Liberals Have Turned Against The War On Terror

by John Hawkins | June 1, 2006 10:45 am

While reviewing Peter Beinart’s The Good Fight, prominent liberal blogger Kevin Drum[1], has, apparently by accident, laid out a pretty good case against trusting liberals to handle the war on terrorism. Here’s an excerpt from Drum’s review:

“One of Beinart’s biggest concerns is that liberals are throwing out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to the war on terror:

A November 2005 M.I.T. study…found that only 59 percent of Democrats — as opposed to 94 percent of Republicans — still approved of America’s decision to invade Afghanistan. And only 57 percent of Democrats — as opposed to 95 percent of Republicans — supported using U.S. troops to “destroy a terrorist camp.” George W. Bush, in other words, has used the war on terror to cover such a multitude of sins that for many liberals the whole idea of focusing the nation’s energies on defeating global jihad (whether you call that effort the “war on terror” or something else) has fallen into disrepute. Just as Vietnam turned liberals against the cold war, Iraq has now turned them against the war on terror.

Now, maybe he’s right about this. I don’t think the evidence is quite as damning as Beinart makes it out to be, but poll after poll makes it clear that at the very least the war on terror doesn’t rank very high on the list of things liberals care about these days.

But — Beinart also makes it abundantly clear that he recognizes just how badly George Bush has politicized the war on terror, misused the military, and made fundamental strategic mistakes of a catastrophic nature. And as I mentioned a few days ago, his prescription for how liberals should conduct the war on terror going forward is decidedly non-martial. It is, frankly, not much different from what John Kerry said during the 2004 campaign, and not something that most liberals would find much fault with.”

So, let’s see what we’ve learned about liberals here:

— A large minority of them think it was a mistake to invade Afghanistan after 9/11.
— A large minority of them oppose using the military to destroy terrorist camps.
— Liberals have turned against “the war on terror”.
— According to “poll after poll,” liberals don’t care about the war on terror.
— Liberals want to tackle the war on terrorism via “non-martial” means (Perhaps Hugs? Singing Kumbaya? Negotiating with Al-Qaeda?”

Well, this does seem to explain why liberals so doggedly seem to oppose anything that makes us safer from terrorism, from the NSA programs, to Gitmo, to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

But, is what we’ve just read a description of people who can be trusted to handle national security? I think not. What Drum is telling here is that the left has become so pacifistic, so “Sheehanized” that they’re simply incapable of standing up to terrorists who want to kill us. It’s sad to see that the party of Zell Miller and Scoop Jackson has now turned into the party of Ramsey Clark and Cindy Sheehan, but it’s the dangerous reality that Americans have to live with. Sadly, protecting America from terrorism is now, more than ever, a partisan issue.

Endnotes:
  1. Kevin Drum: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_06/008924.php

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