How's that again, Mister Beinart?

Peter Beinart, author of some bizarre novel in which the leaders of the Democratic party are the patriots with the nation's best interests at heart, instead of political animals, has come out with How Karl Rove is losing Iraq.

It seems that, for some reason and by this dark method, Rove the antichrist forced the Democrats to behave in a most unseemly fashion regarding the war in Iraq:

Rove and company immediately wielded Zarqawi's death as a partisan club, saying that, if Democrats had their way, he'd still be loose.

Fancy that. In Beinart's world, the Democrats actually had a workable plan for the capture or killing of a known murderer who had taken shelter in a foreign land. Why the hell didn't they spring it on us, say, sometime during the 2004 elections?

Then the White House and congressional Republicans rigged a phony, vicious Iraq debate in Congress, which saw Republicans call the main Democratic Senate plan (which didn't include a strict withdrawal timetable) "cut and jog"--only to announce days later that the Bush administration was considering something similar itself. All of which made Democrats trying to decide what was best for the country--as opposed to merely their party--look like chumps.

They needed no help on that one.

How many of them actually voted their consciences and still voted in support of anything other than the Republican offering? Can we have a show of hands as to who said "aye" to Kerry's "cut and jog" proposal? Or were the Democrats only offering a little partisan grandstanding, knowing full well that, when push comes to shove, the constituents would not tolerate their betraying the troops by offering hope to the "insurgents".

And, uh... the Democrat proposal did include a timetable, and lacked major contingency wiggle-room against insurgencies regrouping later on, or some such "surprise". Bush's original plan was never based on the freaking calendar, but upon events as they play out in Iraq, with room for adjustment. Slight difference. A little like announcing when a natural birth is going to happen. Yeah, the due date is September 15th, but it's the baby who ultimately decides, not the parents and their funny little book with the numbers in the squares, and the kid says he's coming in August, or just hangin' out in there until almost October. Unless you feel like putting Mom and baby at risk with a little improvised surgery because, well, there are schedules to keep. That would be the Democrats' plan, I guess.

Later in his little piece, Beinart says

From the beginning, Bush has preferred the war on terrorism as a wedge issue to the war on terrorism as a unifying national cause.

Funny, I always got the impression that he pretty much did what needed to be done, and did his damnedest to accomodate the Democrats, even when they were irrational and unreasonable.

In 2002, he staged a fight on the Department of Homeland Security, when a bipartisan compromise could easily have been had.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the DHS supposedly a bipartisan suggestion in its earliest form? Weren't the Democrats compalining about how impossible it was to get the intel and the policing agencies to talk to each other? Wasn't that pretty much what the bipartisan, grandstanding 9/11 Commission said should be done? Didn't the Democrats and the public demand that somebody do something to make sure nothing like the failure of intel which brought about 9/11 ever happened again? Or was that just talk?

He has refused to seek congressional authorization for government surveillance, even though Congress would have given him most of what he wanted.

Ummm... if my memory is correct, about the time the surveillance programs were begun, there was another president in office. I'm pretty sure he was southern, but wasn't it Georgia, not Texas whence he hailed?

In short, he has done everything in his power to alienate Democrats from an anti-jihadist struggle that, without their support, he cannot win.

At least he has the last part of the sentence correct.

If Michael Moore did not exist, Bush would invent him.

And yet, Michael Moore was around, spewing his anti-American hatred on the freaking day after 9/11. The left should be embarrassed by his garbage, and instead they chose to celebrate him. What does that say about Beinart's heroes?

Politics, of course, does not--and should not--end in times of war. But mendacious, blood-sport politics should. Instead, it has emanated from the highest office in the land. And, if we lose in Iraq, it will be a major reason why.

As I read these last four sentences, why am I hearing this song? Three true and accurate statements, and then that one about emanations.

It all boils down to "If Bush would only do what we among the liberal elite tell him to do, even if it goes against everything he was elected to do, then there won't be any 'mendacious blood-sport politics' ever again."

Beinart knows what he can do with that.


Update: David Horowitz and Jamie Glazov have fun with Beinart over his rather lopsided perspective, in this FrontPageMag 3-way.



interview! 3-way interview! you dirty minded people!