Read this and guess who wrote it (emphasis added):
[O]ur forces and their allies have toppled one of the world’s most odious tyrants; upheld the principle of collective security; liberated a nation of 24 million; made possible Iraq’s hopeful experiment in representative self-government; and changed the strategic equation in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
These are considerable, and noble, accomplishments, but they could all be squandered if we give up and come home too soon. [… P]rogressives shouldn’t leap to the premature conclusion that we are doomed to failure in Iraq.
Democrats should also bring a sense of proportion to the prisoner abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. [… T]he revelation that some U.S. troops aren’t saints should not come as too great a shock, at least to grownups. By dwelling obsessively on U.S. misdeeds while ignoring the far more heinous crimes of what is quite possibly the most barbaric insurgency in modern times, anti-war critics betray an anti-American bias that undercuts their credibility.
Amnesty International likewise stumbled into the quagmire of moral equivalence in a report that absurdly analogized Guantanamo Bay, where 500 prisoners remain, to the Soviet gulags, where millions perished. The usually level-headed Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was forced to apologize after falling into the same trap. Activists rationalize such witless hyperbole by saying it’s the only way to get Americans to pay attention to what their government is doing wrong. But this is the political equivalent of a compound felony: insulting voters’ intelligence while offending their patriotic sensibilities.
Was it George Will? Charles Krauthammer? Bob Dole? Newt Gingrich? No, it was Will Marshall, co-founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, writing in the DLC’s Blueprint magazine.
I’d like to see some signs of that ceasefire Hillary Clinton called for last month. It seems to me that a good first step would be for the DLC to stop shooting at those in the party who were right about the war.
Update: Billmon points out that Marshall’s suggestion that the Iraq war helped with “the Arab-Israeli conflict” is the same sort of supposed “antisemitism” that the right has been claiming Cindy Sheehan is guilty of lately.
