How to Lose
About one thing the squalling Neocon Democrats are consistent. They claim that their positions–centrism and hawkishness–are the winning positions. But they ignore that in both recent elections and recent wars, those "winning" policies brought Democrats and the US only failure.
Which is about all you need to know about Marty Peretz’ latest straw man op-ed, beyond the fact that is filled with nasty name-calling. Here is Peretz’ little bit of wisdom:
Buthe does have one issue, and it is Iraq. He grasps little of thecomplexities of his issue, but then this, too, is true of the genus ofthe peace candidate. Peace candidates know only one thing, and that iswhy people vote for them.
[snip]
NowMr. Lamont’s views are also not camouflaged. They are justsimpleminded. Here, for instance, is his take on what should be doneabout Iran’s nuclear-weapons venture: "We should work diplomaticallyand aggressively to give them reasons why they don’t need to build abomb, to give them incentives. We have to engage in very aggressivediplomacy. I’d like to bring in allies when we can. I’d like to usecarrots as well as sticks to see if we can change the nature of thedebate." Oh, I see. He thinks the problem is that they do notunderstand, and so we should explain things to them, and then they willdo the right thing. It is a fortunate world that Mr. Lamont lives in,but it is not the real one. Anyway, this sort of plying is preciselywhat has been going on for years, and to no good effect. Mr. Lamontcontinues that "Lieberman is the one who keeps talking about keepingthe military option on the table." And what is so plainly wrong withthat? Would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be more agreeable if he thought that wehad disposed of the military option in favor of more country clubbehavior?
Let’s see. I’m sure Peretz would consider me a "peace" Democrat, even though I’m against stupid wars rather than all wars. But here’s what this "simple-minded" peace Democrat who "grasps little of the complexities" of the issues in the Middle East knew, before the war in Iraq.
Peretz, as Jim Leher pointed out in his Roman a Clef, buys whole magazines in order to silence critics of Israel. Lieberman is one of the latter’s foremost defenders What more need be said?
Come on, Peretz, tell us what you really think: â€The blogosphere Democrats, whose victory Mr. Lamont’s will be if Mr. Lamont wins…â€
In the wikipedia entry on â€old-media dinosaur†there should be a link to that column.
I should no longer be surprised by it, but I’m still amazed at the degree to which Peretz and his ilk cling to policies which seemed wrong from the start, and which prove themselves wrong at every turn of events. It’s a willful obstinacy which borders on faith–and religious wars are never pretty. It looks like we’ve been bargained into one, though, red herrings like WMD notwithstanding.
And what about Cokie Roberts’ comments on ABC Sunday. Sheesh, what the hell does she know about the current situation?
The neo con’s see the future this way. They believe that if we stick to our guns we will have some impact on the middle east and then the middle east will become a booming democracy. They see war as a necessity to this occuring. They don’t care if it takes a hundred years.
Some neo cons and bible thumpers have this prevailing attitude that excuses the use of force for the ideal. They don’t understand that democracy would spread this globe without our wars. Why?? because it works. It needs no promotion. But it works when it is time. Getting to democracy is a natural process. Democracy is not the problem or the solution. War, force, is the problem. Capitalism is the head of the monster.
Capitalism without taxes, without constraints is nothing short of the opposite of democracy. Right now capitalism is the fuel running our world. Too much money is made during war times. Peace is just cost effective but it doesn’t make billionaires the way war does.
Thank you for opposing Mr. Peretz. You may be targetted for a smear job, as Hannah Arendt was, by TNR.
Cokie Roberts got it better today on NPR. A Lamont win is a signal for iuncumbents on both sides of the aisle to worry.
Powerpuff
When was Arendt targetted by The New Republic? Was that during her Eichmann in Jerusalem days (1963)? Remember that Peretz didn’t buy TNR until the early 1970s, so we can’t blame him for that one.
Years ago, Michael Kinsley told me that all Peretz got when he bought TNR (for something like $40,000) was the back issues and rights, a bit of debt, and some run-down office space in a lousy part of DC. (Kinsley was Peretz’s first editor, and Kinsley initially did the job while finishing law school.) Whether you like Peretz or not — and I am not a fan — Peretz did built the magazine up from a low. He invested his wife’s money in the enterprise, he found and cultivated good writers, he put a lot of work into making that magazine heard. That fact should be acknowledged.
ats
Whatever Jim Lehrer’s roman a clef says, Peretz didn’t buy TNR to silence its previous voice. Sure, he may have given TNR his own voice and viewpoints, but one thing I know for certain: TNR almost certainly would have died without Peretz reinventing it.
demfrom CT (and roberts) have it right.
if lieberman goes down then the rest of the old nags in the demo stable better start watching out.
i’d be happy to see biden go – he has been an ineffectual senator for ages.
i’d like to see Kerry go – he just occupies his senatorial seat. he has not exercised leadership of any kind, outside pow’s, in his entire time in the senate.
i’d like to see Kennedy go — he’s had a good run but he has failed utterly to exercise the leadership he could have exercised in this second iraq war, excepting a few comments in 2004 to help his junior colleague.
there are plenty others – maybe feinstein, bayh, etc
who the democratic party could do as well without as with.
the point is that there is an inertia in the demo party, in the senate especially, that i think is based on too many senators who have served way too long.
there are lots of talented democrats like lamont who deserve achance to serve their states and nation. i’d love to see’m challenge some of the old nags.
When it comes time for America to have the debate on â€Who Lost Iraq?†you can bet your petrodollars it won’t be the NeoCons who’ll be blamed. This slimeboating of the â€peaceniks†and Fighting Dems is Chapter One in a grand strategy to McGovernite the rational voices of Democrats nationwide.
How can 67% of Americans see their views portrayed as far-left loony? TradMed!
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Had Enough?
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I’d like to thank Marty Peretz and the rest of the cabal of neocon pundits for so decisively putting the lie to the ancient anti-Semitic slur that â€all Jews are geniuses.†What a bunch of maroons.
Orion, we always have to match Senators with their states and not apply a national criteria when it just doesn’t work overall. Lamont works in CT — I suspect he could win in Minnesota, but he would have a hard time getting the DFL endorsement. You just have to learn enough about regional political differences to see the logic of certain choices.
After this, Bloggers need to focus on defeating Republicans. One downed Lieberman is enough of a lesson for now — the influence needs to be focused on flipping seats. The one I think could use some attention is Nevada where Jack Carter (son of Jimmy) is running against Ensign, and has moved up to within 7 points, moved up 5 points between polls. It is a whole different cultural environment — lots of Mormons, American Indians, and the core of the economy is the Casinos. There is a huge working class population that is politically not yet weighty, but should be. The state tends toward a slash and burn economy over time — silver mining and all that — selling out to the Nuclear and military interests.
Recently I read the biography of former Senator McCarran, Dem Senator from the 1930’s till 1954, and who was actually a more vigerous Commie Witch Hunter than Joe McCarthy. He was also much much more powerful. I’ve been trying to account for demographic changes in the state since those times, and fit a Jack Carter into the picture. I can just see it as hopeful — and thus I think attention needs to be focused on the dynamics of Nevada.
There’s more in that column that Peretz doesn’t know. Look at this bit:
But that isn’t what’s been going on. Since Bush came to power we have refused to talk to Iran. We evidently rejected oput of hand the â€grand bargainthat Iran offered in 2003:
The stubborn rejection by President Bush and his neoconservative advisers of normal diplomatic practice in their dealings with Iran, detailed for the first time here, raises grave questions about the Bush administration’s real motives as it maneuvers through the present crisis over Iran’s nuclear program.
So in fact it was the very opposite–the refusal to deal with Iran before Ahmadinejad was elected President is what has got us in the position we are in today, and Peretz’ â€more of the same†isn’t going to get us out.
Thanks for pointing that out, Mimikatz.
I got tired of Peretz just dealing with his loser strategy for Iraq. Was tempted to take on Lebanon and Iran, but just had no gumption left. So I think you kindly for doing the job.
There were a fair number of us, who, like you, ew, asked what about this and what about that in the run-up to the cakewalk of Iraq. Some of them were hardly peaceniks; they wore uniforms.
And what are we hearing now about Iran? Tehran is no match for U.S. military might, large numbers of the Iranian people are eager to get rid of the mullahs (no doubt true) and they will be ecstatic to see U.S. bombers overhead, the signal to bring about real democracy. Even Michael Ledeen of relentless â€faster, please†isn’t that stupid, Marty.
A very good point, Mimikatz.
Sara, will you be writing more about the Nevada race? Glad to hear that Carter is on the move. A recent thumbnail of him in the NYT Mag suggests that he’s not so much a DLC type.
Of interest on Nevada:
The population is still smaller than most States, but booming (66% increase 1990 to 2000 versus 13% for the nation; 21% 2000 to 2005 versus 5% nationally). That means that potentially there are a lot of new voters to reach and get registered. Related to the pop boom are other industrial booms that fit in quite well with a description of slash-and-burn.
Sara said:
re: NV population growth, i’d be interested to see how many of those new people are coming from California. Everywhere you look in CA, people are cashing out of the real estate boom and moving to places where they can drive less and have a similar standard of living.
george bush doesn’t understand the difference between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims
and this asshat thinks Ned Lamont has a simplistic view ???
how does understanding the challenges and causes of failure BEFORE THE WAR BEGAN count as having a â€simplistic†view ???
I may have a â€Simplistic View†of the crisis in the middle east, but that doesn’t mean my â€Simplistic View†is WRONG
I described very simply and ACCURATLY what would occur in Iraq IN NOVEMBER OF 2001
does that make me a â€simpleton†???
and if I’ve been right on every point, and I’m STILL a simpleton, what does that make the people who have been wrong on every point ???
have we reached the point where the correct predictions are wrong, and the wrong predictions are signs of genius ???
black is white, up is down, ???
is that sustainable ???
jozo sez ???
we’ll have your answer early wednesday morning
TNR ran an article deconstructing Arendt’s argument about the history of the Holocaust in the late 1990’s. I cannot remember the exact date. After 1997. To me, it was a smear job and I cannot say I have read an entire copy of the magazine since. Reading Peretz’ hate editorials in the LA Times is where I learned what kind of person he really was.
Prostratedragon — I’ve been to Nevada twice — on both occassions I wondered why anyone would want to live there — the way I evaluate a place is rather odd, but I look in the Yellow Pages for New and Used Bookstores. If there are very few or none, it is not a place for me. And I don’t care if they are B & N — the number is indigative of literacy.
What I know about Nevada comes from two sources. I’ve read the 1938 WPA Guide Book series on the state (I Love WPA Guide Books)and just recently I read the 750 page bio of Senator McCarren. I had to read it with Rand McNalley laid out on the couch, because of my pathetic knowledge of Nevada Geography. (You know, I live in the land of 10,000 Lakes — actually we have 17,000 if you count the prairie pothole puddles) and a land where war over water is common just is not in my world view. A place where you make your way by poisoning your neighbors cattle so they do not consume so much water, is not something I understand, but it is apparently Nevada History and Culture. It is also the odd mix of strict religious writ — Mormon and otherwise, but a state that has hardly been about Christian Stewardship and Brotherhood. Gambling, legal whorehouses, openness to the Mob and then all the skullduggery about Silver Mine Claims — shootin up Judges and Juries, particularly in murder cases, the whole Howard Hughes Story, — the place is something else. I am certain that those moving in from outstate bring a different culture — and Jack Carter brings the soft Georgia Southern Baptist Culture plus his hi-tech business interests.
I suspect many of our Left Coast Bloggers have in depth understanding of the political turf in Nevada — and of the social and economic structure that might help us use influence to help push Jack Carter those extra seven points he needs.
But beyond that — I think one value of following different races carefully is that we come to appreciate the range of diversity in this country — and figure how progressive politics might work in different environments. We need that sensibility. In the last weeks I suspect we have all learned a good deal about CT — so as Monty Python says, â€Now for something entirely different.â€
Mimikatz, The Iranian proposal was made in 2003 when the Iranians were scared of the â€mighty†US military and before Shooter and our â€evangelist†Preznit got waylaid in the Iraq desert. They have now handed over Iraq to the Ayatollahs with 130,000 of our soldiers as hostage to the 800 mile supply train through Shiite territory that will determine how much food and water they get in steamy Baghdad. The Revolutionary Guard will decide if the US troops get lobster or have to make do with one MRE per day.
And now with the mighty Israeli IDF unable to stop Hezbollah rockets despite urgent Pentagon airlift of bunker busters, every radical Shiite Sheikh from Moqtada Sadr to other wannabes wants to be the next Hassan Nasrallah. Hey, even Zawahiri in a cave wants to be on that march.
Iran is quite happy these days to sit back and thumb their nose at Shooter. Which is exactly what they have done with the UN resolution on their uranium enrichment. And while they are hanging out in the souk they are laughing all the way to the bank with $75/barrel of crude. That 2003 deal is long gone!
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