The recent defeat of Joseph Lieberman in the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senator from Connecticut has highlighted what is being described as a "rift" in the Democratic Party. This is simply not so.
What has been brought to light, however, is a burgeoning and increasingly organized anti-war movement. It has been reported that 30,000 voters who were previously unregistered or registered as independents re-registered as Democrats for this election. CNN reports the turnout for this race as 43%, a record, smashing the previous 39% turnout for the 1970 Democratic primary.
What is being lost in the frenzy over Lieberman's defeat is the difference between having voted for the war and supporting the administration's policies in prosecuting the war in Iraq (and elsewhere).
No matter how one feels about the decision to go to war in Iraq. Whether you believed at the time that it was necessary and the right thing to do, or if you believed we were attacking a country under false pretenses to meet ends decided long before September 11 ever happened, should not be seen as defining your position regarding our nation's current involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I happen to fall into the latter camp. But, I must admit having been an ardent supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 1991, and also supported our intervention in Afghanistan immediately after September 11. Admittedly not a complete pacifist, I believe it is entirely consistent to now criticize how our country has chosen to conduct these actions.
In 1991, we were all introduced to the "Powell Doctrine," which requries that military action should be used only as a last resort and only if there is a clear risk to national security by the intended target; the force, when used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy; there must be strong support for the campaign by the general public; and there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military is engaged. This doctrine was seen as the antithesis of the manner in which the United States conducted the war in Vietnam, and, ironically, the manner in which we have prosecuted the second war in Iraq.
Here we are, embroiled in a conflict where there was no clear risk to national security by the intended target, where the force used was so underwhelming that chaos ensued as we "liberated" Baghdad, and we were powerless to stop it, where support for the campaign was not ensured, and where there was no, and three and one half years into the campaign, there is still no exit strategy.
Whether one believed in the Powell Doctrine, or not, the "Rumsfeld Doctrine" as utilized in Iraq can legitimately be viewed as an abject failure. In Afghanistan and Iraq, it was clear to anyone who was paying attention that "victory" would only be achieved through massive, lengthy occupation, reconstruction and education applied to a resistant populace. We went into Iraq utterly unprepared for that.
It is not unpatriotic to acknowledge that failure, whether you supported the initial action, or not. Democrats nationwide may have been more split at the point of decision than they are now in recognizing that another path must be chosen. The very notion that questioning the course we are on now is akin to "cutting and running" is absurd, and being more and more recognized as such. What, I ask, is the administration's plan for the alternative? All that seems to be on the table is an interminable occupation that will continue to drain our ability to respond to other, real, threats to our nation.
An open debate on where to go from here is healthy for the nation, and healthy for the Democratic party. Perhaps Lieberman's main fault is not having recognized the need for that debate and dialogue in his campaign until it was too late to stem the rising Lamont tide in Connecticut.
Whatever your party affiliation, questioning our continuing policy in Iraq is the most patriotic thing we can do. This is not, and never has been a nation built upon a population that blindly follows their leaders. We vociferously debate and question our leadership, and force them to defend their policies to our satisfaction, or we vote them out. Thus is our duty as citizens, no less. We have the right to sit on the sidelines and blindly trust our leaders, too. But then, we lose the credibility to complain about what we got.
That ain't no rift. That's democracy, baby!
13 August 2006
No "Rift" Among Democrats on War in Iraq
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Thank you for sending me a copy of your blog. I do think the Democratic party is facing a problem, however. It is in the throws of something of a transformation following the major effort by George Sorros in '04 and the organizations that were created then. Shades of the McGovern revolution. The Clintons are not aboard and Hillary is the putative nominee. Lieberman is running and looks like the front runner. Being against the conduct of the war is a proper and necessary dialogue, but not a platform. Howard Dean says things like, "the function of the opposition is to oppose. I think that point of view is terribly wrong. The function of the great party out of power is to be prepared to govern. Democrats, in spite of considerable efforts to formulate discriptions of what they stand for, repeatedly compile lists of what they're against.
My fear is that we have a movement based wholly and entirely on hatred of George Bush. The fact that this is seemingly a follow to the Clinton hatred that preceeded it, and the wrong headed impeachment that it led to, doesn't make it any more condusive to positive debate or formulation of reasoned policy in finding a way for our nation.
You gave me a lot of ideas to ponder in our most recent conversation. Particularly that we are not really engaged in a war at all. You likened this situation more to the cold war. We didn't talk at the time of the "police action" in Korea at the cost of some 50.000 American lives if my memory serves, undertaken by President Truman. Nor was Viet Nam put on the table, as undertaken by President Johnson. Both as responces to the cold war. Whether these were or were not wars seem to be more semantic than the realization that they were major military endeavors, because of the threat perceived by the march of Marxist Theory and international communism, put forward by Stalin and Mao, and disciples such as Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh.
Do we challenge the idea of whether this is or should be a war because it allows us to see wartime powers as threats to our liberty. And do we feel these threats because of the power of the hatred of the president. That allows the very divergent perception of the NSA warrentless wiretaps of calls from or to terror operatives overseas. Notably when the FISA courts were instituted during the Carter administration, Carter asserted that they were in no way to supplement presidential powers. The FISA appeals court has held the same. Now we're both aware of the recent ruling that this activity is unconstitutional. I don't think that opinion will hold. The fact that the District Judge issuing the opinion sits on the board of an organization that is a large contributer to the ACLU, and that she found in favor of the ACLU, I think will prove to be problematic.
Do we need inteligence? The recent foiling of the plot in Britain to bring down 10 jetliners in American cities, relied heavily on intercepted inteligence. Would the success of that attempt have been an acceptable trade for our suspicion of the hated Bush's real motives tapping Al Qieda? There was no debate at the time of the Bush announcement of major ramping of inteligence assets of our need for them. There seemed to be general agreement on the fact that inteligence failures led to 9/11 and that we needed to do better. I just think your fears would be much less pronounced if we had a president you trusted.
If the Democrats win the house and then spend the next two years investigating and ultimately trying to impeach the president, I think the party will have taken a dreadfully unproductive course. No matter that its been done before. It was unproductive then and likely divertd the Clinton administration as the seeds of our present confrontation were being sown.
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