By Owen Paine on Tuesday May 23, 2006 04:46 PM
Once again Tom Hayden (a man who gives opportunism a bad name, as somebody once said)
shows us -- at The Nation, where else --
what a very awful place SDS/Port Huron types can get themselves into,
given enough time and thwarted ambition:
Democrats are slowly but surely uniting around a plan for military withdrawal designed by the Center for American Progress, a think tank linked to Clinton-era Democrats and headed by former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta.Okay -- but watch closely now as the re- comes into re-deploy:Not all the party leaders agree. Senator Hillary Clinton continues to posture as a military hawk. Senator Joe Biden wants to dilute and divide Iraq into three sectarian enclaves. Neither Senator Charles Schumer nor Representative Rahm Emanuel, who are charged with winning November's elections, have a coherent message on Iraq....
The core propositions of the CAP paper point to a nearly complete US withdrawal in the next eighteen months:
- Immediately reduce our troop presence at a rate of 9,000 per month to a total of 60,000 by the end of 2006, and to "virtually zero" by the end of 2007
- Bring home all National Guard units this year "
There's a lot more window-dressing, but this is the meat of it. So what does Tommy take away from this?
- Double the number of US troops in Afghanistan, place an Army division in Kuwait, an expeditionary force in the Persian Gulf and an additional 1,000 special forces in Africa and Asia
All disrespect aside, there is a significant acceptance of the peace movement's message buried in this centrist proposal.Hey, we won! So for now
The peace movement should also be planning now to make it virtually impossible for presidential candidates to campaign successfully in 2008 without committing to a speedy withdrawal from IraqTotal, final, complete, absolutely no one in a helmet left by... 2009! That's "speedy", Tom? Why yes: anything speedier would be, as Tommy says, "a phantom extreme of 'immediate withdrawal.'"
What, oh WHAT, did Jane Fonda ever see in this guy?
Comments (3)
Hayden's kind of faux-liberal democrat-shilling bullshit makes me want to barf all over my keyboard. Trying to pass of CAP's halfassed "redeployment" horseshit troop double-shuffle as some kind of victory for the antiwar movement is the closest thing to a war crime The Nation has published since it's prowar stance in '04. People like this should be dragged out into the street and beaten with crowbars.
Posted by AlanSmithee | May 23, 2006 9:13 PM
Posted on May 23, 2006 21:13
Where's Abbie Hoffman when you need him?
Posted by Haikuist | May 24, 2006 9:47 AM
Posted on May 24, 2006 09:47
Abbie would be running away with his tail between his legs, too. Just like the rest of them.
Posted by alsis39.9 | May 26, 2006 8:23 AM
Posted on May 26, 2006 08:23