risk their 2-terms of sucking up the spoils of victory.
It’s sad to see a group like DailyKos so willingly particpate, allow, permit, empower, that co-opting of themselves and their audience.
What we have now as a form of government isn’t one that balances power, but one that trades in the spoils, of governing.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:32 am
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