US liberals have joined with the neo-cons on Iraq

[Maple]

SNIP......"The U.S. mission has created strange intellectual bedfellows between the neo-conservative warriors and the humanitarian liberals, both groups now arguing with increasing urgency, even desperation, that liberating Iraq was the goal all along.

The neo-conservatives and liberals are both missionaries of a sort, and not just in remaking Iraq but in bringing democracy to the Arab world.

Their marriage is strange because neo-conservatives did not previously believe in this kind of nation-building, and the liberals did not like the use of force. They have come together, however, because the neo-conservatives saw that force alone could not solve the challenge of remaking a state, and liberals understood that without force there could be no remaking."

SNIP...."Just as former British prime minister William Gladstone and his supporters were always anxious to support liberation movements in the Balkans against those awful Ottomans, so today's U.S. liberals, having made common cause with the Bush neo-conservatives, want U.S. intervention in Liberia and U.S. pressure on Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and corrupt Arab sheikdoms."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030909/COSIMP09/National/Idx

[Sagan]

1. ummmm.. I don't think so...

There are VERY important underlying differences between these two groups. This is an over-generalization, to say the least.

[Maple]

2. Well I would have agreed with you

But it may explain why Kerry, Gephardt et al voted with Bush on Iraq.

[ixion]

5. I guess I don't consider Kerry and Gephardt 'liberals'

although I guess some may think so...

[Jacobin]

3. Yup. They conned many a lib into their little conquest game

I ain't on board this train.

[ixion]

4. huh... hardly

I think the neocons should be tried for war crimes. That hardly puts me 'in bed' with them.

[Jacobin]

6. If we buy into the mantra that

billions must now be spent for "security" (translation: oppression) of Iraq, IMHO the article is painfully true.

[htuttle]

7. Ah, but by the current media definitions...

...If you are against the war, you are a 'fringe leftist', not a 'liberal'.

[ixion]

8. by my own thinking, I am a centrist, by the mainstream media's

gauge, I guess I would fall into that category, although I think the mainstream media needs to recalibrate. ;-)

[German-Lefty]

9. I see what they're talking about, but ....

Most liberals are still too pissed off to touch those neocons. Still most realize that we have to help Iraq, even if it means helping Bush.

[Generic Other]

10. I rant, rave, scream, screech, howl, yelp, shriek, hiss, cuss, cry, snap

at neo-cons and someone thinks I am on their side? GRRRRRR....
That's what happens when Democrats insist on appeasing the right.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

The only intervention I support is one where the UN comes in and forces the usurper Bush out of office and exiles him permanently under guard to Crawford.

Damn. You hear that you wimpy Democratic candidates? Quit sidling up next to Bush's butt and planting your lips on it! The world is noticing.

[Maple]

11. Well this is the part I wondered about

Both parties are now seen as agreeing with the invasion...it's only motive that's different.

So the US still gets a bad rep for invading other countries...it's just that there is now supposed to be a difference between 'good' invasions and 'bad' invasions.

Either way, you are still seen as invaders, and of course such a policy is wide open to abuse depending on who is president.

[KoKo]

12. I think "liberals" have wanted to intervene in countries for humanitarian

aid.....and to be a buffer between warring factions. As an "interventionist" rather than an attacker.

We attacked Iraq.......I don't see how any liberal or humanitarian enthusiast can be tarred with a philosophy of "pre-emptively striking a country.......as being either humanitarian or interventionist...

I don't see a "hook up" there........

[denverbill]

13. Horsecrap.

The article correctly states that liberals want the Iraq operation to succeed, but we sure as hell didn't support the operation to begin with. The article makes it sound like because liberals support trying to make Iraq democratic NOW that they supported it pre-war as well. That's a bunch of shit.

I didn't support the war, but once it started and people started dying, your only hope is for the war to bring about SOME positive change. If Iraq degenerates into civil war, Hussein returns, an Islamic theocracy is installed, or an even worse dictator than Hussein is installed, the whole fucking war will have been a waste of lives and money.

Doing anything else would be like being against WWII initially, being forced into the war, fighting and winning the war, then reinstalling Hitler and the Nazis to power. Fuck that. I might not have been in favor of a unilateral attack on Hitler prior to his attack on Poland, but that doesn't mean that once the war is on I don't want his sorry ass out of power.

[Cocoa]

14. I don't know what liberals he's talking about

the dems who voted for the war made Bush put national security, specifically WMD, over regime change. I wish he would have named these urgent and desperate humanitarian liberals.