THANKS Michael! Great lines -- the pull out left blood on the Left's hands; but in retrospect, McGovern WOULD have been better than Nixon.

The only US president I ever cast a vote for (my first), was Jimmy Carter ... because I didn't like the fact that Ford pardoned Nixon BEFORE a full trial and declaration of guilt. (OK, I also didn't like pictures of Ford in a suit standing on a table, bent over with a football between his legs; nor the many shots of him stumbling off planes.) Today, I'd vote for McGovern, too.

I think that, after Dean gets the official nomination, he'll be fighting back for the center based on Bush mistakes and better reconstruction of Iraq plans. He'll prolly still lose, and not win any Southern states, but it won't be the electoral disaster pre-gloated about. And you'll vote for him ... and maybe Roger will too.

(I hope I inspired you on Pol Pot's Leftist blood, it's really underreported -- wish I could write as well as you just did)

Tom: And you'll vote for him ... and maybe Roger will too.

I don't expect to. He has a hole to climb out of. But I'll throw him a rope if he wants one.

Gen. Clark is neither incoherent nor wobbly. If he puts together a political machine, watch out. I know - been there - seen the man in action!

And Clark might have similar positions in the final nomination battles. These current poli skirmishes are to mobilize the faithful, and get them really motivated. But I don't see how Clark is much more electable than Dean -- the real issues will be a) is Iraq looking good, and b) is the US economy looking good. If yes & yes, Bush wins for sure (?). If one yes, Bush prolly wins. If both no, Bush is really vulnerable ... I call it a toss up.

So US gov't money to make Iraq look good -- by being good, is also re-elect Bush money, as well as help Iraqi people money. And gov't programs (like deficit spending) (HUGE deficits), which perk up the economy in the short term, help Bush look good, and give the unemployed jobs.

Efective policies to get good results to get reelected and keep power. Um, that's how democracy is supposed to work though, isn't it?

I won't be pulling the lever for Dean. But unlike the 1972 election, the 2004 election will not be about the war. It will be about the peace, i.e.; the reconstruction - and that favors Bush a lot less. Dean can win because he can appeal to the biggest voting block: the Independents, and if they believe the Administration is poorly managing the reconstruction of Iraq (look at the latest polls) then they will vote for Dean.

The rest of the Democratic candidates have no hope of winning - nor should they given what we know of them and their waffling, flopping, carping points of view.

Interesting comments on the McGovern campaign, but a word of caution. As one who is old enough to remember that campaign, one aspect often overlooked was just how badly McGovern actually managed his campaign on a day to day basis. When you look at the policy positions of foreign policy, McGovern comes off looking fairly impressive, as noted. But it is difficult to convey the impression I gained from the McGovern camp as that campaign wore on...alternatively stridently anti-establishment, thoughtfully center-left and then stupid-silly utopian.

McGovern didn't really get crushed because of his views on Viet Nam, at least as I remember it. He got crushed because (1) he was abandoned by the Democratic Party establishment, leaving him without much money or organizational support, and (2) he and his camp all too often sounded irresponsible or silly or both. And, in politics, you get 100 feet out of every success and 100 miles out of every mistake. By the time of the election George McGovern, fairly or unfairly, was judged to be lightweight by a substantial number of voters...irrespective of his position on Viet Nam.

And with all due respect, your assertion that McGovern as President would have (or, to put it more fairly to McGovern, could have) intervened in Cambodia seems to be pure fantasy. There was absolutely NO political consensus amongst either Republicans or Democrats (or even popular groundswell) for such an action. Neither McGovern nor Nixon could have mobilized the country at that time for military action in Cambodia. The 'Vietnam Syndrome', as you call it, was actually a massive hangover, and the only cure for a hangover is time...further binging, if you will, is contraindicated.

In addition, it should be remembered that the crimes of the Pol Pot regime were not as evident then as they are in hindsight. Pol Pot had the benefit of a number of Western supporters waging a massive disinformation campaign for his regime...many of them are presently running interference for Saddam: Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky, Edward Hermann, Howard Zinn, etc. I think the unfortunate fact of the matter was, given the circumstances, no President could have mustered the support necessary to save the Cambodian people.

I second Dennis, although being born in '67 I did not know the truth of it. But could you imagine the press and its Quagmire/Vietnam talk just a few years after Vietnam. Compared to now I would imagine it would have been immense.

What Dennis said. Remember, the draft ended in 1972, and the condition of the Armed forces after that was, to put it kindly, 'not fit for service'. It took Reagan's investment in the armed forces to get it back to pre-Vietnam effectiveness, and even that took quite a while.

I must disagree with Steve. The election will only be about "the peace" if Bush allows it to be. IF Dean campaigns about the Peace ONLY, then he will lose in a landslide because it will prove that "he doesn't get it."

Nitpicking about how Iraq should have been handled better misses the point completely that there is a tremendous amount of trouble continuing to brew in the Middle East. It's been brewing for a long time. We HAVE to do something to fix it (playing offense in Afgh & Iraq) because allowing the dictators/regimes to stay in power (playing defense with Iran, Syria & Saudi) will mean that we will be allowing the terrorists to continue with their plans to destoy us.

Bush will probably campaign on the War, but not the War in Iraq. He will continue to campaign on the War on Terror, which does exist, and of which Iraq is only a long battle. If Dean doesn't recognize that, and if he can't articulate his plan for how the war against the terrorists should be handled, then his campaign will surely (hopefully) fail.

"In addition, it should be remembered that the crimes of the Pol Pot regime were not as evident then as they are in hindsight. Pol Pot had the benefit of a number of Western supporters waging a massive disinformation campaign for his regime...many of them are presently running interference for Saddam: Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky, Edward Hermann, Howard Zinn, etc. I think the unfortunate fact of the matter was, given the circumstances, no President could have mustered the support necessary to save the Cambodian people."

Denis --
Chomsky, Ed Herman and any other misinformed bogeyman that comes to mind, had and presently have, absolutely no influence whatsoever among Congress, the Administration, the foreign policy establishment and the popular media.

Michael -- If you want to get a better idea of what the foreign policy of ANY of the serious democratic candidates for president would be, with the possible exception of Lieberman, you should check out the speeches given at the Center for American Progress's recent New American Strategies for Security and Peace Conference. (available online). Rather than trying to look into the soul of Howard Dean, it would be smarter I think to read what people like Richard Holbroke, Sandy Berger and, yes, Wesley Clark, are saying about where American foreign policy should go. And then compare that to what you know and think about Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the present gang.

Jim: point taken. I didn't mean to imply that the election would only be about the peace, rather I was trying to emphasize that it wouldn't be about the war, a la 1972 and Vietnam.

The economy will certainly be a factor, the War on Terror will be too but I worry that a large percentage of Americans will have too short an attention span for the sustained campaign that the War on Terror requires.

I agree with Michael that Dean is a left of center moderate and not a far leftist as portrayed by many in the media.

President Bush is also mischaracterized by the media as a far rightist. Bush is a right of center moderate. The Federal Governemnt is expanding under Bush.

When you compare the rhetoric of Dean and Bush critics with factual reality their biases are the only things that are extreme.

It's true Bush has allowed federal spending to grow right now. Doing anything else would hurt the economy short term and therfore be political suicide. But I don't think I'm being a conspiracy theorist when I predict that if he wins next year, and the economy in fact does improve somewhat, we'll have a big push in a couple of years for permanent Gramm-Rudman style spending caps, designed by a bunch of young eager political appointees who used to work for the Cato Institute and who think we should "use a meat ax to cut government spending."

Bush has been most genuninely right wing in his regulatory appointees, almost all of whom used to be lobbyists for the firms they are now in charge of regulating, and how make a hundred important little decisions a week that nobody ever hears about.

"I don't expect to. He has a hole to climb out of. But I'll throw him a rope if he wants one."

Fair enough; I have no intention of ever voting for the fellow, but there have been some indications that the public drive to the center among the Democratic candidates is finally beginning (which, seeing as I'm a centrist-rightist, is something that I approve of, so of course I think that it's wise of them). If this is a real trend, then we're all going to be in better shape for the actual election than I expected, and certainly in better shape than I feared.

Dennis is right, if the U.S. had withdrawn from Vietnam there would have been absolutely no public or political consensus to return to Southeast Asia to intervene in Cambodia. I just can't see it happening regardless of who was in the White House.

The problem I have with Dean is more with his supporters than with what he's saying. He may be talking about Iraqi reconstruction and nation-building, but many in the Angry Left would like nothing more than to turn the whole thing over to the UN and cut-and-run--something that would be disastrous for both the U.S. and Iraq over the long run. If Dean is elected how long will he be able to resist the demands of his base?

The conventional thinking is that the toughest Dem nominee for Bush to beat would be Lieberman, who supported our invasion of Iraq. And that while Dean is more exciting, he can't win because he's seen as a far-left extremist.

But I have to say, Dean had a Sister Souljah moment at the debate last night. By not backing down from his Confederate flag comment, he's just increased his stock dramatically with Democratic-leaning independents who are tired of weaklings who flinch when challenged by the politically correct Democratic establishment.

He's getting a reputation as a straight talker who doesn't shape his opinions according to daily polls, unlike cotton candy candidates like Kerry. That's why Americans like George Bush, and a growing reputation as an independent thinker who can stand up to the race bullies can only help Dean with Democrats, independents and even some Republicans.

This, combined with his gutsy stand against gun control, can only help Dean move toward the center in voter's minds.

And, by the way, Dean's comments are very smart. Democrats can not win the presidency without the votes of white working-class males throughout the nation, as well as the South. His pickup truck comments appeal to these voters as much in Washington state as in South Carolina.

By the way, I'm a Republican who plans to vote for Bush.

Before 9/11 I was pretty anti-war. If I had been old enough at the time, I would probably would have voted for McGovern. That might have been a mistake. Sometimes he says the most outrageous things. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Former U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern charged Wednesday that President Bush intends to invade North Korea and Iran after finishing with Iraq.

Even now, these wars are being planned by the current administration," McGovern said. "I'm positive, based on conversations with people close to the White House, that plans are in place for the next invasions."...

...McGovern compared the action in Iraq to Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor

I just can’t find anything to like about Dean. He’s jumped on the ‘hate Bush’ bandwagon, and he’s not exactly anti-fascist. He’s not friendly with the Saudis yet, but every US president, Democrat and Republican, has been since those oil fields were built. Unlike Lieberman, Dean has given no real indication that he would follow a different path.

I liked Clark, but he’s become so inconsistent lately – and he gets this ‘deer in the headlights’ look in his eyes that’s very disconcerting in a General. He was a war hero, McGovern was a war hero – I’m starting to think that this has nothing to do with someone’s actions as president.

Hello,

I must respectfully submit the following:

I have no idea if Dean would be a good candidate and President when it comes to the Terror War. But besides that point, the rest of Michael's post appears to be pure fantasy.

During the Tet offensive, the Viet Cong lost half its soldiers. They lost most of the rest in a 1972 offensive fighting mostly against the South Vietnamese army (with American air bombardment).

After we pulled out and refused to funding for the South Vietnamese army, the North Vietnamese Army invaded and took over the country. Maybe it would have been better to pull out sooner, but thats not obvious since the Viet Cong was more or less gone anyway.

Ultimately, Vietnam was a war fought between us and the Russians via proxy. There is little reason to believe that if we would have invaded Cambodia, the Russians (and Vietnamese?) would have let us do it without putting up a fight. This would have given us another war just like the later stages of Vietnam. Of course when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia they won easily. No major power had a reason to resit them, both sides of the fight were already communist (of a sort).

Interesting parallel to the current situation. We are currently not really fighting Iraq, we are fighting a proxy war against Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia who are funding people to fight us. This is really turning into another Vietnam in that sense. This leaves me with two conclusions:

1) I think we will ultimately win this proxy war just like we more or less won the Vietnam war - prior to the 1974 invasion. Once we pull out, I doubt the Iranians or Syrians will invade to invalidate the result.

2) Our capitalistic system makes oil valuable. This is the only reason the proxies in the war can afford to fight us. Its also the only reason to fight the war at all, since if oil wasn't valuable, the middle east countries couldn't afford to build weapons to be a threat in the first place. So if we can make oil not valuable, the war is won. Ordinary market forces will probably make oil not valuable in a few decades. If we made huge investments in alternative energy now, then we could maybe speed it up by a decade or two. That would still leave a 20 year war.

Sorry, but I'm feeling pessimistic today.

James

Randal brings up an interesting point. How much do we judge a candidate by the people that support him?

Even if Dean is much more centrist than his supporters, to some extent he has to act liberal to keep their support.

Same for Bush -- his refusal to fire Gen. Boykin made the Christian right very happy, even though it gave powerful ammunition to our enemies who claim that our War On Terror is really a War on Islam.

Bush is a right of center moderate. The Federal Governemnt is expanding under Bush.

I prefer to think of Bush as a corrupt conservative -- the expansions of Federal programs he's put forward are almost exclusively public giveaways to perceived key constituencies.

Even if Dean is much more centrist than his supporters, to some extent he has to act liberal to keep their support.

I submit that Dean's record in Vermont does not support this thesis. Dean is renowned for pissing off the Left, then getting their votes anyway -- he even ended up winning a gubernatorial election with a Republican challenger on his right and a credible independent challenger on his left.

Dean will be an excellent President, simply because he is a smart, committed man who is both pragmatic and principled and has great talent both for politics and public administration.

If McGovern had beaten Nixon (yeah, right) that would have set up an interesting election in 1976. There would have been no Gerald Ford presidency which means that McGovern almost certainly would have faced Ronald Reagan in '76. Would the Reagan Revolution have begun four years earlier or was the country ready for it yet? Hard to say.

Jim M,

I wouldn't be so sanguine about Bush's chances campaigning on the War on Terror. The WaPo released a poll today showing that only one in seven Americans believe Bush about Iraq being the central front in the war on terror. That's not good for him. Another terror attack, and he's wide open to (valid) accusations of ignoring the War on Terror. A lot of things can change in a year, but Bush is right now extremely vulnerable on Iraq, terror, and the economy. What else is there? A Dem candidate doesn't really need to propose a brilliant alternative to Bush's policies. When things are going badly, people often want change for it's own sake. And things are going quite badly right now in all of those areas which are Bush's putative strengths. (those of you about to cite the 7.2% jump in the economy, call me in another quarter, or better yet when employment shows some improvement. I seem to recall a 5% jump in early 2002 that went absolutely nowhere.)

But there are siginificant risks in a Dean win.
The Iraqi people, knowing he opposed Saddam's removal, will be frightened away from cooperation with the CPA.
And one day, when the democratically elected leader of Iraq comes for a tate visit with a token of thanks to America for ending the nightmare of the Baath, will Dean refuse it, saying that he opposed the regime change, wanted to elave well enough alone? It would take some balls to tell an elected president that you wish he was still under a dictator's rule.
I wish someone would ask this at the next democratic debate: "Imagine you're prez., the leader of Iraq walks in to discuss continued electoral reforms and to discuss your selection of new ambassador. He asks you if you supported Iraqi Freedom. How will you explain your position. Governor?"

I think that the DNC cut their losses in '72 and they will again in '04. I do not think there was an electable Democratic candidate in '72, and I campaigned for McGovern in '72. I clearly remember when he came to Coos Bay, Oregon back in the days when we had an important primary. I shook his hand while sitting on my father's shoulders, he said to me, "Hello, up there!" I'm not eight anymore, by a long uncomfortable margain, and part of being an adult is making realistic assessments.

If you feel that the Democratic candidate is a good man worth supporting, vote for him. If you feel Bush has done a good job and will continue the management of this country with integrity, vote for him. But don't let the concept "electable" enter into your thought process on election day. The great thing about the ballot is that it is your choice, and you should vote your own decision on that day. Vote for Dean, Nader, Bush, or write in George McGovern, it is none of my business. And if anyone asks you how you voted, tell them that you voted your decision and if they don't like it, tell them to go to hell.

"By not backing down from his Confederate flag comment, he's just increased his stock dramatically with Democratic-leaning independents who are tired of weaklings who flinch when challenged by the politically correct Democratic establishment."

Raise your hand if you think Dean's confederate flag comment seems a tad bit condescending toward southerners. News flash: many southern centrists and/or Christians get slightly irked when liberal northerners assume they're wallowing in some sort of 'solid south,' racist dream. That comment further lowered Dean's image in my view.

As far as Cambodia is concerned, the idea that McGovern would have 'gone back in to Southeast Asia' is just plain silly, not a chance in hell.

"Imagine you're prez., the leader of Iraq walks in to discuss continued electoral reforms and to discuss your selection of new ambassador. He asks you if you supported Iraqi Freedom. How will you explain your position. Governor?"

bleeding heart, no future leader of Iraq is going to say anything to a President of the United States that is not entirely deferential under any circumstances.

The decision of whether or not a candidate supported Operation Iraqi freedom is water under the bridge. If you want to continue to beat up on Democrats, do so on the issue of supporting loans for Iraq, or ask them what they would do differently than Bush right now.

Ellie,

As a white male Southerner, I didn't take it that way. Most of the Democratic establishment treats white male Southerners as something they need to wipe off their shoe. So, surprise, witness the party's drubbing in yesterday's elections. Dean seemed to say we are worth treating as thinking human beings.

And I don't think Dean is saying that all Southerners are Confederate-flag bearing pickup truck drivers. He seems to realize that's just a subset, but still a subset worth talking to.

I have to agree that Dean is a moderate. His voting record shows that. His current views, show that. However, I will not vote for him unless he changes radically.

Why?

He doesn't seemt to understand the true extent of the danger facing Western Civilization. I haven't picked that up yet. I don't think that he is willing to make the risks needed to prevent all out catastrophe.

And because of his supporters. Dean is far more moderate than the majority of his supporters, as was the case with McGovern. If he were to be elected, he would face enourmous pressure from his base that would force him to act in a manner detrimental to the war. Getting away with pissing off liberals in one state is one thing, but fighting off the whole liberal establishment in the country is another.

As for what would have happened if Reagan had faced McGovern is '76, I think he would have lost.

It's revealing that Dean chose such a crude stereotype to depict white Southerners. "Guys with confederate flags on their pickup trucks" is basically just liberal code for "racist redneck hillbillies" which really is how a lot of northern liberals view white southerners. Dean helped make Zell Miller's case that the Democratic Party doesn't have a clue about the modern South.

I think Dean was taking a gamble. He knows the Confederate flag is a fetish for the Democratic establishment, which no longer thinks very much beyond "how can I avoid angering this or that interest group?"

What he was saying was, "Get beyond your simplistic thinking about a symbol and realize that the humans behind it could be some of your staunchest allies if your message was an economic populist one rather than the identity politics which are washing national Dems down the drain." Yeah..I know Gore tried to take that tack, but he's a dull opportunist.

He seems to want to be shocking the Dems with a wakeup call that writing off the white working class is going to cost them the election.

I think a lot of non-Southerners don't realize that the Confederate flag is more of an anti-elite symbol than an anti-black one. Southern whites live and work among blacks much more than most members of the Northeastern Democratic elite.

I'm still going to vote for Bush because he'll wage a War on Terror much more than any Democrat would, but it's nice to see a Democratic able to stare down the witch-hunters.

BTW, McGovern never would have invaded Cambodia in 1975 for the same reason Ford didn't. We were deep into an era of paralysis because of our self-hatred. In the 1970s, the U.S. was hung over and impotent.

As far as I know, Dean is trying to pick up southern votes, as many as possible. How many southerners drive around with a confederate flag in their window? Here in the heart of Dixie (SC), I see a few, but not all that many. Does Dean want mainstream southern democrat votes, or is he shooting specifically for those good 'ole confederates? Is he suggesting that there's room in his 'big tent' for southern racists? Sharpton certainly doesn't think so, and neither do I. Dean wants the vote of your generic, low income, southern white, man. He's just not too clear, apparently, how many of those men are racists (or ignorant enough to fly the flag for reasons having to do with 'heritage'.) I'm a southern woman, and I suspect that Dean used the phrase 'confederate flag' in place of the even more offensive 'red neck, white trash'. Sometimes those stereotypes about northeastern liberals are true.

Michael I didn't read the whole thing yet.
However, a few points.

1) don't what is in Dean's heart as to his positions. However, he HAS TO position himself more and more towards the center, thus the recent comments about supporting Israel building the fence and strike against Syria. Meanwhile, most of his support comes from far left "peacnick" and "indymediots" loons. Is Howrd Dean's team going to do better in the Middle East and with the conflict? Zell Miller thought he was one of the most callow/shallow people he had met while they were both Governors. Whatever you think of Bush his team is 2nd to none.

2) believe because perhaps he is not as in bed with the oil companies that he won't be as "nice" to the Saudis. However, Clinton was pretty chummy towards them, no? And I don't see a catastrophic change coming within the State Department of all the bureaucrats entrenched with the Saudis either way.

3)JFK didn't desecrate the Presidency officially at least? JFK didn't buy the election with the mob's help? And bugging other's offices first occured with Nixon? Not that Nixon wasn't among the dirtiest well before Watergate.

4)

I think Dean is using the bogeyman of the Confederate-flag-bearing truck-driver to throw out the idea that not all low-income white men are racist, so the party shouldn't write them off.

I doubt most Democratic opinion makers will be bright or open-minded enough to grasp the distinction. But the fact that he's trying show he's different from empty-headed, poll-driven, consultant-controlled Dems like Kerry or Edwards.

Here in Greenville, S.C., you see exactly no Confederate flags and, out in the country, you see damn few. But Dean's audience is really establishment types who wouldn't know what a "meat and three" was if it was on the table in front of them.

Markus Rose-

Where Chomsky/Hermann/Clark/Zinn/etc. DO and DID have influence was with anti-war, intellectual and Leftist circles...exactly the first to vocally oppose the war in Viet Nam. I cannot imagine those peoples being mobilized to support intervention in Cambodia in the face of opposition from Chomsky and his cadres. Those circles always looked to the Chomsky clique first for approval. There is no reason to believe they would have crossed him on Cambodia.

And there sure as hell wasn't going to be a groundswell for intervention from the Conservative/Republican circles who had just had the stuffing beat out of them by everyone from Walter Cronkite to John Kerry for being amoral warmongers.

Call them bogeymen if you like, but Chomsky and his ilk HAD and HAVE clout.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

- John F. Kennedy

McGovern is a long way from the Kennedy Democrats. We won't see them again.

I cast my first presidential vote for Nixon in '72 and I would do so again today. (I do recall being drawn to HH in '68 because of his "Happy Warrior" view point). Dean will be just as effective a Dem candidate as McGovern was. He has already apologized (no Sistah Soulja moment) for his battle flag remark. Former president Clinton had more political savvy in his worst moment (offering Arafat a slightly used cigar) than Dean has shown in his best moment to date. McGovern was a very clumsy candidate, Dean appears to have studied McGovern and decided to emulate him.

Dean shows all the political finesse to this pont that a McGovern/Mondale combined clone could hope for. Good luck, boys.

To all people of good will: please view the following cartoon and be prepared to get very pissed off.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=918

Denis the Peasant -- you are correct: Chomsky/Hermann/Clark/Zinn/etc. DO and DID have influence with the anti-war, intellectual and Leftist circles...who make up 2% or 3% of the electorate, at absolute tops.

Your initial post and response is an example of something that I notice a lot of among "hawks" of all stripes: an obsession with politically marginalized ultra-leftists who make outrageous, irrational, ridiculous, stupid, or incendiary anti-american comments. The one common trait that all of these objects of your contempt have is that they have LITTLE OR NO POWER, AND THEY ARE EXTREMELY UNLIKELY TO ATTAIN ADDITIONAL POWER anyplace in the United States outside of a few elite colleges at any time in the forseeable future. This is so obvious, it leads me to wonder why so many "hawks" pay so much attention to them. And it occurs to me that it is part of the effort to impute guilt by association. Thus, we have in this week's Weekly Standard a not-entirely critical or unfair article about the Center for American Progress's recent New American Strategies for Security and Peace Conference that I referenced in my post above. And what do we have as a accompanying illustration for this article about centrist Democratic foreign policy experts trying to fashion a Democratic agenda for the War on Terror? Why, of course, a photo of someone at an ANSWER rally burning what looks to be an American flag!

I know, politics is a tough business, as Zell Miller said about the Max Cleland/Hussein/Bin Laden attack ads that "the right man in the right place at the right time" approved to use in the 2002 Georgia Senate race. I've got to hand it to the rightwing in this country -- they know how to play hardball. Thank god Gore wasn't elected President -- patriotism aside, Republicans would have been holding impeachment hearings by the end of 2001 on the Clinton/Gore military and intelligence failings that led to 9/11.

Marcus,

If by "hard ball" you mean tough on fascism then you got that right.

Markus Rose - If you read an issue of Salon, or the Nation, or some other mainstream left-leaning publication, you’ll find a seemingly endless stream of articles about the failings of the United States, Bush, a couple of nasty quips about the pathetic stupidity of the average American voter (that knuckle-dragging confederate flag waving Joe Sixpack) – but you won’t find a real complaint about a totalitarian state. Ever wonder why?

Who provided the worldview in which totalitarians are always innocent and American liberal democracy is always guilty? Noam Chomsky. He said:

American dissidents ... have to face the fact that they are living in a state with enormous power, used for murderous and destructive ends. Honest people will have to face the fact that they are morally responsible for the predictable human consequences of their acts. One of these acts is accurate criticism, accurate critical analysis of authoritarian state socialism in North Vietnam or in Cuba or in other countries that the United States is trying to subvert. The consequences of accurate critical analysis will be to buttress these efforts, thus contributing to suffering and oppression.

Translated into readable text, he said something like "If you want the poor to stop suffering, target America. American is all-powerful, the ultimate evil. It is the one and only reason the poor are oppressed. That’s your enemy. If you don't destroy it, you have only yourself to blame. Ignore the suffering caused by totalitarian states. They're not to blame. If you point out their faults, evil America will win, and will continue to kill and oppress the poor."

That was Chomsky’s message. Do you believe it? Ayone who knows anything about the modern left knows that they believe it. We are talkig about many millions of people here. The enemy of your enemy is your friend. This idea is the foundation on which the left rests.

Is the left capable of criticizing the faults of any totalitarian dictatorship without ultimately blaming a Western Democracy for everything? If you can find many criticisms of totalitarian states in mainstream leftist publications, your assertion that Chomsky is irrelevant might make sense. Otherwise, it doesn't.

Any Democratic candidate that wants to win the presidency these days is going to have to carry West Virginia.

Markus: an obsession with politically marginalized ultra-leftists who make outrageous, irrational, ridiculous, stupid, or incendiary anti-american comments....it leads me to wonder why so many "hawks" pay so much attention to them.

Perhaps it depends on where you live. In my neighborhood this is without question the mainstream opinion. It is, in fact, the only opinion that is socially acceptable at the coffeeshops I hang out in. Everyone here "knows" Bush is a fascist liar who hijacked Iraq for oil profits.

My circle of friends is a different story (hawkish liberal is the norm for us), and my city as a whole is also more reasonable. But this anti-American jackassery is the face of the left that I see most often. And when respectable newspapers like the Guardian publish terrorist-supporting hate screeds, it kinda freaks me out.

Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson weren't the norm for the GOP over the past ten years. But I still stayed away because of them more than any other particular reason.

No, Mary, I don't believe in Chomsky's political message, either as he presents it himself or in your simplified caricature of it. Although he has in fact critiqued totalitarian states repeatedly, he does so perfunctorily and superficially. His criticism of crimes and shortcomings of the Western democracies is excessive and one-sided. Etc.

Chomsky has a few hundred thousand fans around the world. None of those fans who live in the United States currently hold any political power whatsoever.

The Republicans are likely to control the House, the Senate, the Presidency and a majority of state legislatures and governorships until January 2013 at the earliest. The Democrats are in serious danger of turning into the Whig party and disolving within the next twenty years. Nobody who does hold political power, or who has more than a snowballs chance in hell of gaining any political power in the coming years, reads Chomsky or reads the Nation (few have even heard of either). Why can't you get it into your head that your side WON! The House Unamerican Activities Committee does not need to hold further hearings!!! And why can't you have the simple human decency to stop engaging in demagogeury about groups and individuals on the American far left that are exercising their constitutional right to politically marginalize themselves, just so that you can dishonestly blur the line between centrists, liberal-centrists, liberals, and left-wing radicals. And why you always need an enemy for your political agenda?

Michael J. touches on an interesting point.

I read Tariq Ali's Guardian article and I saw his speech on C-Span last week. Guess what? Every bit of it is Chomsky, and 35 year old vintage Chomsky at that(let's face it, Ali isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer...he has to get material somewhere). Read or see any interviews with Susan Sontag lately? Recycled Chomsky. Mailer, Vidal, Didion? Guess who gave those deep political thinkers their Cliff's Notes?

And please don't try to make the case that much of what Chomsky has been peddling has not entered the mainstream of either the media or our national politics. Christopher Hitchens, journalist, commentator, self-styled liberal-hawk and third-rate Orwell, spent years running around with Noam. In fact, Chris' life these days seems little more than an attempt to erase that affiliation via the Orwell pose he is striking. And he has on T.V. just about every 15 minutes for the last year.

What about Representative Jim McDermott? Every time he opens his mouth, Noam Chomsky completes a sentence. He is in the House of Representatives, voting on legislation, taking trips to Iraq, and one of the people supposedly supplying 'leadership' in the war on terror.

I don't mean to beat this to death, but just because I'm a Republican hawk doesn't mean I look at Chomsky's influence with a magnifying glass. It is very, very apparent on the national level in the media and in national politics. And believe me, I would ignore it if I felt it was prudent to do so. The man is the most stupifyingly dull, inept and verbose writer since Mr. Karl Marx his own self.

My side has won?

Who were those people rioting in Seattle in'99? Who do you think their intellectual Godfather was?

My side has not yet won. We made the mistake of believing we had in '92. We are sadder and hopefully wiser in '03.

Markus tells us to take it easy, that the Leninists are "2% or 3% of the electorate, at absolute tops." I'll heed the advice and keep my eyes peeled for confirmation of this. I hope, as well, he checks from time to time to see whether there isn't another 25% beholden to a vague notion that those sociopaths are the only morally serious voices in the forum. My experience tells me that the latter is the case, but maybe that's because I just finished a career in academia, where, as far as I could tell, half the population views centrism as slightly eccentric and conservatism as an abomination. Let's see, how many people does half the university population in the US represent?

I don't blame you for that one Michael. Many Christians even are put off by their attitudes and rather extreme beliefs. They give Christians a bad name when it comes to politics. Fortunately, Buchanan isn't part of the GOP anymore. His style of isolationism has already gained us a World War. I say good riddance to him. And Robertson as well.

Markus,

I think you protest just a bit too much about the influence of Chomsky, Zinn, et al. They are real opinion leaders on university campuses all over the country. Academics may not be a huge percentage of the electorate, but they certainly influence a good chunk of the traditional media elites (including Michael Moore, the pseudo-anti-elite), who influence a far wider swath of the public than Chomsky or the entire professoriate can directly reach. The reason many liberal hawks denounce Zinn et al. is because they are often quite familiar with the crowd where those idiots have been influential. I had a trial subscription to The Nation (though I rarely read Zinn's essays) that expired in 2001. In fact, just yesterday, I threw away in disgust their invitation to resubscribe.

Also, please be careful how many people you tar with your "right-wing" brush. If anything, the extremism on both sides has revealed a lot of despair and disgust at the Angry Left by those of us in the vast middle, which IMO is fracturing well to the left of center, with longtime liberals now being attacked as right-wingers. The main reason I seem to be moving right is because I'm fleeing the Angry Left.

In fact, it was an old friend, a pacifist professor I once respected, who gave me the first big shove by flooding my email with too many propaganda pieces by Zinn and his ilk during the Afghanistan campaign. But what really pushed me over the edge was a "seasonally appropriate" email propaganda piece he sent in December 2001 about how many checkpoints Mary and Joseph would have to pass nowadays on their way from Nazareth to Bethlehem. This, you remember, was just as the suicide bombers in Israel were hitting their stride. That's what first drove me to LGF, even though I soon enough withdrew in disgust from the LGF comment boards, and now rarely visit the site at all.

I voted for McGovern in 1972 (the year I got out of the Army), and I've never been a right-winger, but I am now a hawk. A lot would have to change before I'd vote for Dean. But I'm not committed to Bush either.

Final note: intellectuals, specifically those in the humanities and social sciences, do tend to be more politically left, sometimes very much so. They also tend to talk loud. Hip urban neighborhoods tend to attract these people too. (I live in Washington DC -- much more establishment; and I work with total squares)

But that doesn't mean these people have any power outside of the academic world.

regarding hitchens -- his popularity as a "public intellectual" has increased tremendously as he has moved from left to...wherever it is he is these days.

Michael: Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson weren't the norm for the GOP over the past ten years. But I still stayed away because of them more than any other particular reason.

Yes. But I decided a couple of years ago to come on over to the party and just hope to hell it's wise enough to go big tent. Not terribly disappointed yet, but still holding my breath. One thing I have found is that many in the religious right section of the tent are quite reasonable, non-theocratic, and devoted to reasoned debate. In contrast, my misgivings about the left half of the Democratic tent are deep. I see the GOP tent as about 15% kooks who think the Constitution consistent with some degree of theocracy. I see the left half of the Democratic tent as not being entirely averse to sending me to a GULAG someday. The choice is clear.

Jim: I see the left half of the Democratic tent as not being entirely averse to sending me to a GULAG someday.

No one in the Democratic Party will ever want to send anybody to a gulag, let alone half of it.

The ANSWER goons would, though. The Democrats need to kick them in the teeth. Hard.

Michael, don't get me wrong. I said "not being entirely averse" and meant it. I see a line of thought in the left half of the Democratic party - decent human beings - that reminds me of the confused ordering of values that lead millions to comply with mass murder in the first half of the 20th C. The line of thought is the old Marxist saw that values are merely expressions of economic forces, none being any truer or worthier than the rest, and that absolute economic equality may therefore be sought by any means necessary. Ask a member of the left half of the party - a decent person -whether an upper-middle class American white man should be allowed to live well-off while, say, Palestinians or southside Chicagoans do without. Phrase the question exactly that way, and notice the deplorable response you you get.

Marcus Rose – My side won what? I didn’t vote for Bush, I voted for the other guy.

You’re right - the far left and the left in general has marginalized themselves, partly by following Chomsky’s advice. Many people will not admit to being Chomsky fans, but millions follow his advice.

You say that the real marginal types have no political power. Lets hope it stays that way. If the Democrats continue to cater to this group, people will worry about the influence these extremists will have and the Democrats will be the new Whigs.

If they catered to a more moderate crowd, if they ignored the extremists, people would be a lot less wary of them. If they focused on what they could do in the future instead of focusing on how much they hate Republicans for events in the past (the stolen election, the Clinton impeachment) that would also help.

The reason McGovern would not have successfully gone back into Cambodia is shown well from a review of the referenced book A Problem from Hell about US response to genocide (by Samantha Power).

"For the sake of completeness, I'd like to mention that Power doesn't cover all the genocides of the last century. The massacres in Burundi and the mass killings in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) are barely mentioned.
What did the US do about these atrocities? The short answer is that US policy has been consistently not to do much of anything about these events. This has been true regardless of which party has been in power and regardless of whether administrations have been relatively liberal or conservative. "

But, while McGovern might have failed to lead us back, he almost certainly would have put saving Cambodia, or not, on the table. Above the radar screen. Something Clinton totally failed to do about Rwanda, for instance. And remember it was Dole's support for Bosnia action, rather than partisan anti-action, that allowed Clinton to do the right thing in saving Muslims, then.

The right thing. To stop genocide -- with war, against the "national sovereignty" of the local dictator. The Human Rights War. Which, unlike the never to be complete (think Oklahoma) War on Terror, can be complete. It is feasible, in my lifetime, to have every country on earth be governed in a way that allows free speech (the cornerstone pre-requisite BEFORE democracy).

I voted for McGovern. I'll vote for Dean if he's nominated. But he'll lose. I think the better analogy is Dukakis.

I hope the Donkeys can settle on someone electable. Edwards or maybe Clark.

That's an incredible piece of spin, but here's a question: how do you KNOW McGovern would have gone into Cambodia? He said, in hindsight, he would have - but if McGovern had been elected, he would have been elected by the fanatically anti-war Left. The anti-war Left is not against some wars and for others. They are against America going to war, for any reason, period. To think that McGovern would have gone back into war - and not just any war but a war in southeast Asia so soon after Vietnam is ludicrous wishful thinking and hindsight spin.

Federal judges
University professors
Political activists
Newspaper reporters/columnists
Education schools

None of these are elected.
They overwhemingly lean left.
They have enormous influence on both popular and elite thought and culture.

The notion that the right has won the cultural wars because Republicans have the upper hand in elective offices is too silly to take seriously.

I watched a PBS documentary last night on the history of war coverage by the American media.

What struck me was that during the Spanish Civil War and WWII there was never any notion by reporters that they should be anything else but cheerleaders for "the good cause." Martha Gellhorn said straight out that she would play up the killing of civilians by the Fascists, but ignore massacres committed by the Loyalists.

They never reported the specifics of how grim the killing was or rarely setbacks in the Allied advance. And reporters hardly had to be censored by Army officials; they censored themselves. Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer, Andy Rooney: they all admitted that their job was not to be objective, but to be the propaganda arm of the U.S. armed forces.

But after the U.S. had defeated the Fascists and started battling the Communists in Vietnam, many intellectuals and their allies changed their tune. Now, this wasn't a "good cause" and so the grim reality of American soldiers napalming villages or executing prisoners could be shown. And it's not like none of these atrocities happened in WWII. They just weren't excused when fighting Communists like they had been when fighting Communism's sister idealogy, Fascism.

Like Michael says, Vietnam was a tough war against a nationalist foe, but the Nazis and Japanese 25 years earlier were also nationalists.

What changed was that many intellectuals didn't support this war and that undermined popular support, which is crucial in winning a war against a determined foe. So when posters like Markus say that those 2%-3% Chomskyites have no influence on American success or failure, they are being extremely disingenious.

The funny thing is that now we're back to fighting Fascism again, and still many of this nation's intellectuals would rather we lose. At least be consistent in your animus against Fascism.

I remember very well back in high school how my friends were shocked that I wasn't for McGovern. But he mismanaged his campain - the whole Eagleton fiasco where he withdrew his support of the VP candidate because Eagleton had a "history of mental illness" (he had sought help for depression at one time). Also McGovern backed off his support of, get this, Tax Cuts!, because the GOP chatacterized this as an attempt to buy votes - "McGovern is saying that he will give $1000 to evrybody if he wins".
The bottom line is that McGovern campaigned poorly and that led to a lack of confidence.

By the way, I remember distinctly when McGovern asked for a Declaration of War against Cambodia in the Senate. I read it in the newspaper when I was 19 or so, and remarked about it to many people because I thought it was so bizarre. So, for all you folks that that are saying that he would never have done this, and that McGovern is trying to revise history, you are wrong. He was the only one in the government who came out against the Pol Pot regime when those atrocities were happening.

By the way, regarding The Nation, and its support for American haters, I noticed this in an article by Alexander Cockburn, regarding the incident earlier this year in which ANSWER banned Rabbi Michael Lerner from speaking at an antiwar rally:

"Feb. 10: An article appeared on the Nation magazine website by its Washington correspondent David Corn, which coincided with Lerner's announcement and echoed his accusations...David Corn earlier wrote in the Nation website a disgusting piece of red-baiting about ANSWER, as had another Nation writer, Marc Cooper."

Red-baiting at the Nation? And I thought everyone at the Nation took their cues from Noam Chomsky and the rest of the America-haters!

Matt -- i appreciate your honesty in expressing your preference for wartime propoganda as opposed to objective journalism. Fortunately, our free enterprise system and the First Amendment gives Americans access to both. American wars are usually just wars -- as such, America has little to fear from the truth.

Markus,

My point is I prefer objective wartime journalism, but it seems that's never been the norm. Journalists always have an agenda to push.

I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when reading media coverage of the current war in Iraq.

Chomsky certainly makes no secrets of his anti-democratic, anti-capitalist beliefs. As an apologist for totalitarianism, he helps keep the flame of fascism alive on these shores.

And I wouldn't underestimate his influence. Right-wing crazies tend to live in shacks in the woods; left-wing crazies are given chairs at our most prestigious universities. That's an important distinction.

I'd be interested to hear your response to the many criticisms above of your attempt to say only elected officials have political influence in this country.

Nice point, Mat, but let me point out Theo Kuczinski (misspelled I'm sure) aka Unabomber lived in a shack in the woods and was hardly a right wing crazy.

Markus,
Hitchens used to write for The Nation, and I used to read him (still do elsewhere), and sometimes Corn or Cockburn. But not the blithering Zinn or Vanden Heuvel. Why did Hitchens bail, if The Nation is so even-handed? Are you seriously trying to claim The Nation is as center-left as I consider The New Republic to be? Do you think TNR has sold out to the VRWC? Maybe I've arrived at the wrong playground, but you seem to be so far off the left end of the teeter-totter, you can't see the fulcrum without binoculars.

"I'd be interested to hear your response to the many criticisms above of your attempt to say only elected officials have political influence in this country..."

Sorry I can't waste any more worktime with the blogs this afternoon. I'll respond but it might not be until late this evening or tomorrow.

Zacek,

True enough. But, remember, Kaczynski took to shack-living after leaving his post as a professor at Berkeley. Maybe he was slumming.

Markus,

I completely understand that.

I'm supposed to be working right now myself.

Joel -- of course the Nation is to the left of the New Republic. I don't have the time to say much now, merely to reiterate the point I have been trying to make over and over: there are deep substantive differences between ultraleftists, leftists, liberals, liberal-centrists, and centrists. And many people on the right, as well as some disaffected erstwhile people of the left, are engaged in a strenuous effort to blur these distinctions, in order to score rhetorical points and tar everyone from ANSWER to Bill Clinton with the same brush.

I like Hitchens a lot. I wish very much that he hadn't left the Nation, and feel that he was unjustified in doing so, while I also bemoan the fact that there may not be a lot of other remaining Nation readers that feel the same way. By the way, for those of you who love the new Hitchens so much, here a link to an interesting one on Elie Wiesel that he wrote less than three years ago "Wiesel Words":
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010219&s=hitchens

Markus,

“And why you always need an enemy for your political agenda?”

I think many are seeing this only as a domestic partisan issue, but it is important to acknowledge the power the U.S. academic left has to influence others well beyond our borders. While Chomsky's influence is apparent on the national level in media and politics it is much more powerful in world opinion making as well as a nice weapon in the hands of some European and Arab elites. For a while after 9/11, I found growing anti-Americanism in Europe almost as disconcerting as the Taliban and Saddam.

Markus,

First off, thanks for being on the site. I've been the only conservative on talkboards at the Guardian (UK) newspaper and The Atlantic Monthly. It's fun defending your POV from a host of people on the other end of the spectrum, but it can be like fighting off a cloud of wasps.

I get the point you're making: that there are a lot of gradations on the left, and it 'aint fair to tar a leftist or center leftist with the same brush as the loony left like ANSWER and Noam Chomsky.

But that's what the right gets all the time. If you're against affirmative action, you're a racist, no other discussion needed. I think the new governor of Mississippi should catch hell if he's been hanging out with White Citizen's Councils. But Al Sharpton is Mr. Respectable Presidential Candidate now, and he's been a Jew-baiter for much of his public life. Hell, he's gonna host SNL in a few weeks. Sometime tells me David Duke won't be doing that anytime soon.

I also understand that you can be against the invasion of Iraq and not be anti-American. But as long as the Stalinists at ANSWER are the front face of the anti-war movement, you guys are going to be sitting ducks. You're kinda in a "guilty until proven innocent" situation, and that's a bitch, but conservatives have to deal with that most of the time.

I think that the right is held to a stricter scrutiny, which severs most of the bonds between the mainstream right and our crazies. The left doesn't have that kind of quality control, and as a result, there just aren't enough degrees of separation between Howard Dean and, say, Amin Baraka, the poet laureate of New Jersey, who thinks Jews were behind bringing down the twin towers.

Matt -- I enjoy Michael's blog, and your contributions to it as well.

I don't have much to say, I'm afraid.
The fact is that while my center of gravity, my comfort level, obviously remains left leaning, with each passing year I become more unsure about where I stand on a whole host of specific issues. I started out on the ultra- ultra- left, have long since returned to the real world, and find myself with each passing year reading really thoughtful stuff on all sides of the political spectrum, and getting less and less sure who if anyone is flat right and who is wrong. The demonization of the right that you speak about is something that I am aware of, have done myself in the past, and am presently opposed to, although maybe I still slip into it occasionally. It's a bad habit. People on the far left or far right are misguided -- but usually they are not evil, in my opinion.

As a habit, I try to argue from the more rightwing position with my leftist friends, and vice versa. I have a few still radical or superleftist friends who appreciate or at least tolerate my devils advocacy, so I don't have much experience with the ostracism that you and others have experienced from the ultralefties.

The more I think about your earlier question about the power of leftist judges, activists, academics, jounalists to wield power to accomplish malevolent or idiotic aims, the less inclined I am to make a strong statement.

I do not know enough about the federal judiciary to be able to say how biased it is; I haven't read Robert Bork and those who would rebut him yet. And since I don't watch much tv, I can't really gauge the biases that non-liberals complain about. My general thought is that jounralists are more liberal overall in their personal viewpoints but that they also make an effort to appear unbiased. I do watch sunday talk shows and it seems like Stephanoupoulous, Russert, and Chris Matthews -- all former Democratic staffers -- make a strong effort to prove that they are not biased towards the Left. I see Democrats getting asked tough questions, and I also see them obviously not answering them well.
I read the newspaper and seems like Republicans get their message out. At least I am well aware of their arguments. (of course I do read the weeklystandard, nationalreview, commentary,etc. pretty regularly, too) I'm hearing conservative, pro-war arguments loud and clear. I'm rejecting as many as i can, but some of them make to much sense for me to be able to do that! This is why I am likely to say "what liberal media?"

The left and the ultraleft are getting their message out, too, especially on college campuses, but how many people are really listening, or are really getting persuaded? A few. Bowling for Columbine is big, but we're still talking less than 10 million people, probably. And are all of those people going to vote, or vote for the most liberal candidate? I doubt it.

I just don't see the Left winning anywhere in America. Young people support Bush more than most other age cohorts. Europe is a different story, of course. The whole damn NATO Alliance is ending, or starting to, and this is momentous.

A lot of people on the right feel like they are losing the political argument, and so many on the left do too. Strange. I don't know what else to say.

As a Dean supporter and a New Yorker and probable future convert to Judaism, I've got to say I'd find that last comment (about Baraka and Dean) offensive if it weren't so silly. Come on. The left is not your caricature of them. Dean's wife and children are Jewish for G*d's sake.

Not why I'm posting, though, I'm posting to give another reason for liberal hawks to put Dean on the maybe pile. From an online chat in yesterday's post:

"Howard Dean: There are some circumstances which allow unilateral interventions. One is to stop genocide if no other world body had taken the responsibility to do that"

I didn't know until now that that was his position--he favored going into Liberia but that would have been multilateral peacekeeping; this is something that's not been discussed. I'm glad that's his position. (I don't know what the other candidates' position is, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Clark, Kerry, Edwards, or Lieberman agreed and only slightly surprised if Gephardt did.)

Link here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58372-2003Nov3.html

Howard Dean: There are some circumstances which allow unilateral interventions. One is to stop genocide if no other world body had taken the responsibility to do that

I'm glad he thinks that. It is to his credit.

Since Saddam Hussein was a genocidal tyrant, who had procured and deployed the weapons of genocide, I'm sure Howard Dean can't be too bummed out that we removed him.

Markus,

I too give you credit. Much of my anger toward the Angry Left stems from a feeling of betrayal. I used to feel a part of the rational left vs. the religious right. Now the whole spectrum seems to be inverted. The rational right against the religious left. Especially on college campuses.

I'm basically a DLC Democrat. I don't tar Clinton and ANSWER with the same brush. I would vote for Lieberman if he won the nomination. Gephardt might be okay if he weren't such a union-owned protectionist. But they don't stand a chance in hell among the current Democratic base. (And I've got enough Southern roots that Dean has lost my vote for good.) So here's a conundrum I wrestle with from time to time. If Hillary did decide she had to run against Bush in 2004, would I be desperate enough to vote for her? What a nightmare choice!

IMO, the person who should be running for the Dems is f*cking Al gore, the old Al Gore, who was one of the most hawkish, anti-Saadam and anti-Milosevic people in the Clinton administration. I know he's been saying some typical namby pamby stuff since 2001. Whatever.

One reason I think Gore would be good is that he could heal this ridiculous right-left breach, and USA vs. Europe breach that has occured in the war against terrorists.

Gore also would of course be the strongest opponent against Bush -- 50 million people have already voted for him once. But it's just too late for him to get in now. What a weenie.

Matt,

Are the readers of the Atlantic Monthly that leftist, or are you that rightist? My primary print subscription has migrated from The Nation to the New Yorker to the Atlantic Monthly over the past few years. The New Republic is probably next, but not if it's as much all-politics as The Nation is.

I'm sure Howard Dean can't be too bummed out that we removed him.

Is your claim, then that Saddam presented a threat of genocide -- that, in short, our measures already taken to prevent further actions (the no-fly zones and sanctions) were ineffective?

One issue I have against Jews is something I call Holocaust domination -- that the whole intellectual discussion of modern morality, gov't responsibility, and social interaction, has for too long been single issue dominated by the Shoah. Along these lines I'm annoyed at the too frequent mention of 6 million Jews w/o noting the other 4 million non-Jews murdered in the Nazi death camps. I'm also annoyed at the little discussion of US concentration camps of Japanese Americans; not so different from the outside to what Hitler "said" the Jewish work camps were supposed to be like.

I think this Holocaust domination has hindered, not helped, in developing an honest policy, or even discussing a policy, about genocide and horrific human rights abuses. I smile, sadly, at the hope this may be changing. But it must change, for the US to remain free.

Saddam seems to be the particular subject, but it is already becoming more general.

Katherine,

I didn't mean to compare Dean to Baraka. I was trying to say that the left doesn't condemn their loonies loudly enough, so some of their sewage seeps over onto their mainstream. Fair or not. For example, I think more Americans would accept Bush's characterization of Islam as "a religion of peace" if more moderate Muslims condemed Al Quaeda and suicide bombings. Islam has the same PR problem as Democrats, but much much worse.

Joel,

I've been reading The Atlantic Monthly for 15 years; it's my favorite magazine. Its specialty is slaying sacred cows, and there are just more of those on the left right now, so the posters on their online message board see it as a center-right magazine. The posters on the online forum are mostly leftists, but not loony leftists. Good guys, most of them. For what it's worth, I see AM as a centrist, only semi-political magazine.

Chomsky has made it onto the NYT Bestseller list repeatedly in recent years. For someone in the business of influencing public opinion this is far from a marginalized position. This indicates sales of hundreds of thousands of books read by a t least that many people who in turn influence a substantially larger number. As a result many who can spout Chomskeyite idiocy on command don't actually know his name. The point of origination is clear just the same and is deservedly the focus of criticism.

Some people interviewed carrying iANSWER signs at the recent Washington rally were asked if they knew much of anything about iANSWER's origins and tenets. Several admitted they didn't and just held the signs that were handed to them because they thought they were doing something good. How many of those people do you suppose vote with same level knowledge about what their candidate truly represents and the company he keeps?

Tom Grey, you need to learn a hell of a lot more about the Japanese internment camps before you dare campare them to the likes of Auschwitz. Why does anything Hitler had to say about his death camps have validity in the conversation? And when did this become part of a discussion of McGovern?

The Japanese were held in such terrible conditions that those same camps house US troops returning from overseas. There is simply no comparison. The US had a serious problem in that intercepted Japanese communications (which only entered the public record just a few years ago and thus weren't part of the flurry of self-flagellation over the internments in the late 70's) indicated that the Japanese command believed they had access to a substantial force of potential saboteur residing in the US. The US had every reason to believe this, too. In addition the horrible blood baths that characterized battle in the Pacific raised the potential for terrible anti-asian violence to break out in the US. The internment effectively neuter the Japanese hopes for sabotage and kept a lot of potential victims out of sight from a very tense populace.

Note also that the internment were only of Japanese living in the coastal areas. This accounted for most of the Japanese-American population but even so quite a few living inland reamain free throughout the war.

As for the Holocaust, when someone tries to wipe your entire people from existence and comes pretty damn close while much of the world shows little concern or even offers encouragement, it tends to dominate a lot of how you approach the future potential of similar events. As for those others slaughtered, if there hadn't been so much attention drawn to the murdered Jews, I suspect those who are less well remembered would scarcely be recalled at all. Sometimes you have settle for what you can get when the threat exists of being entirely forgotten. In many of the bastions of our current foe one of the Nazis other targets, gays, are also regularly put to death. giving world domination by these sorts, places like San Francisco and West Hollywood would be depopulated very soon after they were done with Israel.

So no, we haven't forgotten but we know who is first on the hitlist among those who want to pick up where the Nazis left off.

I wasn't old enough to vote in '72 but I recall the environment of the era and the idea that McGovern could have inspired an intervention in Cambodia is nothing short of hilarious.

Consider how widely Nixon was dispised in '72 yet ook at numbers in the landslide. It becomes pretty clear that a lot of people thought McGovern such a clown that they'd rather have a man they hated re-elected because he was at least gave the appearance of being competent. McGovern couldn't manage and still doesn't understand what went wrong.

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