Want to be perceived as tough on crime? Go out and commit a murder. Want to be seen as a deficit hawk? Run up the debt as far and as fast as you can. Want to champion civil liberties? Violate them early and often. Need to burnish your national security credentials? Support the biggest national security blunder in modern history.
That, in a nutshell, is the advice Slate editor Jacob Weisberg is offering Democrats in the wake of Joe Lieberman’s no good, horrible, very bad day.
“Lieberman’s opponents,” Weisberg allows, “are not entirely wrong about the war. The invasion of Iraq was, in ways that have since become hard to dispute, a terrible mistake. There were no weapons of mass destruction to be dismantled, we had no plan for occupying the country, and our troops remain there only to prevent the civil war we unleashed from turning into a bigger and more horrific civil war. Just about everyone now agrees that the sooner we find a way to withdraw, the better for us and for the Iraqis. The problem for the Democrats is that the anti-Lieberman insurgents go far beyond simply opposing Bush’s faulty rationale for the war, his dishonest argumentation for it, and his incompetent execution of it. Many of them appear not to take the wider, global battle against Islamic fanaticism seriously. They see Iraq purely as a symptom of a cynical and politicized right-wing response to Sept. 11, as opposed to a tragic misstep in a bigger conflict. Substantively, this view indicates a fundamental misapprehension of the problem of terrorism. Politically, it points the way to perpetual Democratic defeat.”
“Not entirely wrong” about the “terrible mistake”??? Great god almighty, they’s a hurricane a’comin.
Oddly, Weisberg fails to identify these Lamont supporters, or anti-Lieberman insurgents, as he prefers, who fail to take the threat of terrorism seriously; no more does he identify how they manifest this lack of seriousness. And no more does he offer any evidence of how Lieberman’s decision to continue supporting this terrible mistake/tragic misstep constitutes anything other than an act of monumental irrationality. Instead, he enthusiastically makes the case that opposition to someone who supports an action that has demonstrably undermined our national security itself demonstrates “a fundamental misapprehension of the problem.”
This is beyond thick; not only was Lieberman’s fall a consequence of his decision to make a career of attacking Democrats and enabling the Bush administration — and with a float mocking the Bush smooch following Lieberman all over Connecticut, Weisberg’s ignorance of that objection seems more than a bit daft — but when you strip away all the excess fluff, which is virtually the entire column, you’re left with the notion that Democrats are required to endorse every application of force, no matter how stupid, no matter how gravely it threatens our national security, if they want to be taken seriously on national security issues.
Weisberg will never cope rationally with any issue even peripherally involving Iraq unless he finds it within himself to forgive those who managed to identify the war as a terrible mistake a year or two or three before he did. Until then, he’ll find himself locked in the embrace of his own logic: Want to be a pundit? Put down your brain and slowly back away.
UPDATE: More on the hideous effects of brain liquefaction here.
It’s not simply that people like Weisberg can’t admit that he was wrong and “forgive” those who were right. He, Beinart, and other “liberal hawks” want to pretend that all they need to do is acknowledge they were wrong (but for all the right reasons) and that the people who had Iraq pegged as a non-threat from the start are still beneath them.
To storm the shores of rationality, they would need to actually admit that the folks who said going into Iraq was a stupid idea in the beginning were right, and that’s just not going to happen.
Officials Probe Lieberman Web Site Crash
U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman’s campaign Web site remained offline Thursday, and federal and state authori
“Not entirely wrong?” It sounds like they were abso-friggin-lutely, dead-nuts right. Ah well, I suppose it’s hard to retract some things.
And as for perpetual Democratic defeat… I have to opine that Joe’s claim of getting things done has two flaws: (1) they’re not things that Democrats have wanted done (as you point out), and (2) rolling over to the Republicans hasn’t done a damn thing for the Dem’s electoral politics in the past six years either (ask John Kerry).
If there’s a political message in all of this, it’s that a cynical, entrenched incumbent was just ousted for failing to represent his constituency or his own stated principles. Democrat or Republican, we should be rejoicing that the system sort of worked for once. I identify as neither, and just remain gleeful that one of those executive-cowed patricians got some measure of comeuppance.
K
Keifus: yeah, that was a somewhat ungenerous characterization. But this is the guy who described Thomas Friedman and Mickey Kaus as “shrewder commentators” than Eric Alterman because their support for the war was based upon impeccable logic while he was just acting from reflexive Bush hatred. In all modesty, he thinks, he’s just smarter than people who opposed the invasion from the get-go.
Darrel: see above. He’ll admit that opponents of the war were right, but only because they were guessing.
The blog Lawyers Guns and Money suggests Slate has a theme of explaining why Democrats are wrong, but not for the reason why Republicans think they are.
Now that both Lieberman and Cheney think Lamont wants to help terrorists who want to blow up airplanes, this isn’t quite true. Now, simply put, Weisberg et. al. promote Republican talking points plain and simple.
[LGM also noted the amusing attempt of Fraywatch to defend Weisberg by noting a couple other mindless twits share his opinion. With friends like these ...]
Democracy is grand, unless the people stupidly choose people who think you are wrong. This is so even if you are. Darnest thing.