Stand Up and Fight Like A Pacifist!
By Repair Man Jack Posted in War — Comments (15) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Promoted from diaries. - Moe Lane
Matt Tiabbi, Commentator/House Leftist for Rollingstone.com, feels deeply perturbed. Perhaps leading Democratic political apparatchiks should grow perturbed that he’s perturbed. Tiabbi accuses the Democrats, in a polemic entitled “The Chicken Doves”, of having used the Iraq Anti-War movement for political gain.
He appears shocked and amazed that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi haven’t ended the Iraq War and declared Glorious Dunkirk. He inveighs below that they have taken the movement to end the fighting in The Middle East and used it as an electoral bludgeon.
Working behind the scenes, the Democrats have systematically taken over the anti-war movement, packing the nation's leading group with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war. "Our focus is on the Republicans," one Democratic apparatchik in charge of the anti-war coalition declared. "How can we juice up attacks on them?"
Tiabbi goes further and describes the Democratic Party’s effort to end combat operations in Iraq as less than muscular.
Why it "just wasn't going to happen" is the controversy. In and around the halls of Congress, the notion that the Democrats made a sincere effort to end the war meets with, at best, derisive laughter. Though few congressional aides would think of saying so on the record, in private many dismiss their party's lame anti-war effort as an absurd dog-and-pony show, a calculated attempt to score political points without ever being serious about bringing the troops home.
The author seems convinced that the Democratic Party has gone with a strategy centered around the audacity of political viability, rather than offering any hope to genuine pacifists. He suggests that the entire fusillade of public pronouncements by leading Democrats in Congress on the Iraq War is a Potemkin aimed at fooling the voting public. Tiabbi does justice to the claim that the Democrats are lying about the war, but he does not completely enumerate the myriad number of ways in which the Democrats have become disingenuous in their pandering.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi obviously won’t seek membership in the George W. Bush Iraq Policy Fan Club. This is all fine and good. However, her efforts to distort the public perception of how the troop surge is proceeding in Iraq would make Baghdad Bob or Grima Wormtongue blush.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”
“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”
The speaker hastened to add: “The troops have succeeded, God bless them.”
The true state of affairs in Iraq is nowhere near as dismal as Pelosi paints them. She criticizes Iraq’s government for failing to produce Jeffersonian Democracy, while deliberately ignoring the fact that the United States needed thirteen painful years to go from Declaration of Independence to Articles of Confederation to United States Constitution.
She is correct about one thing, the troops are indeed succeeding. When a character such as Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector, writes a sixteen page condemnation of Al-Quaida’s strategy and ethical decision-making, it can’t be reasonably denied that Iraq has turned into a grinding humiliation and a quagmire; for Osama Bin Ladin. Abu-Tariq spares no egos or vanities in his diary entries.
“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers,” he says. “Those people were nothing but hypocrites, liars and traitors and were waiting for the right moment to switch sides with whoever pays them most.”
Abu-Tariq’s continues to write a scathing critique of the Al-Anbar Awakening that should soon grace US Army Powerpoint pitches worldwide.
Al-Qaeda's “Islamic State of Iraq is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar”, the unnamed emir admitted.
In an apparent reference to al-Qaeda's brutal tactics, he said of the Americans and their Sunni allies: “We helped them to unite against us . . . The Americans and the apostates launched their campaigns against us and we found ourselves in a circle not being able to move, organise or conduct our operations.”
He said of the loss of Anbar province: “This created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down . . . There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.”
So Matt Tiabbi claims The War in Iraq must be ended as soon as possible. Nancy Pelosi claims to have the moral authority and desire to accomplish exactly that. What Tiabbi and Pelosi quibble over is whether to surrender immediately, or whether to drag the surrender out, humiliate our nation, demoralize our armed forces and use the war as a political bludgeon prior to waving the white flag of ineffable defeat.
What Tiabbi and Pelosi have left out of the equation is that the enemy always enjoys a certain suffrage in every council of war. President Bush used his vote to redirect US military strategy in a more effective manner. He put General Petraeus in charge of suppressing the Iraqi Insurgency.
General Petraeus is using his vote to accomplish what Tiabbi and Pelosi both profess as their good faith objective. Petraeus will end the war, when Al Qaeda can no longer participate due to incapacitation. This will occur long before the Democrats in Congress would summon the necessary courage to cut off war funding under a Republican President.
are certainly preferable to the alternative. Whatever Tiabbi rolls, it certainly keeps him stoned.
"I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." - The last recorded words of Adam Smith.
about Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny?
He better watch his mouth, too. Two words, Matt: Cindy Sheehan. Remember her? Maybe not. She disappeared when her opinions mirrored yours.
around that guy, and he'll accuse you of rife homophobia.
"I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." - The last recorded words of Adam Smith.
The dirty little secret on Iraq is that despite all the rhetoric and all the hot air being spouted by Democrats, we will NOT be leaving Iraq if by chance one of them is elected president in 2008. They know damn well what the consequences of pulling troops out at this point will be. Now, I have no doubt that they will continue to pay lip service to withdrawl, and they may even make symbolic pullouts of 1,000 to 2,000 troops here and there (which Bush is already doing, BTW), but mark my words, there will still be a very significant military presence in Iraq in 2012, even if a Democrat is elected president.
These left-wing kooks had better come to grips with this, because they are being used to get Democrats elected and to raise money. As soon as they cease to be useful for Democrats, they will get shafted - one need look no further than Cindy Sheehan to see how this will play out.
The silver lining of the prospect of a Democrat being elected in 2008 will be being able to watch the implosion on the part of the American left when the troops don't come out of Iraq. That will be hilarious to watch.
“.....women and minorities hardest hit”
will run a special entitled "Broken Liberalism" for 5 consecutive days before the 2010 midterms? OK, maybe not, but seeing their side having to intellectually justify itself for a change would be a pleasure.
"I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." - The last recorded words of Adam Smith.
Are you sure about that? I could see them quickly withdrawing troops to get the number under 100,000 to appease their base, assuming that thanks to the surge they might be able to keep things from falling apart at that force level. They'll continue to withdraw as many troops as possible without Iraq falling apart, which will actually lead to more American and Iraqis being killed because it is a transparently idiotic and suicidal strategy.
the Dems can rapidly fix that!?
"I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." - The last recorded words of Adam Smith.
...withdrawl troops. Despite all the rhetoric, the Dems know what the situation is over there. Although they would never say so publicly, deep down they know that General Petraeus is doing a good job. The last thing they will do is pull out troops just to appease the anti-war elements of their base, because they do not want to be saddled and blamed for the ensuing disaster. They know they will never be given the keys to the White House ever again if they botch Iraq up and ruin all the gains that have been made.
Iraq is a purely political issue for them, nothing else. Now, they would LOVE to force a withdrawl under Bush's term. Obviously those hopes were dashed, but their plan was to force Bush to withdrawl, and then for them to blame the resulting disaster on Bush. If they are given the keys to the White House with 160,000 troops in Iraq, they are NOT going to do anything to mess it up over there. They will go with essentially whatever Gen. Petraues tells them.
“.....women and minorities hardest hit”
The Democrats have to look ahead to the November election, and (if they win) to actually running the Executive Branch. They don't want the noisy antiwar left to embarrass them.
Such as when Cindy Sheehan decided to run against Nancy Pelosi. On the liberal blogs, TMPCafe I think it was, they said: "Cindy has done her job. She helped defeat the Republicans in 2006. Now she has to be eased from the picture."
Good stuff! I guess the Matt Tiabbis of the world never see it coming until they are basically already road-kill.
"I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." - The last recorded words of Adam Smith.
Perhaps Matt Tiabbi could now have sympatico with the way the conservative evangelicals (as opposed to the Jim Wallis variety) feel towards the Republican party - given lip service to by the party and discarded when they're no longer useful towards the party acquiring more power.
(And I suspect that Jim Wallis and crew will find their day of betrayal coming when they are no longer useful to those running the Democratic party.)
Interesting mirror process. At what point does continuing blind support (by either group, pacifists or evanegelicals) turn into denial of an ongoing abusive relationship?
Put not your trust in princes
both pacifists and black voters. You can't make the same cae for Republicans and evangelicals or SoCons.
You can complain about the Republican record on SCOTUS nominations, but that tends to be somewhat of a crapshoot because they serve for life. What they can't - or at least shouldn't be complaining about - is the Party record of addressing "their" issues.
The Republican leadership made absolute fools of themselves over Terry Schiavo. They pushed DOMA. They did nothing on HLA, but then again, no SoCon posting here has been able to tell me which version they would want pushed. Oh, and any version will never get through the Senate since it would require fairly significant Democrat support, so this (and FMA) are both really non-issues to anybody who's not drowning in KoolAid. Then there's Bush's ONLY veto in 6 years, ESCR.
If any segment of the party has been kowtowed to, it's the SoCons.
____
CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
especially when I largely agree with what you wrote in your comment.
It's just a reminder of how it's always risky to talk about an "other" group. While I consider myself evangelical, I take a much more pragmatic view towards politics recognizing that my views represent a (hopefully) growing minority of Americans and that we live in a republic. Ultimately, we're going to have to prevail (or not) in the marketplace of ideas, not by coercion.
I was referring to the vocal self-appointed spokesmen for evangelicalism (e.g. Dobson, Robertson) who thought they ran the party and demanded total purity (by their standards) - and who convinced many "rank and file" that the Christian society was at hand if they got their views into the Republican party platform and verbal committments from politicians.
These sorts of folk (and I'm not sure how large a group there are) are going to feel various degrees of betrayal, depending on how much they focus on what didn't go their way rather than what did, and also when they define failure to obtain part of their agenda as representing the end of the world.
There's always in these circles constant harping on doom and gloom - which spills over too often into whining. Unfortunately in some (or many) cases, the behavior pattern is manipulation to get people to give more money. But I digress.
This portrait fits a certain segment of evangelicals - and this segment to me has a remarkably strong parallel to a certain segment of the left-wing anti-war crowd whom and whose leaders have exhibited the same spectra of behaviors as described above, only focused on a different agenda. Change the names, but the pattern is quite similar. That's what I was trying to get at above.
And I really think Jim Wallis is leading another segment of evangelicals down a similar path in a similar handbasket, though he's still in earlier stages of the process.
I think it's the very humble and honest people who put a lot of, dare I say it? faith in Pat Robertson who will feel betrayed. If Robertson plays it smoothly, they feel betrayed by the GOP. If not, Robertson's 700 club will become sort of like that emir's "Maybe 20 Club" out in Al Anbar.
There are a lot of televangelists who are trying to do good work, and who also involve themselves in social discourse over politics as a necessary evil. Others, like Robertson, or Jim Dobson, who stop caring about the souls of their parishoners and followers and seem to care more about their votes....Power corrupts even the best and most nobel of men.
"I believe we must adjourn this meeting to some other place." - The last recorded words of Adam Smith.
But a truly entertaining one. I recommend giving "Spanking the Donkey" to all your liberal friends.Probably the best drug-influenced gonzo travelogue of the 2004 Democratic Primary out there.
No one of good character leaves behind a wasted life - John McCain