Bless their hearts, who cares?
Below I’m going to answer some questions asked by the Brittanica Blog (via Instapundit), in the order that they were given at the end of a blog post. To give the background, the author of said blog post has noticed something that the rest of you knew already: based on recent events, the Democratic party never really gave a tinker’s dam about the Iraq War except insomuch as it allowed them to scream about the Republican party. And, even though that party’s leadership has by now pretty much contradicted everything that they have ever said on the subject of going to war, there seems to be a certain… passivity… thus far in the progressive antiwar movement’s response to the Libya situation, too.
Fools, dupes, and knaves, in other words.
Anyway, on to the questions!
Nearly two-thirds of Americans now say that the war in Afghanistan hasn’t been worth fighting, a number that has soared since early 2010. Where are their leaders?
On the Democratic side? Indifferent. On the Republican? Uninterested in losing a war.
Where are the senators pushing for withdrawal?
On the Democratic side? Scared about re-election, large numbers of them (and thus uninterested in anything like foreign policy). On the Republican? Getting testy about the lack of communication from the White House.
Where are the organizations?
Waiting for their marching orders from the Democratic establishment, most of them.
Could a new, non-Democratic antiwar movement do to Obama what the mid-2000s movement did to Bush?
If such a thing were to exist, and if it were to draw from actual, patriotic Americans (as opposed to the Commies, fascists, homophobes, Stalinists, racists, Maoists, misogynists, anti-Semites, anti-Globos, radical deep ecologists, and blackshirt anarchists [that make up the current antiwar movement’s core groups]), I would hope that this hypothetical movement would take as its touchstone for success a group that was just a little more effective than the old antiwar crowd. Like, say, the Flat Earth Society.
And the $64,000 question — though these days it would have to be at least a $64 billion question — could a new antiwar movement hook up with the Tea Party movement in a Stop the War, Stop the Spending revolt?
Only if it was completely derived from the Right and Center. Considering that the antiwar Left has spent the last two years enthusiastically using crude sexual slurs against the Tea Party and the Right in general, I would pay good money to see them try to make common cause now. And they probably will, too: one of the most exasperating things about the Left’s pet fantasy ideologists is their utter inability to understand that their targets have memories…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
It was less anti-war than Anti-R. That is why the whole movement went into blackout mode shortly after November, 2008. They are all-for Government, as long as they run it. The Tea-Party movement is all-against government, no matter who runs it. THAT is why it has been so successful. It really IS non-partisan. It just had to choose a party to be successful with, so it went with the party that historically agreed with it’s platform, even though said party had behaved badly in recent history. They may be anti-something but they aint stooopid enough to dilute the vote by forming a 3rd party (which I personally think is evidence of some kind of divine guidance on a massive scale, this is coming from someone who is nominally agnostic).
I’m sure you are busy Moe, but if you have not seen Bill Whittle’s video called “The End of the Beginning” you should check it out.