Thursday, August 03, 2006

The Crazies

At the end of a mostly reasonable analysis Stu Rothenberg concludes:

Lamont’s victory, however, would not be without its downside for Democrats, since it would only embolden the crazies in the party, a consideration not lost on other Democratic elected officials and strategists.

Lieberman’s defeat is likely to add to the partisanship and bitterness that divides the country and Capitol Hill, and to generate more media attention to grassroots bomb-throwers who, down the road, are likely to make the party less appealing to swing voters and moderates.


I'm not quite sure who these crazies are, but it got me thinking about what crazy is and who actually is crazy. Consider Will Marshall of the DLC.



In 2002 Marshall was involved with the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. As Matt Taibbi wrote:

In addition to his duties as the president of the PPI, Marshall kept himself busy in the last few years. Among other things, he served on the board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization co-chaired by Joe Lieberman and John McCain whose aim was to build bipartisan support for the invasion of Iraq.

Marshall also signed, at the outset of the war, a letter issued by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) expressing support for the invasion. Marshall signed a similar letter sent to President Bush put out by the conservative Social Democrats/USA group on Feb. 25, 2003, just before the invasion. The SD/USA letter urged Bush to commit to "maintaining substantial U.S. military forces in Iraq for as long as may be required to ensure a stable, representative regime is in place and functioning."


Their web site has been disappeared, but here's their mission statement.


Five Friedmans ago Marshall wrote:


Are Dennis Kucinich and Donald Rumsfeld secret allies? You'd think the Democrats' most vocal peacenik and the GOP warlord would have little in common, but both seem to be in a hurry to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. Even with Saddam Hussein in the bag and awaiting trial, that's a bad idea.

If Rummy is from Mars, Kucinich is from Pluto. The longshot presidential aspirant wants to withdraw all our troops now and dump the whole mess on the United Nations. Rumsfeld's exit strategy is Iraqification -- drawing down U.S. troops in this election year and handing off responsibility for security to hastily trained Iraqi forces.

If the U.S.-led coalition was merely mopping up Saddam's diehards, bringing some troops home would make sense. But the Pentagon announced its force reductions back in November, which turned out to be the bloodiest month of the conflict to date as 81 Americans were killed.

...


America has about six months to break the resistance and give the new Iraqi government a fighting chance to survive. It would help if our leaders stopped casting anxious glances toward the exits.



So, after 9/11 he was fixated on invading Iraq. A year after the invasion he was fixated on making sure we stayed in Iraq. And now what does Will Marshall have to stay about Iraq, when he isn't busy defending Joe "lost the plot" Lieberman?

Democrats' fixation on Iraq, in at least one respect, is a boon to President Bush: It distracts attention from the administration's inept handling of the larger struggle against jihadism.



And then concludes:

It's time for America to speak to the Muslim world less in the language of war and more in the common vocabulary of universal human aspirations for freedom and justice.


And a pony.