Reply #11: DLC: peace, a "failed or outdated lefty idea"

[welshTerrier2]

The DLC views calls for "peace" in the world as naive ... they view people like Kucinich as the radical left ... who the hell would want to have a Department of Peace that uses diplomacy to build alliances around the world? who would want to have people in our government trying to help the country avoid warfare and balance the hawkish interests of the defense department? why is working for peace a "failed and outdated lefty idea" ????????????????

you asked for substantiation ... here you go ... and while you're at it, please take notice of the disrespect the DLC showed for those of us who protested and tried to prevent the invasion of Iraq ... we said there were no WMD ... we said there was no threat to the U.S. ... and we said that the invasion would destroy Iraq and its people ... the DLC view was that we were just a bunch of baby boomer whiners nostaligic for the days of our youth ...

here's the deal ... either the DLC loses power or they lose the activist (i.e. not just left wing) base of the party ... FUCK THE DLC ...

source: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=251439&kaid=131&subid=192

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The Kucinich campaign is sort of the Unclaimed Freight Outlet of Democratic politics, retailing every failed or outdated lefty idea with a fierce and touching passion.

But Kucinich also reflects a persistent if small faction in the party that helps reinforce Republican claims that Democrats simply cannot be trusted with military leadership or with vigorous defense of our national interests. These come-home-America liberals are in many respects still fighting against the Vietnam War, and tend to react to any prospective use of military force by hauling out the same old signs and slogans. As a Pew Research Group poll recently showed, they are isolated from the rest of the U.S. electorate in their opposition to the war. If allowed to define the Democratic Party's approach to national security issues, they would undoubtedly drag the party back into the electoral hole it inhabited for much of the post-Vietnam era of the 1970s and 1980s.

Antiwar Democrats are entitled to their opinions. In fact, we share most of their concerns about the Bush Administration diplomacy that has made the drive to disarm Iraq such a lonely endeavor for the United States and the United Kingdom, without letting those concerns obscure the national interest in toppling Saddam. But antiwar Democrats do not have the right to claim, as Dean often does, that opposing the war is a matter of fidelity to Democratic tradition, or that antiwar Democrats represent "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

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Some aging baby boomers may continue to view every military conflict as a reprise of the big war of their youth, and some politicians may opportunistically offer them a sort of battleground reenactment of the protests they fondly remember. But for the rest of us, the Vietnam War is long over, and it's time to reassert Democratic internationalism for a new era.