Month: August 2006

The next generation of soldiers will not tolerate the bigotry and unfairness and stupidity of the ban on openly gay soldiers. Firing 55 Arab linguists because of the gender of the people they fall in love with is a way to lose a war, not win it. Here’s another sign of the times: an award-winning essay at West Point by a cadet who opposes the policy. Money quote:

"I love the Army and I think that this is hurting the Army," said Raggio, 24, in an interview this week from his new military post at Fort Riley, Kan. "I see it as my obligation to say ‘I don’t agree with what you’re doing.’ I’m not being insubordinate ‚Äî I just think we’re making a mistake here."

And so they are. And one day, when bigots don’t run the GOP, the mistake will be rectified.

A Connecticut reader writes:

I disagreed with Lieberman on Iraq, I disagreed with him on the bankruptcy bill and on social security (I give some slack for cloture on Alito) and most especially when he scolded any Democrats who would criticize Bush’s prosecution of the war in Iraq. That last really set my skin on edge, when a pol sets himself up as the arbiter of what is or is not acceptable in political speech it seems to me they arrogate a bit too much power to themselves.

But the day I knew that I would vote for Lamont was the day that Lieberman started to criticize the voters for daring to vote against him, setting the primary up in effect as a litmus test as to whether [his alleged] deviation from Democratic orthodoxy would be permitted, whether the Democrats were still tolerant of free-thinkers. First, it was an obvious lie ‚Äî many Democrats supported the war in Iraq and some still do. But second, it was Lieberman  attempting to tell us, the voters, the basis on which we should vote. Setting himself up as indispensable (someone should remind him of De Gaulle’s line about the cemeteries being full of irreplaceable men) and stating the terms on which his defeat would have to be evaluated.

The sheer preening self-righteousness and arrogance of this was staggering. Is this really how the man thinks? This is the guy whose great asset is "character?" And then to see the Washington Democratic Party rally around him and this argument. What do they think they are, the Central Committee of some authoritarian party that determines the list of candidates for whom voters are allowed to cast a rubber stamp ballot?

And listening to Lieberman’s speech last night ‚Äî "carry on for the good of the country" ‚Äî was to hear a man who has so conflated his career with public policy that I thank God that someone so mendaciously delusional was never a heartbeat away from the presidency.

I voted for Lieberman in the past. He has become a walking testimony to the need for term limits.

More photographic embarrassment?

"[T]he fact is that Lieberman is one of the most, perhaps the most, pro-Bush Democrats in Washington, in one of the most liberal states, and he only lost by a whisker. I don’t think other Democrats are going to look at Lieberman and say "there but for the grace of God go I." ‚ÄîJon Chait, TNR.

Jason Zengerle reads the tea-leaves. Juicy exit poll data here.
 

For one Democratic reader, this primary was the last straw:

You ask if anyone is crying over Lieberman’s defeat. I am not crying, but I am leaving the Democratic Party. Here’s why:

1) Unlike your intimation, he has been critical of the war’s implementation. Has he been brashly partisan? No. Has he suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome? No. The Dems now think he is no longer qualified to be in the party that he almost brought to 2000 presidential victory.

2) He is for Dems like me socially tolerant and liberal while actively pro-defense. Now the Dems are going to retreat into a repeat of Vietnam — pull the troops out, let a massacre happen in Iraq, and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. The party no longer speaks for Dems like me who want a strong defense abroad with a dose of libertarianism in social issues at home.

3) The Dems chose (again) to run a wealthy scion who can self-finance. I thought the Republicans were the party of privilege, wealth, and exclusion. Apparently, running a wealthy WASP heir against a working-class Jewish guy is OK as long it is in the Dems primary. Pathetic.

4) Lieberman did NOT say criticism of the president was unpatriotic. He meant that the constant partisan bickering, smears, etc. were eroding the president’s standing and that is dangerous. It started under Clinton by the Republicans, but the Dems have gotten pretty good at it, too.

The Dems as a party have chosen to reject someone who works across the aisle. Lieberman is not perfect; no one is. But this was a vote by Dems and the party for more partisan rancor.

Here’s a broadside against the current National Review, from the perspective of one who remembers the old days of Buckley conservatism ‚Äî a place where conversation was as common as lecturing, where questions were as welcome as answers, where idiosyncrasy and intellectual curiosity were treasures, not threats to some smelly series of orthodoxies. Money quote:

[F]or all his gifts of insight and expression, not to mention his hierarchical dominance, Bill [Buckley] was always factually hungry and intellectually humble. He rarely imposed his view at the outset of discussion, preferring to hear from others before refining and declaring his own position. In the dialectic of the magazine, he rarely advanced thesis or counterposed antithesis. His natural mode was synthesis. That is, while he may have been uncomfortable watching James Burnham and Frank Meyer batter each other — and their showdowns in my own staff days could turn into draining Borg-McEnroe five-setters — he was happy to learn from them.

As the dinners evolved, then, they were rarely the occasion for issuing encyclicals in matters of conservative faith and almost always a convocation of the likeminded in pursuit of fresh doctrine. [My italics]

The author ‚Äî a longtime NR alum and board member ‚Äî opposed the Iraq war on the grounds of insufficient evidence of WMDs. I didn’t. I was part of the groupthink problem back then and too susceptible, in the wake of 9/11, to putting skepticism aside. Which brings to mind another sentence in the piece:

From time to time I have reminded NR editors that conservatism means that it’s never too late to say you’re sorry.

Sorry again. But the war against Islamist terror is real. And saying sorry for past misjudgments doesn’t mean denying the real danger that still exists, or being excused from coming up with new ideas and strategies for victory.

(My own contribution to the debate about the meaning of conservatism can be pre-ordered here.)

Give Max Boot points for persisting in coming up with new strategies and ideas. Heaven knows we need some kind of drastically less ambitious but not disastrous damage control.

No, I don’t have a crystal ball, but Dick Morris just predicted a Lieberman renaissance. That can’t be good. All we need is a Johnny Apple profile, and Joe’s burnt toast. I do agree with Morris, though, that Gore’s chances of the nomination just increased – because his spineless former veep candidate just lost. The ironies deepen.

It will be tempting to believe that Joe Lieberman’s defeat in the Connecticut primary means something profound about the future of the war or the future of the Democrats. It may indeed mark a turning point in the public’s patience with the president’s war-management, but we’ll have to wait till November to confirm that more generally. The primary defeat wasn’t a rout, after all. And Lieberman, even among Democrats, was a special case. Hawkish Democrats, like Clinton, have managed to maintain support for the war against Islamist terror, while criticizing the president’s staggering ineptness. Lieberman seemed unable to do this. He appeared more interested in becoming Rumsfeld’s successor than in getting re-elected in blue-state Connecticut. And it’s worth recalling: many Republicans have been more critical of the Bush administration’s war decisions than Lieberman. Lieberman is to George Will’s and Bill Buckley’s and Chuck Hagel’s and Bill Kristol’s right on this. His position that any criticism of a president is inappropriate in wartime is also simply Hewittian in its proneness. At least that’s my instant response to his political demise as a Democrat. I’m not crying any tears. Do you know anyone who is?

(Photo: Bob Falcetti/Getty.)