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May 25, 2007
Unlearning Helplessness
"The [Democratic] party's leadership and political thinkers," writes Yglesias, "simply can't conceive of national security issues as anything other than a source of potential political problems to be coped with, never as a set of potential political opportunities."
Welcome to the learned helplessness of the Democratic Party. They've been spanked on national security for so long that they literally cannot conceive of pulling out a win merely because their position commands overwhelming public support. At best, the reprisal will be delayed a few years, until the Right convinces a fickle populace that the Reid-led withdrawal lost the war for us.
And it's almost hard to blame them. Hawkishness holds court as the default correct position in national security politics. Save, possibly, Curtis LeMay, I can't think of a single figure reviled or even mocked for excessive warmongering. Meanwhile, the ground is littered with dovish Democrats, from McGovern to McCarthy to Dean. Scoop Jackson, for no particular reason, is far more revered than William Fulbright. It's a sick and twisted tendency, and it manifests constantly, as in the Fineman column discussed earlier today, where McCain's poor accuracy in evaluating foreign policy outcomes is ignored and his enduring hawkishness and "moral seriousness" grant him the status of wise old national security man.
To keep this from being too unrelentingly pessimistic: Iraq is an opportunity. There just needs to be follow-up. If Democrats successfully close out the war and then let the right wing recapture the national security discourse, they'll end up tarred, feathered, and publicly trashed once again. But if they end the war, continue investing in the progressive national security infrastructure, and systematically work to turn the public's disgust with Iraq into a larger critique of warmongering imperialistic overreach, you could see the beginning of a more durable advantage for the Left. There are a lot of "buts," "ifs," and "coulds" in that sentence, though, and my sense of the Democratic foreign policy infrastructure does not leave me with a whole lot of confidence.
Update: Also, what Kevin said.
May 25, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
The only problem is that the referenced Matthew post is sorta gibberish.
Posted by: Petey | May 25, 2007 12:41:51 AM
Amid all the cheering, I can't imagine that Mitch McConnell is feeling that great tonight. Iraq is going to be a disaster until the 2008 elections, and his party is going to own it completely. He'll spend the next 18 months trying to figure out a way for this election not to be election 2006, and I think he'll struggle in vain.
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | May 25, 2007 12:49:48 AM
Iraq is going to be a disaster until the 2008 elections, and his party is going to own it completely. He'll spend the next 18 months trying to figure out a way for this election not to be election 2006, and I think he'll struggle in vain.
ONLY if those opposed to the war raise a serious primary challenge to some (if not all) of the 216 House Democrats who voted YEA for continued funding for Bush's War. today was the day, hopefully, where the scales fell from the eyes of Democratic voters who want their representatives to end this war. Succesful or not, antiwar primary challenges to people like Sestak and Wasserman-Schultz and Meek and Mollohan and Hoyer and Murtha and Murphy will send a message. D voters are not purity trolls, they simply want to end the war, right now, and will work, contribute, organize, and vote for candidates who promise to end the war, not hide behind tricksiness and Rules Committee bullshit. "Vote out of office any D representative who funds the war" should become the mantra of those of us who want to end the war. now.
Posted by: mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari | May 25, 2007 1:15:41 AM
You are bound to get horseshit on you when you clean out the stables. The Democrats do not realize that even if the MSM tars and feathers them with the "you don't support the troops" accusations they will only stick in the immediately future! Yes, the polls might worsen in the next few months, but they are near bottom. If they seriously challenged Bush, the debate would be infused with clarity. Clarity and conviction would be beneficial to the Democrats. In fact, this could lead to a serious rebound in 08! Too bad, the congressional Democratic Leadership stepped on fresh manure and got scared. What do you expect from pampered wimps that don't know what a shovel is?
Posted by: jncam | May 25, 2007 1:27:32 AM
Arthur Silber wrote four shaming posts in a row I read today.
"THIS IS NOT PRIMARILY, OR MOST IMPORTANTLY, OR IN ANY SIGNIFICANT WAY ABOUT THE MISERABLE, REPELLENT CALCULATIONS OF DOMESTIC POLITICS, OR ABOUT YOU OR ABOUT US, YOU NEUROTICALLY SELF-ABSORBED, IGNORANT DUMB FUCKS." ...Arthur Silber
Silber: "I saw this confession [ed. of Michael Tomasky] of complete and irredeemable moral bankruptcy via IOZ, who comments:
What's a little death between Super-Delegates? Blood under the bridge. But you know, this is America's war, and to an Iraqi the difference between George W. Bush, Harry Reid, Michael Tomasky, and the soldier holding a gun to his wife's face is really vanishingly small. Each speaks English; each is a coward; and none of them truly gives a damn." ..IOZ
He also also a long discussion of Paddy Chayefsky's Americanization of Emily and a discussion of American Exceptionalism in history and the psychology or sociology of war, which is a specialty of his.
Each to his own, I suppose. Most of my life, I have hated my country every day, and would turn it into a parking lot without hesitation. We are Rome.
I AM, WE ARE EVIL.
First stage is denial. Second Stage anger.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 25, 2007 2:34:53 AM
Hell, I probably went too far, but like I said, I have been in 2nd stage all my life. Third stage is what, negotiation? That is where young idealistic pundits live. Acceptance is the stage where you can get your hands on actual power, and by that time, you are a good Roman.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 25, 2007 2:54:46 AM
Democrats aren't being politically opportunist enough. Yes, many supported the war when it was popular, and they didn't come out against it until the polls had already shifted against it, and there are quite possibly a few hundred thousand lives at stake, but they really need to see this more in terms of political opportunity. And show conviction, as Kevin adds.
Kevin Drum:
I suspect it depends on Democrats making a positive case for withdrawal. Not just that the war is unwinnable, or that it's costing too many lives — both of which seem merely defeatist to a lot of people — but that America will be actively better off by getting out of Iraq. I admit that's a tough case to make, since we liberals have been less than totally candid about acknowledging the almost certain chaos and bloodshed that will follow an American departure.
Not candid with the public or themselves. It's been bullshit through and through, and shows no sign of improving. But suppose they were to be honest about the likely outcome of our leaving Iraq. What would the public think then? That's something liberals don't really want to know. Not enough to be honest.
The public wants out, and the death toll is so high now that they'd likely accept that further bloodshed was bound to occur whether we had stayed or not.
Further bloodshed? An all-out civil war far worse than what's happening now.
Amid all the cheering, I can't imagine that Mitch McConnell is feeling that great tonight. Iraq is going to be a disaster until the 2008 elections, and his party is going to own it completely.
So maybe we're being sufficiently opportunistic after all. With conviction, of course.
Posted by: Sanpete | May 25, 2007 3:53:26 AM
Perhaps someone else has siad this up above. I'm typing without my glassses this morning and I just want to say this without reading everything today. Everything is an opportunity but we are too stupid and afraid to recognize it. 9/11 itself, while a huge tragedy, was an opportunity for this country to step forward as one of the greatest countries in the world. We choose to freak out and reach for the big stick. Had we had some real adults in charge--and I don't actually know any other than a very small circle of people--we could have turned the world's sorrow for us into something great. We could have sboth struck back at osama *and also* reached out to those who offered to help us, and reached out through intenrational gestures of goodwill and made friends where we had only had enemies before.
The thing that pisses me off about the utter degredation of our national and international discourse under bush is that he has shifted the window so far to the right that there is nothing left of what used to be commonly understood diplomatic strategies like
1) reocgnizing that other countries and individuals have rights and inteerests distinct from ours.
2) thinking through our interactions , offerings, and threats in terms of whether they will actually leave us better off than before rather than worse.
3) trying to create situations which the toddlers call "win /win" instead of "kill, crush, destroy.
4) trying to "make friends and influence people" rather than just terrorize them.
aimai
And F*&^ you sanpete: everyone knows that we scrwed the pooch in iraq and that when we pull out there will be a blood bath. Same thing happened when the british pulled out of India. The same thing always happens when a colonial strategy goes belly up. Britain survived. We will survive. Perhaps our amour propre won't survive, perhaps we will be a teeny-tiny bit embrrassed that we let war mongers like bush and sanpete sell us a cost free war. But our country will survive. I will go so far as to predict that Iraq *though worse off than under saddam* will not be *worse off than under the Incompetent rule of the US army*. That isn't because our army isn't composed of very very nice people (it is) but because 150,000 troops can't hold back the flood of anger and fear that our crushing of the Iraqi secular state unleashed. Your plan to have the troops stay there indefinitely, though seemingly actuated by a sympathy for the iraqi people none of your other posts or our actions have indivcated, is utterly meaningless. WE can't stay, and we can't fix the mess we made, and the end result will be chaos and mass murder no matter what we do.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | May 25, 2007 7:08:09 AM
Nope. This doesn't provide bi-partisan cover..the Republicans still own this war. If the Democrats held fast and tight, ironically enough, they'd then own this war (and probably in the eyes of most mor...er..people..from start to end).
And for sure, when the troops came home they'd own the upcoming civil war and all the bloodshed. They don't want to take political responsibility for that.
And they REALLY don't want to take responsibility if the next "terrorist" (I use that term very loosely by the way) attack comes from Iraq. Why the quotes? Because I don't think their goal will be some overarching ideology. I think it'll just be some pissed off people who are looking for a bit of vengence...their pound of flesh so to speak.
But here's the thing. Nobody can, or wants to talk about this in those terms. Nobody wants to talk about the impending civil war, the fact that ethnic clensing isn't just likely, it's probable. Nobody wants to talk that there's a lot of hurt people over there who might want revenge.
Why?
Because when you look at it that way, you can't straight out condemn it. I think it's wrong. Vengence is always wrong. But we do vengence too. We KNOW that one. That seperation between "us and them" is now gone. Doesn't exist. The "terrorists" are us.
And the whole damn Democratic party is too damn patriotic to look at things in that light. What's needed is some good, old-fashioned self-loathing. But that might lose elections as well. No, it probably will.
So unless you want to hand over the keys to the Republicans for a generation, I don't see a choice on this right now.
Posted by: Karmakin | May 25, 2007 8:04:55 AM
Most of my life, I have hated my country every day, and would turn it into a parking lot without hesitation.
Thank you Bob.
For years we have known that the left hates America, but few will actually say it. Bob is just more honest than most. This is the face of the American hating left.
This war is just one of a string of issues on which the left always paints their own country as evil. Civil rights, poverty, nukes....doesn't matter. It always looks like BOB when it's said and done.
Bob, is there anything positive that you can say about America?
Posted by: Fred Jones | May 25, 2007 8:06:17 AM
Furthermore, this horrible horrible choice and situation was probably the ENTIRE point of the Iraqi war from day one. It was always less about anything but domestic politics.
Posted by: Karmakin | May 25, 2007 8:07:04 AM
Hawkishness holds court as the default correct position in national security politics.
Historically, AFAIK, this is not true. It's an accident of the particular circumstances surrounding WWII that we became such a hawkish nation.
It used to be that there was a particularly dovish wing of the GOP, in fact. I remember as a kid asking my dad, who was at the time still under the political sway of his arch-Republican maternal grandparents (who, btw, couldn't stand Reagan), about Vietnam (I couldn't make heads or tails of it from the Encyclopedia article and my mom's response was something to the effect of "well you'll never understand what the Vietnam war was about 'cause it didn't make any sense at all anyway"), and his response was (in all seriousness) -- "Vietnam? that was just a plot by the bullet manufacturers to sell bullets".
Remember, the term military-industrial complex comes from a speech by a GOP President!
Posted by: DAS | May 25, 2007 8:18:58 AM
"Bob, is there anything positive that you can say about America?" ....NO
1 million dead Iraqis, probably another million maimed, 2 million refugees...are we approaching 6 million? Reduced the country to rubble seeded it with clusterbombs and chemicals...for what? Why? Only forty years after Vietnam, and twenty years after Guatemala? Not to mention our indirect achievements like Cambodia and Saddam.
And the supposed best of us are talking about polls & perceptions & domestic politics?
"But golly, we are serious people trying to get things done. We can change it this time, for real & forever."
We are concentration camp guards in spiffy Black uniforms trying to cover out asses. We are Sergeant Schulz. At best.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 25, 2007 9:23:18 AM
Bob, is there anything positive that you can say about America?
I get it now! Fred is positivity life coach!
"You can't just be DEstructive, you have to be CONstructive!"
"Turn that frown upside down!"
'Right after they've finished telling you some tragic story, say to them, "now tell me a positive story."'
Helps those unhappy thoughts just go away! Fred, empty-minded positivity is for politicians during campaign season and salesmen on commission. The rest of us are obligated to look at things with a more critical eye.
Posted by: Tyro | May 25, 2007 10:35:06 AM
Most of my life, I have hated my country every day, and would turn it into a parking lot without hesitation.
Sounds just like Timothy McVeigh, doesn't it?
Bob is certainly not a patriot. Can anyone defend bob's seditious / treasonous statemets? How 'bout Tyro? He likes to make personal attacks, but can he muster what it takes to go on record for his friend bob?
Anyone?
I don't think bob's statement was the offhand remark of frustration. These are dangerous statements and as a patriot, I was compelled to report these statements with a link to to them to the FBI.
All of this ceases to be a fun game when someone makes statements like this.
Posted by: Fred Jones | May 25, 2007 11:07:34 AM
Jim Henley links to Glenn Greenwald who links to Chris Floyd who links to Arthur Silber. Arthur has been eloquent and insightful for a long time, but seems at a peak recently. I am obviously not in their league.
So what the hell do I want? Uhh, Kierkeggaard? I want to move the discourse from the aesthetic/rational to the ethical. Now that can go two ways:
1)Smile on you brother everybody get together try to love one another right now save one life you save the world do unto others as you would have them yadda yadda blah blah blah.
Hasn't changed a thing for thousands of years, but feels personally real good. Real good. And so pretty, even bootifool. I contend it remains in the aesthetic/rational.
2)Metaphorically, grab a 3-wood, close my eyes and start swinging. That's my plan, or maybe Bakhunin's or Sorel's. Ugly & scarey, huh, for myself and others. That is why the great "moral" teachers argue against it. But did Socrates or Jesus or Muhammed or Mohandas or Martin really change the world?
Will my plan work? I don't know, but it is authentic and express my real feelings. I really don't love everybody. Sorry.
I want revolution. Revolution starts with rage and alienation. Partial alienation is just tribalism and reinforces the system. Alienation. Recognizing it, accepting it, expressing it.
With a 3-wood or a blog comment.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 25, 2007 11:32:02 AM
No Fred I am not a patriot. Nor am I having fun.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 25, 2007 11:35:38 AM
I don't think bob's statement was the offhand remark of frustration. These are dangerous statements and as a patriot, I was compelled to report these statements with a link to to them to the FBI.
Good for you, Fred. This means that in some small, slight way, you have power. Don't you feel better?
Posted by: Cyrus | May 25, 2007 11:43:00 AM
One more time, what is it that fred adds to these threads? Aside from a semblence of dialogue (as though talking to a cartoon character created dialogue), can anyone tell me what he adds here?
The answer is obvious.
As to the issue, it is, at the very least, a missed opportunity for the dems to stand up and appeal to the majority of Americans who feel that this administration has criminally mismanaged the war and this country.
Instead, they backed down. There's no other way to characterize it.
Shame on them.
Posted by: ice weasel | May 25, 2007 11:43:21 AM
"I can't think of a single figure reviled or even mocked for excessive warmongering"
George W. Bush.
Posted by: ostap | May 25, 2007 11:54:19 AM
I want revolution
Is this really Tim McVeigh's ghost?
No one seems to want to defend bob's previous statement and, I'm sure, will not want to touch this one as well. Bob is like a pizza in the rain...no one wants to take him home. If bob were a conservative saying this, the uproar would be deafening.
Seriously, how is the silence you give bob's statements any different than the Muslims' silence over suicide bombings of civilians?
Anyone that can't stand up and tell bob that this is wrong is complicit by his silence.
Posted by: Fred Jones | May 25, 2007 12:25:11 PM
everyone knows that we scrwed the pooch in iraq and that when we pull out there will be a blood bath
Aimai, our fearless Democratic leaders either don't know that or are lying about it.
The same thing always happens when a colonial strategy goes belly up.
No it doesn't, and this isn't a colonial context. You can't excuse this with half-baked history. We have a responsibility to do what we can to prevent the bloodbath we have made likely.
We will survive.
We? What about the Iraqis? Shit.
WE can't stay, and we can't fix the mess we made, and the end result will be chaos and mass murder no matter what we do.
This is one way of avoiding reality and responsibility. We can stay, of course, and are staying. We owe these people every chance possible at avoiding the bloodbath. It's astonishing how easily so many liberals accept the bloodbath as inevitable so we can leave. That makes it so much easier, when things are black and white. Well they aren't. There is no certainty that nothing better than a bloodbath can be had, yet many act as though there is. The vast majority of Iraqis still favor a political solution. It's our responsibility to facilitate that as long as possible, as long as there's a chance we can help save hundreds of thousands of lives. Yes, that matters.
Posted by: Sanpete | May 25, 2007 12:27:10 PM
I want revolution
Is this really Tim McVeigh's ghost?
No one seems to want to defend bob's previous statement and, I'm sure, will not want to touch this one as well. Bob is like a pizza in the rain...no one wants to take him home. If bob were a conservative saying this, the uproar would be deafening.
Seriously, how is the silence you give bob's statements any different than the Muslims' silence over suicide bombings of civilians? Anyone that can't stand up and tell bob that this is wrong is complicit by his silence.
Posted by: Fred Jones | May 25, 2007 12:29:19 PM
Can anyone defend bob's seditious / treasonous statemets? How 'bout Tyro?
Fred, I'm not here to fight your battles for you. I'm here to ridicule you.
Posted by: Tyro | May 25, 2007 12:38:54 PM
Hell, Fred, we aren't so different. I am a troll from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Anyone who mentions Bakhunin and Sorel positively doesn't deserve a respone, huh? The biggest difference is that you represent 20-30% of the American people and much of the administration, and I probably would have a hard time finding anyone in the world who would study Sorel from the left. Fuckin Marx made revolution bourgeois.
I was very pleased that Greenwald linked to Chris Floyd. Probably safer to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, and I would be satisfied if the leftosphere got only as strident and passionate as Silber. It would be a start.
Bring on the feebles. I would love to have them to waste their time and resources searching for 3 billion tons of asphalt I have moved to the safe house.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | May 25, 2007 12:40:38 PM
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