The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.

The court scholar serving Hermann of Thuringia.
The scholar

2006/05/09

The DLC talks foreign policy

The LeftCoaster looks at some of the DLC's favored presidential candidates for 2008 and we see them offer the following advice:

Bayh accused the president of mishandling Iran and North Korea while weakening U.S. alliances and the nation's armed forces. He said the war in Iraq has been "tragically, tragically" mismanaged.

So the Iraq War was merely "mismanaged", eh? I wonder what Bayh would advise the President to do about manpower. Right now, the Army has been caught taking an autistic 18 year old. Obviously, they did so because the US has reached the limits of what persuasion can do.

Seriously, does anybody think the Bush Administration just plain forgot to have a national draft? It's been plainly obvious for over three years that a draft would energize the anti-war movement and would cause the war to come to a screeching halt. All of the sudden, the war would mean something to young people in a personal way instead of just being a faraway, "one of these days" possibility.

Sorry, but the "mismanaged" excuse doesn't fly.

Warner said the key for Democrats is to represent a muscular foreign policy that respects and supports U.S. troops; deploys diplomatic, economic, and when necessary, military assets against U.S. enemies; rises to the challenge of global competition; and unites friends and divides enemies — "not the reverse," which he complained Bush has done.

Yet, there seemed to be limits to how far Warner would go. He told reporters afterward that while he hopes the Iraq war is successful, he would consider pulling U.S. troops out if the country did not make progress in coming months on democracy and security.

Okay, but Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army is actively competing with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution for influence within the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. Al-Sadr, as people might remember, is not very fond of the United States being in Iraq and he's very obviously a popular figure within that country. What exactly does Mark Warner plan to do about al-Sadr? What would his response be to an Iraqi demand for US troops to leave?

As the LeftCoaster puts it:

To Warner and Bayh, talking about Bush’s record and holding him accountable for his mistakes is nothing more than “lashing out in anger” and political retribution.

Accountability means nothing to these people. They've got a bunch of clever slogans with no clear thought behind them and they don't intend to hold Bush accountable for anything.

Yeah, okay guys. Great plan. Nice ideas. Way to go.

Yeesh.

Whatta buncha losers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Russ Feingold and John Edwards interest me the most at the moment but I'm not ruling anyone out in 2008, not even Hillary. I'm more interested in new ideas, and a rehash of the Clinton model, whoever it might be, doesn't qualify at the moment but there's a real possibility that things are going to be very different in two years, and that may include some of these possible candidates. And I don't want to generalize about anyone either. If Bayh and Warner deserve criticism for particular things, yeah let them know, and lean on them if you have to, and then let it go, because they're far from the worst and one way or the other they may be needed down the road. I would rather save my ammunition for the Bush crew, and Hastert and Frist and the entire corrupt Republican leadership and their media friends.

I'm a liberal Democrat but I look at the stats and only about 33% of the American people call themselves liberal. Maybe the Democrats are going to have to fight it out around 2010 or so but right now I'm more concerned about what it takes to build a coalition of liberals and moderates and even a handful of rational conservatives.

(It's okay to use some ammunition on Richard Cohen, though!)

Rich Gardner said...

My main point here, is that if someone were to note that I was caling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq and would then ask "Okay Rich, how would you see to it that Iraq didn't then dissolve into chaos?"
I'd regard that as a thoroughly legitimate question. (Seems to me that the alliance between homegrown rebels and foreign jihadists would quickly come to an end and that the rebels would take a prominent position in the new government. The Sunni-Shia conflict appears to be driven more by the US presence than by anything else as there wasn't much evidence of a split until just a year or so ago.) It annoys me that Bayh and Warner don't deal with the equally legitimate questions concerning their proposals, because if someone suggests a new policy, it's incumbent on them to deal with the questions that policy raises.