Antiwar Democrats

Note well what antiwar Democrats are saying in Congress right now concerning Afghanistan:

"If we are going to do something constructive about Afghanistan, we should have done it seven years ago,” said anti-war Democrat Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif. “We’ve made a lot of mistakes and I am going to be watching very carefully before I am at all supportive of sending our troops over there to get killed"....She added that if Afghanistan “was the right war, it would have been the right war five or six years ago. My fear is we go from Afghanistan to Pakistan because that’s where al-Qaida has run. So is that the next ‘right war’? I say no.”

Apparently some antiwar Democrats believe that, when it comes to U.S. military commitments in the war on terror, the most important things are 1] immediately planning our exit; and 2] getting it all over with fast. News flash: military commitments sometimes take time; if they're important enough, we have to be willing to see them through. And we will never deter terrorists by giving the impression that if our enemies just drag a conflict out enough, we will never be able to stick it out and see something through. If Barack Obama wins, the Lynn Woolseys of the world will gain in influence in Washington. Be afraid.

Re-examining the critics of the Iraq war

Did you catch this? Michael Barone the other day makes an excellent point:"


"The claim is that "neocons...politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have concluded already. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam's regime and al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam's hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat. Unfortunately...the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren't found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was."

Read the whole thing.
Especially important to grasp is Barone's reference to a "narrative" that the left and other critics of the war have managed to impose on our politics. That is, war opponents have gotten a lot of people to accept as a given something that, as he demonstrates, isn't true. Fundamental: conservatives especially in this day and age must fight against such untrue narratives. (another example comes from the 1990s--the Clintons' demand that tax cuts must be "paid for." Tax cuts mean the government is allowing you, thank goodness, to keep more of your earnings. Keeping more of your own money isn't something you have to "pay for." Yet the Clintons got that accepted by many as gospel truth.)

The stalled antiwar movement

Another sign today that the antiwar movement in Washington has lost momentum.
Always remember--national politicians, including senators, always know where the polls stand.
If indeed setting strict timetables on pulling American troops out of Iraq was so popular with the American people, it would be reflected in the congress, especially given its Democratic majority.

Demonstrating little passion

There was supposed to be big antiwar demonstrations in Washington over the weekend. But they draw relatively few attendees.

By comparison, antiwar demonstrations during the Vietnam war era could easily draw over 100,000 participants. Which means that concerning the present antiwar movement, when it comes to passion and momentum...there's no comparison.

There they go again

On the History News Network, the historian Robert Brent Toplin wants to know: how can so many Republicans continue to back President Bush's policies in Iraq? After all, he writes, such support is "sharply" at odds with the "facts" out of Iraq, which he claims demonstrates that the war is a disaster. Naturally, he turns to psycho-social theorizing, that some must see Bush in his position of authority as some kind of savior, or that they have a kind of "authoritarian personality" which forces them to believe in obedience to the men at the top.

There's nothing new about this (as Toplin himself admits)--this kind of psychoanalysis on the part of liberals towards their political opponents goes back to the 1950s. In the 1964 campaign, a number of psychiatrists tried to suggest that Barry Goldwater was off his rocker. It's mainly a sign of liberal arrogance, elitism, laziness, illogic, and to a degree ignorance. Don't feel like dealing with your opponents' ideas? Just assume the facts you like are the only facts, and suggest your opponents are kinda nuts. There must, just must, be something wrong with people who don't believe what you do anyway. Democrats--long-time war opponents, no less--such as Brian Baird come back from Iraq and support the surge? That doesn't seem to enter into Mr. Toplin's thinking. Does Baird have psychological issues? What about Joe Lieberman? What about all the evidence--I've highlighted a ton of it here on this blog--that in fact the surge is working and Mr. Toplin's "facts" aren't all there is to know? Why are politicians coming back from Iraq in increasing numbers supporting the surge, anyway? You'd never know, from Mr. Toplin's essay, that persons like Baird or Lieberman or John McCain even exist, much less the ideas they express.

But then it's much easier to define your opponents as nuts than to engage their ideas.

A constituent a little unclear on the concept of a republic

Our founding fathers always preached that, in our republic, while congressmen and senators certainly needed to represent their constituents, they also must exercise their own judgment, even if the majority of voters in their districts might disagree.

Well. Brian Baird, a Democratic congressman who represents a district near the city of Seattle, was long opposed to the war in Iraq. But recently he visited there, and came away convinced the surge is succeeding and that a rapid pullout was a bad idea. He has said so publicly. Therefore some of his antiwar constituents are after him, which became obvious in a town meeting he held in his district the other night. The congressman, with some obvious courage, argued with some of his critics, stating that he couldn't go against his convictions. That didn't sit too well with a female in the audience: “We don’t care what your convictions are,” said Jan Lustig of Vancouver. “You are here to represent us.”