The Hollow Center of Liberal Activism In The US (Or, Why The Dimocrats Will NEVER Beat Bush)
If there was ever a week that proved why the American Left in in such a weak state as it is, it is this week.
First off, you have General Petraus, going to Capitol Hill to testify about the “success” of the “surge” in Iraq (a “surge” so successful that US troops are now dying at a slightly less steep rate this month than before) and to persuade the supposed Dimocratic “majority” to give even more blank checks to his commander-in-chief to further “liberate” their country.
But rather than attack the actual outcome of “the surge” or even organize real opposition from the public, here comes MoveOn.org with a nice gift to the war boosters….in the form of an ad in the Washington Post all but calling out the chief military commander as “Be-tray-us” and all but calling him a traitor…for prosecuting a war endorsed by his President. Nice going, Mensas…..way to give your enemies the tools to whack you as “extremists” and loony lefties, and with no benefits whatsoever.
And then, here is the usual clown street media from the likes of Medea Benjamin and Code Pink (you remember them, they were the ones that got the bright idea of baring their breasts to protest Hillary Clinton’s support of the war) making various scenes at the hearing before getting booted out by the room. Yeah, the C-SPAN and CNN and FOX audience really dug that.
We all know where this is going, now do we?? Another six months of wait-and-see, followed by another cave-in by the Dims, more blank checks given to Dubya to bomb to his heart’s content (perhaps even expanding the war into Iran and/or Syria; and more puffing and huffing from the usual suspects in the liberal blogosphere about how those damn “Bush Dog Democrats” are ruining a good antiwar party.
But never fear, liberal sheeple hearty progressives…if only we would persuade the public that we have a plan for Iraq once “our troops” leave, and once Hillary takes over as President in around 18 months, all will be much better.
Except that, it pretty much won’t be, since Hillary would more than likely continue the same damn policies that Dubya is practicing right now…with perhaps a bit less glowing rhetoric, perhaps.
Meanwhile, back in Congress, some of the progressive Dims who are now realizing how much power they really have over Iraqi policy (that is, no damn power whatsoever, since the Bush Dogs can bolt and cross the aisle as they please and the leadership could care less) are getting a bit frustrated with it all….especially from hearing from the usual suspects in the liberal “netroots”. Of course, if they hadn’t been so kind to giving up the fight against funding the war last summer, they would probably fare a bit better…..but you know, “we really don’t have the votes”. (Which is plain BS, of course, since the Dims could easily, if they really, really wanted to, simply not vote to fund the wars through the appropriation process…but the fear of Karl Rove ads in their districts morphing them with Osama and Saddam remains so strong…and besides, they just want to get the credit for “winning” — or at least, not be tagged for “losing” — the war. Well, that..and the fact that deep down inside, most of these Dims really do support the war anyway…they just don’t want to embarrass “their base” by saying so openly.)
And you wonder how Dubya was still able to pull ‘04 out of his ass?? It wasn’t just Ken Blackwell’s mojo in Ohio, after all.
Just to show you how pathetic and hollow liberal “opposition” has become, just take a gander of this article from the center-right online journal Politico.com, where a certain centrist (”religious progressive” is the new political center, I guess) antiwar activist lectures the Dimocratic “base” on why they have been striking out:
Anti-war leaders stymied, frustrated
By: Mike Allen September 10, 2007 07:32 PM ESTA well-known anti-war leader has gone public with the transcript of a
private conference call that shows peace activists are exasperated
with the Democratic congressional leadership and at a loss for a long- term strategy.The Aug. 29 call highlights divisions in the Democratic Party that
Republicans are gearing up to try to exploit as Congress debates its
response to the report on Iraq this week by Gen. David H. Petraeus
and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.On Monday, the pair begins two days of testimony on Capitol Hill.
Republicans say the call reflects the degree to which war opponents
have failed to gain the advantage that many in both parties thought
would build over the summer.Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, posted the
transcript Friday on the website of the Network of Spiritual
Progressives, of which he is a co-chair.The transcript shows that opponents of the war in Iraq plan to try to
convince freshman Democrats from conservative districts that they
might not get reelected unless the party produces something serious
in the way of resistance to the war.But the call shows the war opponents are having little success
because of fears about the impact on next year’s elections if the
party is seen as defeatist.[…]
The call, which Lerner titled “Strategizing With Leaders of the Anti- War Movement,” included two sympathetic members of Congress and representatives of groups ranging from Code Pink to the Progressive
Democrats of America.Lerner — who is based in Berkeley, Calif., and is a leader of what he
calls “the religious left” — told Politico in a phone interview on
Sunday that he concluded from the call that the anti-war movement
does not have a long-term strategy, even though the war “is going to
continue through the end of President Bush’s administration” and
perhaps into the term of the next president.“A central point that the spiritual progressives are trying to make
to the secular progressives is this: People in the U.S. are opposed
to the war, but they feel that they need to have a picture of what
the world would look like if the U.S. were to withdraw from the world
by leaving Iraq,” Lerner said.Lerner said he posted the transcript in an effort to convince war
opponents that they need “some fundamentally new thinking.”“Right now, we could write the story of this Congress as ‘Profiles in
Cowardice,’” Lerner said. “There’s a great deal of frustration with
the Democrats in the Congress – a sense almost of betrayal.The Democrats don’t have – and even the people in the anti-war
movement don’t have – a coherent alternative world view from which to
base a strategy. That’s why they end up debating everything on the
same terms that the Republicans do.”
Hey, Mr. Lerner…..How about “We’ve done enough damage to their country, and they are pissed enough at us…let’s get the fuck out of there and save our fire for real threats??” That would work for me. Oh, I forgot…that would be too “defeatist” and would provide free material for Republican war boosters and their soundbytes for FOX News and the political ads. Not to mention that it would get in the way of the coming war on Iran…OOPS, did I give the game away??
[…]
Republicans are circulating the link [to Lerner’s article] to the transcript and think it
makes their case that opponents of the war in Iraq are losing ground.
“This call shows the tables may have turned,” said one Republican
official.“It shows the tightrope Democrats have to walk with an angry group of
liberal organizers who are sensing defeat.”The transcript quotes Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), who is co-chair
of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as saying: “The people that
need to hear are the moderate Democrats who are holding up the whole
thing.They’re the ones who have to know that their people care, that they
[want to] bring our troops home. They swear they don’t. They swear
that they’ll lose their elections if they do the right thing.”When one peace organizer talks about “peeling away Republican support
for the war,” Woolsey interjects: “Maybe you folks should go after
the Democrats.”Chris Shields, Woolsey’s press secretary, said in reply: “As a leader
of the anti-war movement, the congresswoman is committed to working
with outside groups, her colleagues in the House and her party’s
leadership to bring our troops home to their families in a safe and
orderly manner.”During the call, Woolsey advises the activists: “Help people change
the conversation from ‘abandoning the troops’ to funding orderly
redeployment. I’m telling you, that’s going to take six months to a
year. … Progressives know that whether we spend money on this or not
is going to make the difference. That’s all the House can really do,
the budget part of it.”
Ah, yes, “orderly redeployment”….that is, just move the troops away from some hot areas in Iraq and keep them snug in those permanent bases in Iraq and Iran that we will be building after we bomb the shit out of Tehran and oust that anti-Semitic firebrand Ahmadinejad (whom we owe big time anyway for holding America hostage during 1980). Of course, that will raise the threat of more isolated suicide bome attacks like the one that hit the Marines in Beirut in 1982…but hey, someone’s gotta protect our oil.
[Lerner’s side of the story can be found here, where he posts the entire transcript of the conversation.
As usual, it is the “far Left” that has a somewhat more grounded sense of the truth. Old school Marxist Louis Proyect uses his regular blog to dissect Lerner’s nonsense and the Dimocrats’ fallacy:
This paints a dreary picture, doesn’t it? The blame keeps getting shifted in American bourgeois politics. It is a just like a 3-card Monty game. You can never turn up the right card. The leftwing of the Democratic Party says that the party’s moderates are the problem. And then the Democratic Party as a whole says that it can’t do anything to stop the war because it can’t override Bush’s veto. This, of course, is a lie. All the Democrats need to do is not pass a funding bill of any kind. That will bring the war to an end immediately, just as it did in Vietnam. When they continue to fund the war–crocodile tears and all–they are as complicit as the Republicans.
[…]
Leslie Cagan, the most left-leaning conferee, throws up her hands and says, “We don’t know how this war’s going to end. This has been a nightmare for five years—almost five years now, before the war began.” But there’s hope. She says that “September is a critical time, in terms of what Congress can do, what they might do, what they probably won’t do.” And if Congress doesn’t get it done next year, there’s always next year:
Beyond that, we’re beginning to look at 2008, as the country has already been forced to, in the election cycle. Both the Congressional and the Presidential races—not that we will support a particular candidate or political party, we certainly will not do that—but again, how do we begin injecting not only ending this war and occupation, but also preventing a war in Iran, preventing any other military operations like this, and beginning to put forward a much more thorough peace and justice agenda, and how to use the election process to work through that agenda.
In other words, mass demonstrations are just an adjunct to the real game, which is the “election cycle.” For those of you living outside the US, this is a buzzword that is used on Sunday morning talk shows. There are “news cycles” and there are “election cycles”. Within each cycle, you get issues and personalities that rise to the top like scum on a stagnant pond. When the cycle is over, things return to normal. Of course, for people living outside the US, like the beleaguered citizens of Baghdad, the “election cycle” might not mean a whole lot when you have to worry about being victimized by a car bomb, thrown out of your house by ethnic cleansing or picked up by a death squad.
Oh…and what’s to say that “next year” won’t turn out like this year….or last year…or 2003…or any other period when Dimocrats were in power and actually did more to oppose than support progressive policy???
And it’s not so easy for a few folks here in this country, either….ask any Black refugee of Katrina or any Black resident of Jena, Louisiana about the impact of “the election cycle”. Or the children of an undocument immigrant who has been thrown out of the country thanks to the ICE raids on their jobs.
Still want to believe that the Dimocrats will save you if you are to the left of Dick Morris?? Be my guest. Based on what I’ve seen of them and the usual suspects, I’d put my trust in David Duke before I ever do in them.
The The Hollow Center of Liberal Activism In The US (Or, Why The Dimocrats Will NEVER Beat Bush) by The SmackDog Chronicles, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:02 am
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