February
9, 2005
The Left's Old-Time '60s Political Religion
By
Austin Bay
The
week before the Jan. 30 Iraqi election, Sen. Ted Kennedy
branded Iraq a hopeless quagmire. "Bush's Vietnam,"
Kennedy bellowed.
"Quagmire."
"Vietnam." "Bush." Indeed, the Massachusetts
senator's dire sermon invoked his fundamentalist faith's
demons old and demons au courant. Sen. Barbara Boxer joined
the snake dance, adding her own poisonous sanctimony.
The
Iraqi people, braving car bombs and waving ink-stained fingers,
demonstrated that Ted is more than a bit "tetched,"
to use the colloquial term. Iraqis weren't going to miss
the chance to damn Saddam's legacy of theft, murder, thuggery
and war.
Beltway
political experts explain Kennedy's action as a tactical
political gamble. See, Bay, ole Ted was simply staking out
political territory. If the Iraqi elections failed --as
the conventional media wisdom said they would -- he was
positioned to "take the moral high ground" from
the Bush administration. "Moral high ground,"
accompanied by appropriate friendly media magnification,
would translate into the political power to dominate the
Bush administration.
It's
tactical, Bay, tactical.
No,
it's sad. It's blind. It's also bitterly small. That's why
I pity Mr. Kennedy.
Jan.
30 was crunch time for the people of Iraq. The War on Terror
is crunch time for the 21st century. We are living in a
moment that really matters, when blood, sweat, toil and
tears fueled by hope and courage can lay the political foundation
for a more just and prosperous century.
With
the exception of Joe Lieberman, the Democratic Party's senior
leaders have either vacillated in their support or been
dead wrong about Iraq. This doesn't bode well for the United
States. Last July, I met Lieberman at a reception in Baghdad.
I told him I wished he were the Democratic nominee for president.
He smiled wryly and said he wished he was, too.
Lieberman
gets it. He understands the stakes and appreciates the risks,
but he also understands the opportunities. He's an armed
liberal in the tradition of Harry Truman and Franklin Delano
Roosevelt -- and, for that matter, John Kennedy.
America
needs the Democratic Party of Truman and FDR -- and that's
a party willing to drop A-bombs and "bear any price"
for freedom on the planet. Instead, the Democratic National
Committee infects itself with Mad How disease, the political
bacillus spread by Park Avenue's Typhoid Mary of ulcerous
anger, "Mad How"-ard Dean.
This
is a serious strategic illness. Symptoms include lack of
spine, especially when sustaining international action to
defeat tyranny and terror. There are some humorous side-effects:
As the disease progresses leftward, particularly among bi-coastal
and academic elites, a desire to recast America as France
emerges.
The
more extreme manifestations include activist nostalgia for
1960s narco-politics, where gray-haired profs with ponytails
rant about -- you guessed it -- "quagmires" and
"Vietnam."
"Left-wing
denial" has become a redundant phrase, just like "left-wing
defeatism." Remember, Afghanistan was supposed to be
a quagmire. Millions would die in the harsh Himalayan winter.
Instead,
U.S. forces and Afghan allies quickly drove the Taliban
from power and Al Qaeda's claim to "divine sanction"
for its war against America went poof. The October 2004
Afghan election ratified the victory.
The
Vietnam War -- so costly and destructive -- was strategic
defense, a Cold War attempt to buy time while avoiding nuclear
conflict until the Soviet Union "mellowed," to
use George Kennan's phrase.
Iraq,
like Afghanistan, is part of a strategic political and military
offensive directed at the dictators and genocidal ideologues
whose design for the 21st century is 12th century autocracy
imposed by death squads, men in turbans and nukes.
China's
Mao Tse-Tung wrote that guerrillas are fish swimming in
the sea of the people. Translation: It takes popular support
to sustain a genuine guerrilla conflict. The Saddmist thugs
and Al Qaeda zealots who kill Iraqi civilians and coalition
troops are reactionaries with scant political appeal. They
are murderers, not soldiers in a wider people's war.
Check
the ink-stained fingers -- the Iraqi elections demonstrated
just how politically marginal these fascists are.
Ted
Kennedy and Howard Dean can't hear that, can't see that.
Saddled with defeatism and blinded by cynicism, their old-time
'60s political religion is now the quagmire.
©
2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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