Today’s must-read
Bookworm on May 21 2008 at 7:42 am | Filed under: Democrats, John McCain
Eschewing all domestic issues, Joe Lieberman carefully explains the decline and fall of the Democratic party’s foreign policy:
Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.
This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.
This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”
And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom.”
[snip]
Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party’s lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.
This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America’s moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party’s platform endorsed a national missile defense.
By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy” and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.
Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.
Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
Read the whole thing here and you will understand why Lieberman is voting for McCain — and why you should too, even if you have to hold your nose as you do so.
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Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions.
False. We’re still in Korea, we’re still in the Balkans “peacekeeping”, and not to mention that Democrats promise the moon but often don’t deliver. See Bay of Pigs.
Like many people, Bush didn’t see the benefit in the Balkans. Would the Muslims provide us material help and support for our actions? No. Would Europe provide material help and support for our actions? No. Would The Balkans do so? Yes, but not because of Slobodan Milosec being given luxury treatment at the UN.
After the Cold War was over, the threat was so much less that people like Gore and Clinton could talk big and make great shows about “doing things”, but the ones that made decisive actions one way or another were always Republicans, whether for negative or positive. Nixon’s withdrawal from Vietnam and Bush’s actions that directly led to Saddam’s execution, as opposed to MIlosovec’s peacebed death.
The way I see it: Since 2000, the anti-war zealots of the far left, with funding by George Soros and others, have taken over control of the Democrat party. Whatever remained of the Roosevelt/Truman/Kennedy wing, the “I love America, I’m proud of America, I will defend America” crowd, is now totally marginalized.
Now, Democrats who want to remain in their establishment must support their rabid hate-America-first rhetoric and policies. And the far-left zealots are only getting started. They’ve only just begun to flex their power within Democrat circles.
Eventually the American public will catch on. But not this year. It will take awhile.
I don’t know. Joe takes a rather random walk through history.
As Churchill confided to his diaries, FDR was a backward child in the hands of a professional thug like Stalin, and knew nothing on the international stage. The problem that the Soviet Union was through the fifties, sixties, and seventies was about 80% due to Stalin’s manipulation of Roosevelt – and Truman, into giving him eastern Europe and then helping him rebuild his industrial plant.
Truman got us into Korea and then micromanaged that war as badly as LBJ did Vietnam, engineering a mess: not a victory. He got us there, and then didn’t allow the military to go ahead and win it. There’s also the fact of what a sleazy politician he was in the first place: the only reason he gave a damn in any direction about the far east was because (just like Bill Clinton) his broke campaign got a lot of help from what used to be called the “China lobby,” and thereafter he was pretty much willing to do whatever Chiang-Kai Shek wanted.
Kennedy. Well, Kennedy came across as such a weiner to Khrushchev that Mr. K. felt it would be fine to go ahead and load up Cuba with missiles, the little wimp wouldn’t do anything. If Kennedy’d avoided creating that impression in the first place none of it would have happened. He painted himself (and us) into a corner, and then had to start blustering and rattling other people’s sabers – but he didn’t in fact face down the USSR. What we did was trade withdrawing our missiles from Turkey for their withdrawing theirs from Cuba.
And then of course there was Vietnam, another Korea with no clear end in view, half-assed strategy in pursuit of unknown objectives – even Kennedy realized what a mess he’d perpetrated and was (allegedly) going to pull out in 1964-65.
It’s nice, I guess, that the democrats once upon a time contemplated the use of the military and the idea of American intervention, but I don’t seem to notice it ever amounted to anything other than new and different problems. Their history is one of startling ineptitude, primarily owing to a complete lack of follow-through.
The point in the end is that the Democrat party never changed its stripes after 9/11. Their behavior was a natural and logical, and perhaps even inevitable, product of Democrat philosophies, social re-engineering, and the creation of a huge underclass of bitter, angry, and helpless voters.
Lieberman can say all he wants that the Democrats changed from the happy Gore to the crazy Gore, but crazy Gore wouldn’t have become crazy if the seeds weren’t already planted and ready to sprout. Certainly Lieberman’s connections to the Democrats prevented him from breaking apart from them, even when they were out to get Lieberman. It won’t be easy for him to paint a less optimistic picture of pre 9/11 Democrats because he spent most of his life working with those pre 9/11 Democrats because he believed they could be saved. Unfortunately, they didn’t want to be saved.
Democrats are big on talk but Republicans have the best track record of following through on principle, policies, and promises. Lincoln might not have spoken out against slavery in the beginning, but he followed through on the war and ended up ending slavery. If he had been a Democrat, he would have promised the moon and then quit because the cost was too high or some other new fangled thing came about to interest him. Peace at all costs because war is annoying to Democrats, was seen in Lincoln’s administration and it is seen now, in Bush’s administration.
Obama’s good with the talk too. He promises everything and makes things out to be easily solved if only he was in power. Obama would have acted no differently than the Democrat Presidential runner that was also Lincoln’s top general in 1861, McClellan. Meaning, he would have tried to make a peace deal with the South before the South had been militarily defeated, thus allowing Lee time to launch a counter-offensive that eventually led to Gettysburg and Antietam. Great work by the Democrat master diplomats and peace activists, eh?
Nothing more than has been said, but very organized and well thought out.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/how_cryptomarxism_won_the_cold.html
Lieberman is totally hypocritical on his foreign policy views, as the following article beautifully lays out. http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/05/23/lieberman/
I have never seen a bigger flip-flopper politician in my life. Because he is defending a GOP cause, however, the conservatives aren’t using that favority adjective to describe the amazing shift in his views.
As I said to Danny, any agreement you might have with the pro-Iraqi faction, EC, is purely superficial based upon… well the salon articles you link to, for one thing.
Y, you can shoot the messenger (Salon) or try to refute the factual basis of the piece. Until then, I’ll revel in your hypocrisy, namely that Lieberman’s history of flip-flopping is upsetting to you only when he’s acting like a Democrat. There’s really no way to have a rational conversation with someone who ignores facts and/or treats them inconsistently, depending on which party stands to benefit. You’re worse than a Pats fan…
namely that Lieberman’s history of flip-flopping is upsetting to you only when he’s acting like a Democrat
The claim that Lieberman has a history of flip-flopping is a statement I give no credit to. So why do you still pretend as if that affects my position one way or another, when it is you claiming something I reject as true?
Does the mere fact that somebody denies your claims, make it justified for you to revel in their “hypocrisy”?
No, but the fact that his view of the Vietnam War has changed considerably over the last 10 years should. I guess you are impervious to factual data.
What I’m impervious to is EC’s sense of omniscience and intellectual arrogance, not to mention the zealotry and total fabrications about logical fallacies inherent in your work here.
When you have no idea what Bush’s views over the last 10 years have been concerning the Constitution and when you have no idea of the global strategic ramifications of Iraq via the Petraeus Surge, I am not required by any formal or informal logic to accept your non-factual, biased, and misinterpreted “data” on Lieberman.