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Politics : Attack Iraq? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (1798)	9/30/2002 1:04:03 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8683

REVIEW & OUTLOOK The Democrats and War Joe Lieberman needs to rescue his party from the Vietnam generation. URL: opinionjournal.com Monday, September 30, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT The Iraq debate has finally broken out in earnest in Congress, and it turns out it's mostly among Democrats. Republicans are rallying behind President Bush, even the rare skeptic like Dick Armey, but the Democrats are once again being haunted and divided by their Vietnam ghosts. Ted Kennedy is the latest to weigh in, a sure sign of a growing constituency on the left against deposing Saddam Hussein. Tom Daschle's meltdown last week coming out of a meeting of Democratic Senators is another, and Al Gore has broken with his hawkish past with so much partisan passion that even his acolytes at The New Republic have had to sue for divorce. What we have here is the re-emergence of the foreign-policy wing that kept the Democratic Party in the Presidential wilderness for a generation. With the collapse of the Cold War, this mentality once known as anti-anti-Communism was supposed to have vanished for good. Bill Clinton was often willing to use military power as President, albeit sometimes fecklessly, and in the 2000 campaign Mr. Gore arguably ran to the right of George W. Bush in urging a forceful U.S. role in the world. After September 11 especially, most Democrats united behind the anti-terror campaign. But the prospect of war with Iraq seems to have revived all of the old fear and loathing. The revolt began among the party's intellectual and media elites and then spread to its activists in Hollywood and at the grassroots. With funders like Barbra Streisand sending a letter to Capitol Hill saying that Mr. Bush is a greater danger than Saddam Hussein, it was only a matter of time before many elected Democrats returned to their dovish, Vietnam-era roots. (Think it's unfair to mention Hollywood? One of Mr. Gore's speech advisers was reportedly none other than director Rob Reiner. This does not bring to mind Dean Acheson.) In many cases, let us concede, this is a matter of sincere if misguided conviction. Congressmen David Bonior and Jim McDermott traveled to Iraq last week, for example, much as they gave the benefit of the doubt to Communists in Central America in the 1980s. Yesterday Mr. Bonior did the morning talk circuit from Baghdad, assuring Americans that the Iraqis had promised to allow weapons inspectors "unrestricted, unfettered" access so long as their sovereignty was respected. Mr. Bonior also believed the Sandinistas wanted democracy in Nicaragua. A cadre of liberal suspects (including Ed Asner and Tom Hayden) took out an antiwar ad in the New York Times recently to assert that "nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers." This too echoes of the Cold War, when these same voices always worried more about American than Soviet behavior. Today the main focus of their moral outrage isn't Saddam's use of terror weapons but U.S. "coercion." Mr. Gore once rejected this kind of thinking, but in his speech last week he embraced it by noting that the U.S. has taken the world's goodwill after September 11 "and converted it into anger and apprehension aimed much more at the United States than at the terrorist network." Mr. Gore also scored Mr. Bush for an "attack on fundamental Constitutional rights" and for a security strategy "glorifying the notion of dominance." Most remarkably, he none too subtly compared Mr. Bush's strategy of pre-emption to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The Gore Democrats are now anti-anti-Saddam. This may all play well with the left wing of the Democratic Party but it runs the risk of alienating the broader electorate. In the wake of Vietnam, voters refused to elect a liberal Democrat to the White House until the Berlin Wall fell, and every poll shows they still trust Republicans over Democrats by a huge margin on foreign affairs. This didn't matter when foreign policy wasn't a cutting issue, but since September 11 it is back to the fore. The Vietnam impulse may already be hurting Democratic candidates for the Senate this year, especially Minnesota incumbent Paul Wellstone, who nearly always opposes higher military spending. But it is bound to have an even larger impact at the Presidential level. A Democrat who isn't credible on national security will have only a McGovern's chance of winning in 2004. It's true that an Iraq war could go badly, and Democrats will be able to claim vindication. But the history of every conflict since the Gulf War suggests that as long as American leaders don't lose their nerve the U.S. will prevail, and more easily than the left now fears. The American public is willing to give Mr. Bush the benefit of the doubt on this point, with 61% favoring action against Saddam in the latest Washington Post survey. The Gore-Streisand Democrats may yet find themselves watching Iraqis cheer their liberation from Saddam the same way Afghans did from the Taliban. Not all Democrats are falling back into the Vietnam syndrome, of course. Joe Lieberman has notably broken with his former running mate over Iraq, and he now has reason to run for President in his own right if he wishes. Many Democrats in Congress will also vote to support Mr. Bush, and not just for fear of what might happen in November if they don't. California Representative Howard Berman is leading a pro-war faction in the House. These Democrats are going to have to prevail if they want to save their party from another era of national-security irrelevance.