The State of the Democrats
EDITORIAL The State of the Democrats "A few weeks ago, we were doing some work on my back porch back home, tearing out a section of old stacked rocks, when all of a sudden I uncovered a nest of...
...Over in the House, 70 Democrats, a third of their party's caucus, did vote "aye" to such a proposal: a substitute amendment expressing support for an exclusively "diplomatic" solution...
...action against Saddam Hussein will constitute "imperialism" and will therefore "deprive America of the moral legitimacy necessary to promote our values...
...to authorize and sponsor an armed, forceful effort against Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, thereby implying that such an effort is urgently required...
...Our own answers to those questions are hardly a secret, of course...
...David Bonior and Jim McDermott—what with their Lord Haw-Haw pilgrimage to Baghdad and Basra—aren't exactly the Democratic party norm...
...At the same time, neither proposal would have authorized unilateral American action, except in the event an "imminent" Iraqi threat should arise, presumably against the continental United States...
...Reps...
...We note, as well, and are happy to applaud the fact, that sentiment like Gephardt's, though not so candidly acknowledged, seems almost commonplace in the Democratic Senate...
...Meantime, here at home, no doubt the Democratic party will be sorely, constantly tempted to turn its attention to friendlier and more familiar issues than war and peace...
...Then there were men like Sen...
...The Weekly Standard believes that Iraq presents a situation in which traditional policies of containment have become infeasible and therefore dangerous...
...We think preemptive action against that country's weapons of mass destruction is necessary sooner rather than later...
...The country deserves, and at the moment very much needs, to have both major parties, not just the Republican one, engaged full-time— and unflinchingly—in a life-or-death international snake hunt...
...Fringe elements of which are still prepared outright to deny the threat posed by continued Baathist rule and proclaim America the aggressor in the Persian Gulf...
...And our complaints have not simply, perhaps not even essentially, concerned the bottom-line philosophical and practical questions at issue...
...And an even larger number of them cast approving votes for the "Spratt amendment," which blessed near-term U.S...
...Kennedy, who argued, without equivocation, that any preemptive military strike by one nation against another—Pearl Harbor was the example he offered —"flies in the face of international rules of acceptable behavior...
...We have blamed them, instead, for something like cowardice...
...It could kill one of my dogs...
...But it's a serious disappointment, just the same...
...Even where Saddam is concerned, the Democratic party's backbone will be tested many times over the next few months...
...EDITORIAL The State of the Democrats "A few weeks ago, we were doing some work on my back porch back home, tearing out a section of old stacked rocks, when all of a sudden I uncovered a nest of copperhead snakes...
...Yes, too, a certain rheumatoid disapproval for non-humanitarian exercises of American military muscle is still current in the Democratic party's "intellectual" base—in the media, and in the academy...
...Much of what he said was incoherent...
...It could kill one of my grandchildren...
...And it is reassuring, we further suppose, that Kennedy's point of view seems not very widely held...
...Yes, Jimmy Carter still walks among us, vulgar as always, cheerfully accepting a Nobel Peace Prize tendered explicitly as a rebuke to our current president...
...And yes, undeniably, among congressional Democrats, especially in the House of Representatives, there does exist what still deserves to be called an "anti-war left...
...disarmament cam-paign—and held open the possibility of unilateral American force should such a campaign be thwarted or fail to materialize...
...Democratic votes for the Spratt and Levin amendments, in other words, were Democratic votes for nothing in particular...
...And yet...
...One congressional debate, and the split-decision vote that follows it, are hardly an adequate basis on which to cast aside decades-old and well-justified doubts about the Democratic party as a dependable partner in the formulation of grown-up national security policy...
...Byrd at one point compared the president to Hermann Goring...
...A copperhead will kill you...
...A great many congressional Democrats have since declared themselves on the subject of Iraq—during the week-long congressional debate culminating in last Thursday's House and Senate votes to authorize renewed U.S...
...they play all the time where I found those killers...
...Which implies no special urgency whatsoever...
...Zell Miller (D-GA) in the Senate, October 3, arguing for the use of force against Iraq Until now, this magazine has found very little to praise in the Democratic party's contribution to the national debate over a U.S...
...It would be best if they didn't...
...We note, however, that a fair number of veteran House Democrats who 11 years ago voted "no" to the first President Bush's Persian Gulf War—some 15 in all, minority leader Dick Gephardt among them—have switched their votes to "aye...
...None are so perfectly reptilian as Saddam Hussein, but the global landscape remains strewn with copperhead-snake regimes and other such outlaws—and still it is rare to find a congressional Democrat, like Sen...
...We consider President Bush's promise to take such action, with or without the formal sanction of "international opinion," a brave and wise one...
...Robert Byrd was by far the worst of them, wronger, and louder about it, than anyone else...
...Oddly enough, though, we have not found those arguments circulating all-that-commonly, or fervently, within the Democratic party...
...So our principal gripe, and the Democratic party's fundamental foreign-policy problem, has not so much been that they are "wrong" about Iraq...
...I just took a hoe and knocked them in the head and killed them, dead as a doorknob...
...Faintest praise, if any, goes to those Democrats who last week did finally dare to be wrong—and were...
...military action there...
...But nearly twice that many House Democrats directly rejected this diplomacy option...
...On balance, we call this progress...
...It seems only fair, then, with benefit of this fresh evidence, to revisit the charge of cowardice, and ask again: How is the Democratic party doing...
...A clear majority of Democratic senators refused to endorse Carl Levin's "Multilateral Use of Force Authorization Act," as it happens...
...And we find all the most commonly circulating arguments to the contrary singularly unpersuasive...
...Sometime soon, the U.N...
...Neither he nor any other senator so much as bothered to introduce an alternative measure that would have blocked the president from conducting a renewed assault in the Persian Gulf...
...military participation in a renewed U.N...
...Gephardt, indeed, unambiguously calls his 1991 vote a "mistake...
...If and when it comes to war, there will be casualties—and an Arab-world reaction, and other, unforeseeable but surely comparable challenges— and the United States will have to persevere...
...I did not yell for help from my neighbors...
...For refusing to declare themselves about what's right to do, and trying their damnedest to change the subject...
...For shrinking from shared responsibility, with their Republican colleagues and with a Republican president, to fashion a credible American response to what most Democrats have all along conceded is—in Saddam and his ilk—a new and grave global danger...
...For not even daring to be wrong...
...The rest was an embarrassment...
...But the key word here is "fringe...
...It is a point of view, we suppose...
...Here things get tricky, though...
...preemptive strike" against Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad...
...Absent an "imminent" threat to American lives, Kennedy concluded, U.S...
...I did not go before the city council...
...And, yes, there is Al Gore, similarly remote from contemporary relevance, insisting that he could do better than Bush on Iraq (but declining to tell us exactly how...
...I guess you could call it unilateral action—a preemptive strike...
...Security Council will speak its piece on Iraq, or fail to, and the United States will have to decide how best to proceed...
...But that was before...
...That a majority of House Democrats came out this way (and voted against the relatively unrestricted use-of-force resolution that eventually passed) is no surprise...
...An even larger majority of them—29 of 50, including 12 who'd voted "no" in 1991—wound up supporting the final bill...
...The Spratt amendment, like the "Multilateral Use of Force Authorization Act" introduced by Michigan Democrat Carl Levin in the Senate, was a dodge—cowardice all over again...
...Both measures encouraged the U.N...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...Zell Miller, who unhesitatingly and enthusiastically picks up a hoe to kill them...
...You know, when I discovered those copperheads, I did not call my wife Shirley for advice, as I usually do on most things...
Vol. 8 • October 2002 • No. 6
