Reply #11: more complicated than it looks [View All]

[moggie12]

Brief history: Democratic Party got tagged with bad rep from Vietnam era -- anti-war, anti-military posture went too far in some people's minds (the criticism being that some wars -- like WWII -- need to be fought. we need a strong, capable military, all soldiers are not war criminals, etc. etc). Someone posted the other day that DLC has its roots in the "Scoop" Jackson era (in case you are younger, Jackson was a 70's Dem who was "tough" on national defense issues).

Of course, the joke now is that it was the DLC types who went "too far" the other way by supporting the Iraq War.

Until recently. I was "anti-Dean" because of the "national security" issue. His Obama Bin Laden statement during the primaries still worries me in that it raises the question of whether he, and by implication the Dem Party, thinks "going after" OBL was right (me personally, I think invading Afghanistan was right, Iraq wrong). It is pretty ironic that his "national security credility" is being questioned now given that he was completely right about Iraq, but I think this is where some of it is coming from.