leading Democratic presidential candidates - warhawks

[pberq]

Of what use is the Democratic party? The majority of the nation is against the Iraq war, but we are being offerd hard core supporters of Bush's quagmire as presidential candidates.

How can we turn the deomcrats into a true opposition party? Or is that asking for too much in this day and age?


http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050829&s=berman
<snip>
The prominence of party leaders like Biden and Clinton, and of a slew of other potential prowar candidates who support the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, presents the Democrats with an odd dilemma: At a time when the American people are turning against the Iraq War and favor a withdrawal of US troops, and British and American leaders are publicly discussing a partial pullback, the leading Democratic presidential candidates for '08 are unapologetic war hawks. Nearly 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war, according to recent polling. Sixty-three percent want US troops brought home within the next year. Yet a recent National Journal "insiders poll" found that a similar margin of Democratic members of Congress reject setting any timetable. The possibility that America's military presence in Iraq may be doing more harm than good is considered beyond the pale of "sophisticated" debate.

The continued high standing of the hawks has been made possible by their enablers in the strategic class--the foreign policy advisers, think-tank specialists and pundits. Their presumed expertise gives the strategic class a unique license to speak for the party on national security issues. This group has always been quietly influential, but since 9/11 it has risen in prominence, egging on and underpinning elected officials, crowding out dissenters within its own ranks and becoming increasingly ideologically monolithic. So far its members remain unchallenged. It's more than a little ironic that the people who got Iraq so wrong continue to tell the Democrats how to get it right.

[TwilightZone]

1. Perhaps Cindy Sheehan will wake up our side to the realities, as well.

Obviously, the Republicans are paying attention to her and realize that she's a threat to their war effort and that she represents much more than a grieving mother. She represents the not-so-silent majority that wants us out of Iraq and wants the killing and dying to stop.

We have to hope that our leaders are smart enough to see the same signs.

[pberq]

2. A glimmer of hope - Feingold

Russ Feingold has listened.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/
<snip>
That was then, however: this is now. Feingold has thrown down the gauntlet to the hawkish party hierarchs, held hostage by the quasi-neocons over at the Democratic "Leadership" Council, and the base is enthusiastic, to say the least. The country is moving faster than the know-it-all Democratic "strategists" and their policy-wonk camp followers: and even one Republican presidential hopeful is quicker on his feet. When Senator Chuck Hagel, often mentioned as a potential GOP presidential candidate in '08, travels around his home state of Nebraska these days, he hears little else but talk of two subjects: the war and the price of oil. Hagel, like the markets, sees the connection in the aura of uncertainty created by Bush's war and his reckless foreign policy, which, he warned earlier this year, could be "worse than Vietnam."

[pberq]

3. There are many Republicans against this war too

More from Justin's article:


http://www.antiwar.com/justin/
<snip>
Amid all the debate, the name-calling, and the obfuscating fog of charges and counter-charges, what is clear to ordinary folks – Republicans as well as Democrats and independents – is that there are two wings of the War Party, represented by the leadership of both "major" parties. That's how we got into this mess to begin with, and only a break with the political patterns of the past can get us out. What is developing is a populist rebellion of the grassroots against the bipartisan pro-war elites, made possible by the emergence of a new antiwar majority in this country. Half of all Americans now believe the president "misled" – i.e., lied – them into war. A majority want out of Iraq within the next year. A third want out now.