Reply #16: I must agree [View All]

[Jack Rabbit]

(Disclaimer: I haven't decided who to support, but Dean is still a strong possibility.)

It seemed in the run up to the war that the leading Democrats were going to roll over and play dead in front of Bush and what many of us knew was an unjustified colonial war. True, Kucinich was speaking out, but Kucinich is the kind of idealist who many will ignored when he says things like that. It is an unfortunate truth, but speaking alone Kucinich would have been a Cassandra.

Then Howard Dean stood up to be counted. Dean's credentials as a realist and a moderate were more in order. People had to ask why he was speaking out like that. Dean warned of a quagmire that would have nothing to do with fighting terrorism and would do notheing to make Americans safer.

True, the DLC tried to discredit Dean as a liberal idealist, something he is not. Dean has withstood the attack and it is the DLC that seems to be discredited.

Whether one is a moderate or a progressive, Dean should be given credit for helping to mainstream opposition to the war against Iraq. Today, half of the army's combat forces are tied down in Iraq; al Qaida operatives were not in areas controlled by Saddam before, but they are in areas putatively controlled by US colonial forces now. It an unfortunate situation, but not one that was hard to forsee. Howard Dean had the courage to tell us what he saw.

So far, Dean has reaped the benefits of having been right. The idea that Dean is unelectable for having opposed the war is nonsense. He saw the outcome of the war and showed good judgment and clear forsight. Can the "Blair Democrats" say the same thing? No, especially not Lieberman, who continues to speak as if none of the reasons Bush and his aides gave for the war have been exposed as lies, when in fact almost all of them have.

Whether Dean gets the Democratic nomination or not remains to be seen. However, by speaking out against the war as a moderate and then having the war turn into a guagmire, he has probably guaranteed that the Democratic will take a position that opposes complicating the task of bringing Osama to justice by diverting resources needed to that end to a dishonest colonial misadventure.