The Neoconservative Democrats
The Wikipedia entry for "neoconservatism" has, as part of its first paragraph, this statement:The leadership role of Neoconservatives in pressing for an American-led overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in 2003 outraged many critics.
This is the sort of thing easy to write for people who don't remember the ancient history of eight years ago. Let me quote a newspaper of the time, laying out the Democrats' strategy regarding the anticipated war with Iraq:WASHINGTON - When it comes to war with Iraq, this is not your father's Democratic Party. At least not if your father protested the war in Vietnam, voted for peace candidate George McGovern, or thought Michael Dukakis looked good in that tank.
The coming vote in Congress on war with Iraq is revealing a new Democratic Party, one desperate to shed the antiwar, antimilitary reflex that defined it from Vietnam through the Persian Gulf war.
First popularized by challenges to President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 over Vietnam, antiwar and antimilitary sentiments prevailed in the party for a quarter-century. They propelled the 1972 presidential nomination of McGovern, the Democrats' aversion to force during the 1980s presidency of Ronald Reagan, and their near-total opposition to the 1991 gulf war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Now, those looking instinctively for Democrats to oppose President Bush's drumbeat for war with Iraq are finding few leaders. Antiwar voices are rare, and many leading Democrats - such as House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who opposed the 1991 war - are lining up behind Bush on Iraq. Leading Democrats predict that Congress will pass a resolution giving Bush broad authority to wage war against Hussein with sweeping support from Democrats.
What changed? Three main things: Democrats are weary of being tarred as weak in a nation that prizes strength; the nature of war changed in the 1990s to being about human-rights causes that Democrats could support; and Sept. 11 made it clear that America is already at war.
So. All of these Democrats who supported taking Saddam Hussein out of Iraq (starting with Bill Clinton, the only President to launch a war against Iraq without UN approval) are neoconservatives, apparently. There's more in the article. Remember "make love not war" candidate John Edwards, who bragged about his bitter opposition to the war in Iraq? From the same articleSen. John Edwards (D., N.C.), another potential presidential candidate, is no less bellicose than Bush.
"The United States must lead an international effort to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein," he said recently on the Senate floor. "The path of confronting Saddam is full of hazards. But the path of inaction is far more dangerous."
"Oh," but friends on the Left will say, "they were fooled into it by Bush -- for the only excuse was WMDs." There are problems with this assertion. As one fierce proponent said at the time:[W]ith Hitler in the 1930s, the rationale for moving against Hitler wasn't a doctrine of preemption because we knew he was a bad guy. It was because his country signed the Treaty of Versailles. He was violating the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles did not have an end date on it. It didn't say you cannot have forces for the first 2 or 3 years, or you cannot do the following things. We were fully within our rights as a world community to go after Hitler in 1934, 1935, 1936, or 1937. It was not based on the doctrine of preemption but a doctrine of enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles, and in a very limited time.
What we have here, I argue, as the rationale for going after Saddam, is that he signed a cease-fire agreement. The condition for his continuing in power was the elimination of his weapons of mass destruction, and the permission to have inspectors in to make sure he had eliminated them. He expelled those inspectors. So he violated the cease-fire; ergo, we have authority--not under a doctrine of preemption. This will not be a preemptive strike, if we go with the rest of the world. It will be an enforcement strike.
This particular speaker was arguing with Democrat Senator Byrd, one of the last Democratic hold-outs against going after Hussein in 2002. His fellow senator chastised him over this, as indicated above, and in more detail here.
I've made the same point, in fact.
This particular speaker would have had a hard time understanding the anti-war position of Joe Biden in the 2008 Vice Presidential Debates--since the "enforcement strike" speaker in 2002 above was Joe Biden.
Oh, and remember famous anti-war Al Gore? He's on the pro-war side in that article, too. The issue is that the 1991 Gulf war was, as this article put it, "wildly popular" -- so Democrats were falling over themselves not wanting to be left out of the popularity they expected to come from removing Hussein in 2003. They did not want to look weak like Clinton did with his half-hearted missile jabs at Hussein.
It was only later, when the insurgent issues of al Qaeda in Iraq (and Iran's assistance) made things difficult, that the Democrats and media have gone back and re-invented history -- including their own. And that is reflected in the Wikipedia article, which advances the farce that only "neoconservatives" were pressing to remove Saddam Hussein.
===|==============/ Level Head
This is the sort of thing easy to write for people who don't remember the ancient history of eight years ago. Let me quote a newspaper of the time, laying out the Democrats' strategy regarding the anticipated war with Iraq:WASHINGTON - When it comes to war with Iraq, this is not your father's Democratic Party. At least not if your father protested the war in Vietnam, voted for peace candidate George McGovern, or thought Michael Dukakis looked good in that tank.
The coming vote in Congress on war with Iraq is revealing a new Democratic Party, one desperate to shed the antiwar, antimilitary reflex that defined it from Vietnam through the Persian Gulf war.
First popularized by challenges to President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 over Vietnam, antiwar and antimilitary sentiments prevailed in the party for a quarter-century. They propelled the 1972 presidential nomination of McGovern, the Democrats' aversion to force during the 1980s presidency of Ronald Reagan, and their near-total opposition to the 1991 gulf war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Now, those looking instinctively for Democrats to oppose President Bush's drumbeat for war with Iraq are finding few leaders. Antiwar voices are rare, and many leading Democrats - such as House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, who opposed the 1991 war - are lining up behind Bush on Iraq. Leading Democrats predict that Congress will pass a resolution giving Bush broad authority to wage war against Hussein with sweeping support from Democrats.
What changed? Three main things: Democrats are weary of being tarred as weak in a nation that prizes strength; the nature of war changed in the 1990s to being about human-rights causes that Democrats could support; and Sept. 11 made it clear that America is already at war.
So. All of these Democrats who supported taking Saddam Hussein out of Iraq (starting with Bill Clinton, the only President to launch a war against Iraq without UN approval) are neoconservatives, apparently. There's more in the article. Remember "make love not war" candidate John Edwards, who bragged about his bitter opposition to the war in Iraq? From the same articleSen. John Edwards (D., N.C.), another potential presidential candidate, is no less bellicose than Bush.
"The United States must lead an international effort to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein," he said recently on the Senate floor. "The path of confronting Saddam is full of hazards. But the path of inaction is far more dangerous."
"Oh," but friends on the Left will say, "they were fooled into it by Bush -- for the only excuse was WMDs." There are problems with this assertion. As one fierce proponent said at the time:[W]ith Hitler in the 1930s, the rationale for moving against Hitler wasn't a doctrine of preemption because we knew he was a bad guy. It was because his country signed the Treaty of Versailles. He was violating the Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Versailles did not have an end date on it. It didn't say you cannot have forces for the first 2 or 3 years, or you cannot do the following things. We were fully within our rights as a world community to go after Hitler in 1934, 1935, 1936, or 1937. It was not based on the doctrine of preemption but a doctrine of enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles, and in a very limited time.
What we have here, I argue, as the rationale for going after Saddam, is that he signed a cease-fire agreement. The condition for his continuing in power was the elimination of his weapons of mass destruction, and the permission to have inspectors in to make sure he had eliminated them. He expelled those inspectors. So he violated the cease-fire; ergo, we have authority--not under a doctrine of preemption. This will not be a preemptive strike, if we go with the rest of the world. It will be an enforcement strike.
This particular speaker was arguing with Democrat Senator Byrd, one of the last Democratic hold-outs against going after Hussein in 2002. His fellow senator chastised him over this, as indicated above, and in more detail here.
I've made the same point, in fact.
This particular speaker would have had a hard time understanding the anti-war position of Joe Biden in the 2008 Vice Presidential Debates--since the "enforcement strike" speaker in 2002 above was Joe Biden.
Oh, and remember famous anti-war Al Gore? He's on the pro-war side in that article, too. The issue is that the 1991 Gulf war was, as this article put it, "wildly popular" -- so Democrats were falling over themselves not wanting to be left out of the popularity they expected to come from removing Hussein in 2003. They did not want to look weak like Clinton did with his half-hearted missile jabs at Hussein.
It was only later, when the insurgent issues of al Qaeda in Iraq (and Iran's assistance) made things difficult, that the Democrats and media have gone back and re-invented history -- including their own. And that is reflected in the Wikipedia article, which advances the farce that only "neoconservatives" were pressing to remove Saddam Hussein.
===|==============/ Level Head