Never mind Saddam, never mind his weapons of mass destruction that were said to be of such a threat to our country. Never mind all the previous goals stated by various groups which were determined we were going to invade Iraq.
In December 2005 a DLC Idea of the Week memo totally changed and rewrote history when they declared that what happened in Iraq could happen elsewhere in the Middle East.
The exact words:
Idea of the Week: Middle Eastern DemocracyThe United States must continue to use its still considerable influence to broker political compromises and help build national institutions based on the rule of law rather than factional interests.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these elections help vindicate the basic idea that democracy remains the strongest weapon in what is ultimately a war of ideas against Islamist extremism. By this we don't mean democracy as a magic elixir, as Bush administration officials sometimes seem to describe it, but democracy as a process whereby people wounded and fearful after decades of tyranny learn to negotiate, compromise, build up institutions of civil society, and forge a national identity based on mutual respect and free consent rather than brutal coercion.
And if that can happen in Iraq, it can happen throughout the Middle East -- in Palestine, in Egypt, and even in Saudi Arabia.
In the end, that's the just and worthy cause we are fighting for in Iraq -- the cause our troops have suffered and died for -- and we urge Democrats in particular to look beyond our justifiable anger at the administration's many blunders and its stubborn refusal to admit them, and embrace that cause as our own.
That's what our troops died for? That is most likely not what our troops thought during the rush to war in 2003. They thought they were going there to make our country safer.
A Democratic think tank just does not get the right to rewrite history like that.
Sounds a little like a sort of empire building to me.
That same week DLC leaders Al From and Mark Penn sent a strategy memo to party leaders.
From the Washington Post:
Penn and From warn not to be fooled by Bush pollsAl From, president of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, and pollster Mark Penn wrote a strategy memo to DLC supporters last week warning party leaders not to use Bush's problems as an invitation to call for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, or generally to steer a more liberal course that could alienate the middle-of-the-road voters the party needs.
"It is important for Democrats to understand that despite Bush's decline, America remains a moderate to conservative country -- particularly on economic and security measures," the two wrote. While a poll taken by Penn for the DLC showed voters opposing the Iraq war 54 to 44 percent, they warned that "Democratic leaders could be playing with political dynamite if they call for an immediate pullout of American troops."
The memo is the latest illustration of deep divisions among Democrats over the right stance on Iraq -- on policy and political grounds. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who supports a rapid withdrawal starting now, has estimated that half the Democratic caucus agrees with her. From and Penn said the most defensible ground for Democrats is a middle path: rejecting deadlines for troop withdrawal but endorsing "clear benchmarks" to measure progress and hold Bush accountable for the results.
They reiterate that the party must distance itself from "the left", the liberal wing.
The DLC has been arguing since its inception 20 years ago that the party needs to transcend its liberal activists and traditional interest groups to be electable nationally, a message that has rarely varied with any new issue or circumstance. From and Penn say the latest evidence still supports them.
...While the problems of Bush and Republicans have "opened the door" for Democrats, Penn and From wrote, to take advantage of this "Democrats need to capture the vital center and bring an abrupt halt to what voters see as the party's drift to the left."
I think Robert Fisk writing in the Independent UK might have some different ideas for them to ponder. He writes about the
dangers of war in the Middle East with a special warning about Afghanistsn.
he Soviet general at Bagram now has his amanuensis in General David McKiernan, the senior US officer in Afghanistan, who proudly announced last month that US forces had killed "between 30 and 35 Taliban" in a raid on Azizabad near Herat. "In the light of emerging evidence pertaining (sic) to civilian casualties in the ... counter-insurgency operation," the luckless general now says, he feels it "prudent" – another big sic here – to review his original investigation. The evidence "pertaining", of course, is that the Americans probably killed 90 people in Azizabad, most of them women and children. We – let us be frank and own up to our role in the hapless Nato alliance in Afghanistan – have now slaughtered more than 500 Afghan civilians this year alone. These include a Nato missile attack on a wedding party in July when we splattered 47 of the guests all over the village of Deh Bala.
And Obama and McCain really think they're going to win in Afghanistan – before, I suppose, rushing their soldiers back to Iraq when the Baghdad government collapses. What the British couldn't do in the 19th century and what the Russians couldn't do at the end of the 20th century, we're going to achieve at the start of the 21 century, taking our terrible war into nuclear-armed Pakistan just for good measure. Fantasy again.
Joseph Conrad, who understood the powerlessness of powerful nations, would surely have made something of this. Yes, we have lost after we won in Afghanistan and now we will lose as we try to win again. Stuff happens.
This was from September this year, and we now are talking about 30 to 60 thousand more troops in Afghanistan next year.
I wonder what
the "policy shop" thinks about that idea.
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