Relief and Redemption Posted by Shadi Hamid

It feels damn good. Thank God freaking OBL kept his mouth shut. The Karl Rove we created in our own minds no longer exists, or perhaps he never really did. I remember the sense of profound disappointment so many of us felt two years ago. I was in Jordan then with a bunch of expats at the Amman Hyatt (which was blown up by terrorists a year later). We woke up the morning after depressed, not quite knowing what hit us. But this time around, there is redemption, finally. Despite conservative machinations, gerrymandering, and other forms of institutional hanky-panky, we have yet more evidence that democracy does in fact work. Alternation of power is a beautiful thing. My parents, who grew up under a repressive dictatorship, never knew what that was before they came to the States. Santorum thanked God last night, and so did I. 

So, anyway, to jump off Suzanne’s last post: where do we go from here? It would be easy now to indulge in political revenge, particularly after the rampant Mitch McConnelism of the last few years. Let’s resist that temptation and keep our eye on the ball. As progressives, we may disagree on Iraq, democracy promotion, the Patriot Act, and on whether or not to call Condi “Dr. Rice” or just “Condi.” But, for now, we can and must agree on one thing: that politics has to be cleaned up. If this election was about anything, it was about the corrupting influences of power, of how a conservative “revolution” with noble origins and lofty intentions descended into tragic self-parody. Ideas no longer meant anything, if not in the service of narrow partisan goals. These are the lessons that must be learned.

We are Liberals and we’re proud of it. We have to stay positive, be ourselves, and restore people’s faith in government. We have two years to perform and prove to the American people that they made the right choice. Now that the campaign is over, let’s throw out the polls, the focus groups, and the hollow politics that has so often paralyzed us, and let’s demonstrate that not only are we better than the conservatives (a low order indeed), but that we have a clear, bold, forward-looking agenda on domestic and foreign policy – an agenda that is defined not by what we think people want to hear but by a set of deeply-held principles and beliefs.

i

Comments

[J.S.]

Dam straight- sign me up- now we get a chance to show the world how a democracy is meant to be run- competently, fairly, with accountability, and for the people by the people.

And like I always said, the far right under Rove got a few legs up only because they cynically took advantage of 9/11 when people wanted to trust them- remember, Bush lost in 2000 and Rove was more like the Wizard in Oz than the real thing- Democrats got scared of their shadows for some reason but finally got their mojo back. This is a center-left country not an authoritatarian theocracy and the GOP better learn that quick or they will be relegated to minority status forever- hey maybe that wouldn't be so bad...

J.S.

[flagrl118]

A great opportunity was offered to us last night when the Dems took the House. It is new chance for the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs address global poverty and hunger. The Borgen Project has been working to address these goals and encouraging our political leaders to do so as well. However, the GOP wasn't listening. This is a new awakening.

[Dan Kervick]

I agree that a unifying theme for the Democrats should be the return to good government, honesty, openness, competence and progress. However, they will lose their momentum very quickly if they attempt to finesse the Iraq issue indefinitely or pass the buck to the administration.

In my state, the two incumbent Congressmen, both Republicans, were tossed out in favor of Democrats who ran unabashed "let's get out of Iraq" campaigns. Paul Hodes, who beat six-term incumbent Charlie Bass in the 2nd district says this on his web site:

As a member of Congress, I will hold the administration accountable and enforce, through the appropriations process, a responsible and comprehensive exit strategy. Our troops are caught in the midst of a sectarian civil war, where they are easy targets and their presence only inflames tensions. It is time for the Iraqis to take over Iraq, so we can focus on quelling problems in Afghanistan and elsewhere. In the interest of our national security, I support the following:

I. Make it clear that we will not occupy Iraq permanently. The sprawling embassy and base complexes we’ve built in Iraq seem to indicate that their designers wish to stay in Iraq for the indefinite future. That is the wrong message to send to the Iraqis and a wrongheaded allocation of our resources.

II. Withdraw our National Guard and Reserve troops immediately. We need our hardworking Guard and Reserve troops ready to respond to disasters at home, and truly to serve as reserves for unforeseen crises abroad.

III. Immediately focus our mission on training the Iraqi military and police and security for their operations. The Iraqi armed forces and police must be readied to take on the task of quelling fighting and restoring order themselves.

IV. Require the Iraqis to forge a political solution to the current crisis. It has become clear that any political solution imposed by the United States will be viewed as illegitimate. Yet until Iraq has a functioning civil government, the lawlessness and civil war will continue.

V. Support that solution while redeploying the remainder of our troops. The remainder of American forces in Iraq should be redeployed to Afghanistan, where they are badly needed to fight the Taliban, and to pro-American regions on the periphery of the Iraq conflict, such as Kurdistan, (an autonomous region in the North of the country) and Kuwait. This will remove them from the civil war but allow them to support the political process, combat al Qaeda in Iraq, and act as a stabilizing buffer against an increasingly hostile Iran.

VI. Bring other countries into a comprehensive and sustained peace process. This administration and Congress have divided our friends and united our enemies. It’s time to reverse their abandonment of diplomacy and make real progress before the crisis in the Middle East gets worse. The peace process should include as a major tenet a lasting solution to the conflict between Israel and its neighbors.

VII. Rebuild our military. It’s essential that our military be restored the great strength it once boasted. The Pentagon budget should be reshuffled to abandon white elephant projects designed for wars of the past in favor of equipping and enlarging our actual fighting force.

VIII. Replace the leadership. The Bush administration’s national security team has failed utterly and is too deep in its own mess to be effective moving forward. Congress must demand, and the President must accept, new leadership on defense and homeland security.

Carole Shea-Porter, who came from nowhere, with no money, to win as true a grass roots campaign as there ever was and defeat shoe-in Jeb Bradley in the 1st district, has stated unequivocally that Iraq was an "unnecessary war", embraced the Murtha-Odom critique, and argued that the US must "must physically leave, abandon our "lone wolf" approach, and work with other nations to stabilize Iraq."

There were other issues, of course - general Republican corruption and incompetence and the erosion of civil liberties, for example - but everyone in New Hampshire knows today that Iraq was the decisive issue. And neither of these two new representatives will have the slightest doubt about what they were elected to do: go to Washington and work with their new colleagues to bring a very speedy end to the US involvement in Iraq. I suspect very many of their new Democratic colleagues, both re-elected incumbents and newcomers, heard the very same message in their districts.

Any attempt to argue that the President is the commander in chief and there is little Democrats can do to get us out of Iraq just isn't going to cut it. The public wants results - now.

[Don Bacon]

New Hampshire. "Live free or die." I knew there had to be something.

You can't pick up spilled milk. We need to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan now. The administration has had a "a responsible and comprehensive exit strategy" -- train the Iraqis to take over security and then leave. This strategy hasn't worked because (1) The Iraqis understandably don't like our brutal occupation and (2) Hussein, for all his faults, held all the disparate groups together which are now at each others' throats. Like, duh, many people foresaw this. Now we have to "require the Iraqis to forge a political solution." We already tried that--Maliki told us to take a hike. Is the Iraqi government sovereign or not?

I suppose that the people who say that we should impose order in a foreign civil war would also think that France should have intervened in our civil war.

"Enlarge our fighting force"--great idea. We'll need more for Iran, Syria and North Korea. Makes me proud to be an American.

We and the rest of the world have a common enemy--the policies of the US government. Chomsky writes that there are two superpowers in conflict in the world today--the U.S. and world opinion.

[seyid]

There are certain things in life related to smoking that simply cannot :)
parça kontör
parça kontör bayiliği
parça kontör bayilik

[cheap coach handbags]

Thank you for your sharing! I like i very much!