Today, I read Armando's latest attack on the DLC. Titled
The New McCarthyism: DLC Style, it drew attention to the comments of Marshall Wittmann, a foment Republican strategist now working for the DLC, who gave a columnist a juicy, anti-Democratic, quote.
"If Karl Rove was writing the timing of this, he wouldn't have written it any differently, with the president of the United States expressing resolve and the Democratic leader offering surrender."
Not nice stuff from Wittmann. And worse, fundamentally flawed. He's mischaracterizing the position of Pelosi and Murtha. Neither has proposed fleeing Iraq or the region. Rather, they've both suggested that we move our troops "over the horizon" - still in the region, but not a direct incitement to the people of Iraq.
So where did Whittmann get the misimpression that Democrats want Americans to flee, leaving Iraq to civil war, state failure, and terrorist breeding ground? There are only two places that characterize Democrats' position like that: 1] The GOP, 2] Just About Everywhere In The Media. Even here in the D.U., where a significant minority of posters actually argue this position, people acknowledge that it isn't what the Democratic leadership's strategy. Otherwise they wouldn't be so continually angry at them.
Still, someone needs to speak to Whittmann, soon. If he's going to work for us, he has to recognize that the media lies about Democrats. The position you take against something stupid may very well be a totally fabricated strawman that your fellow Democrats didn't take, set up by reporters just for the purpose of embarassing you both. It's much different than working for Republicans, where you can often get editors to spike bad news just by giving a call to their ownership.
Leftists also need to learn this lesson. Whittmann is a member of the DLC. He does not speak for the DLC. The real DLC position,
Iraq and the Vital Center, can be found on their website. You may disagree with it, but it takes no cheap shots, and is largely spends its time correctly criticizing Bush:
<snip>
If our forces leave before the Iraqis can defend themselves, the result will be a national security disaster for the United States. Iraq will be convulsed into full-scale civil war that could provoke a regional conflagration. The Sunni triangle will likely become home base for the global jihad network, a safe haven for hatching new terrorist plots against our country and our friends. America will once again have broken faith with Iraq's long-suffering Kurds and Shi'a, and the cause of Arab democracy will be set back for a generation.
Democrats should steer a course between two extremes. On one side are those in such a rush to end the war that they don't recognize the grave consequences of an immediate withdrawal. That is the wrong course for America, and the wrong course for our party.
At the same time, Democrats should reject President Bush's habitual tendency to frame the Iraq question as a test of nerve. It is also a test of skill -- a test the administration has badly flunked. The president's plan for victory has a "now he tells us" quality. Though the president was at pains to show that his administration is adapting to changing conditions on the ground in Iraq, he might have made a bigger impression by actually admitting the colossal blunders his administration has made in Iraq -- and announcing the firing of such key architects of failure as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Instead, the president, as he usually does, argued that American resolve is the sine qua non of success in Iraq. But resolve is not a strategy, as the plan released yesterday belatedly acknowledges.
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