There can be no other excuse for his recent column entitled “Purge by Taliban Democrats” in the Washigton Times last week and then nationally syndicated. He took the defeat of Senator Lieberman as a “loss for the entire country.” I beg to differ. His hyperbole aside, it was merely democracy in action within the registered party members of a single small state. Or was it?
Thomas seems to try to coin the meme that the anti-war, anti-DLC wings of the Party are “ultra-leftists such as George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry” which he then goes on to claim will lead those on the ultra-left [I wonder who they are, as the people on the left wing of the Democratic Party are about as radical as a spinster’s bridge club in a provincial town] to ensured defeat as did the platforms of McGovern, Dukakis and Kerry. Thomas sees Lieberman’s defeat as a purge of the non-Jacobins. I say if it is anything, then it is a shift of a single policy on the adventure in the Middle East while Osama bin Ladin remains in his palace in Karachi or cave in Tora Bora or in Mekkah, or wherever he is. I see it as a rejection of the DLC, spoon-fed focus group oriented “but the polls say we need a war” crowd enablers of BushCo’s policies.
The DLC free traders, pro-war, pro-Patriot Act, “I’m more electable than you” crowd has had its triangulating heyday. Noone died and left them in charge of the Party. This is our party. It belongs to all Democrats…not one small big business bossed clique. This is also the party of Senator Dorgan, Senator Feingold and Representatives Waters, Conyers and Kucinich. This is also the party where a huge number of nominal Democrats will vote for Bernie Sanders for senator this year. It is also the party of the DLC and the Blue Dogs.
But I digress, let us return to Cal Thomas: in Thomas’ rant, he caled the defeat of Lieberman an example of the “kill[ing] of one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party’s kook fringe.” Rigid? Kook fringe? Hardly!
The meme of the importance of this election is getting tired. It needs retirement of a permanent nature. An upswing of progressive writing and voting is in force. It will soon become a juggernaut and those not on the bandwagon will need wait twenty years, after the disastrous neocon policies the DLC has enabled right themselves and a rehab of those elements can be undertaken. It is the natural political tide: left, right, left, hard right, center left, center right… ad nauseum. Of course those who are mere politicians and able to wear as many cloaks as required will survive. Charmeleons appear to be nearly as resiliant as cockroaches. “Hillary Clinton as the new Vicar of Bray,” if one will. But these are mere politicians, neither statesmen nor authentic representatives of the people, nor even especially brilliant, merely sharp at knowing when to change cloaks and convince us that the coat is not new — they had always really worn it, just not in public…and then change the topic rapidly.
But back to Thomas. He alleges that Lieberman has correctly seen that “the consequences of American failure in Iraq would be catastrophic.” Well, Messrs. Lieberman and Thomas, word to the wise: our policy has failed and the result has been catastrophic. But not catastrophic in the sense I feel they meant. It has been a catastrophe in that it has riled up the Turks, one of our strongest allies for the blank check that the US has handed the Kurds’ attempt to enlarge Kurdistan at Turkey’s expense. Now we see them riled in return at the puppet government in Baghdad and failure of Washington to rein in their extremists. So now Turkey is angry at the US and Iraq as well as Kurdistan…fantastic! Who wins here? Iran. Next, the British occupation in the south of Iraq are not able to handle the massive influx of Shiite refugees from the center and north of Iraq towards Basra and Iranian NGOs take up the slack of relief for the Shiite refugees. Who wins? Iran. Next, Baghdad has a Green Zone and who even knows how many skirmish lines dividing neighbors as Shiites battle Sunnis and the fake Iraqi army that Washington so disastrously disarmed and demobilized. Utter chaos. The numbers of fatalities are so staggering that they no longer are considered breaking new. If that is not civil war, then heaven preserve us if that should come. Who wins? Noone.
Only Iraqi Kurdistan has a semblance of normalcy, yet wardrums threaten in the distance. Most of the Christians have fled their traditional homes of Mosul and Baghdad for unknown parts… No reliable electricity in the country, no potable water, no sewage treatment, a morgue filled with a thousand dead from bullet fire. This is Iraq. And so far, Mr. Cal Thomas, if that does not qualify as a catastrophe, then I do not know what does. It looks as if Iran, if anyone, has won a war between the Baathists and the United States.
The current exposure of torture and mass killings at US hands do not even need be addressed here to cement the point that Cal Thomas is insane, and that Joe Lieberman’s defeat was the loudest warning bell heard by a politician in many a year.
This is the link for Thomas’ rant — WARNING NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART OR THE YOUNG! WASHINGTON TIMES.
Screeching Rats 