The 'Wrath' of Atrios Posted by Shadi Hamid

Atrios has just written a fairly nonsensical post, a paragraph which makes, as far as I can tell, no coherent sense. He writes, referring to something I posted earlier today

But when someone writes 'I like Will Marshall,' you know they can be ignored, if not laughed at and mocked, by all sentient beings until the end of time.

Until the end of time? This, I presume, is hyperbole. But Atrios goes on, and seems to imply that Will Marshall is evil and has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands. Not only that, but Atrios thinks that schoolchildren should spit on Marshall's image "for generations to come." Even if this is what passes in some quarters as rhetorical bluster, it strikes me as rather petulantly childish:

Marshall was one of the prime "Democratic" forces behind the invasion of Iraq, has nontrivial responsibility for the hundreds of thousands dead, and who, along with Bill Kristol, should have his image spat upon by schoolchildren during their "moment of quiet reflection" for generations to come.

Instead of attacking a Democrat like Will Marshall, maybe he should attack the people who actually took us to war, ran the war, and blundered the war; the people refuse to ban torture, insist on undermining the constitution, cheerlead warrant-less wiretapping, and promote a "unitary executive" - they're called Republicans, and it seems Atrios has forgot about them. Atrios, instead, would like to purge the Democratic Party of dissenters and create an internal civil war where none should exist. So much for party loyalty. Which side is Atrios on? Thanks for giving the Republicans more talking points.

And if Atrios actually cared to read my whole post, he would have noted that not only did I say "I like Will Marshall," but in the following sentence, I said

I also like the Kossacks because they want to stand up to Republicans and fight fire with fire. They understand that the Republicans have, it seems, done all they can to destroy our country and shred our constitution, and they’re sick of Democrats backing down and taking it. Well, good for them. I'm sick of it too.

The whole point of my post was to explore common ground between DLCers and the DailyKos community, and to see if their roles could be complimentary, and to highlight and value what each group brings to the table. So much for reconciliation.

Comments

[David]

I, too, like the Kossacks [one of the Diarists is an old friend], but I rarely go over there, or to Eschaton, because they're so preoccupied with their intraparty quarrels. Indeed, though they claim to be "just about winning," too often they seem to be "just about winning" control of the Democratic Party. Atrios most certainly tries to wield such power as he has to play the pettiest sort of high-school clique politics, with his constant blackballing and sexually charged humiliations. There's too much of it around the left blogosphere, and it could well scotch the Democrats' best shot in a generation.

[bartkid]

>Instead of attacking a Democrat like Will Marshall...

Mr. Hamid,
You have a typo in this sentence:
The word you are looking for is "enabler".

[commie atheist]

Until the end of time? This, I presume, is hyperbole.

No, no, he literally means until the end of time. Seriously.

You don't really get it, do you? Useful idiots like Will Marshall are what enabled the Republicans to do what they've done to this country. And useful idiots like you are continuing the tradition.

[AAnonymous]

Who the hell are you to broker reconciliation? Will Marshall is a fool, someone who not only should not be listened to but who should be disdained by reasonable people for his role in 1) promoting the Iraq war, 2) avoiding the realities of its continuation, and 3) trashing his fellow Democrats to earn cool points.

You have a tendency to write about two groups/people/things, declare both part good and part bad, and then anoint yourself the bridge or the amalgamation of the good on each side. It's self-indulgent, mendacious, and, above all, predictably boring.

[dave™©]

Dear Shadi,

You and Will can go fuck yourselves.

That is really the only response you and he merit.

Very truly yours...

[Bob Narus]

"Instead of attacking a Democrat like Will Marshall, maybe he should attack the people who actually took us to war..."

He is. The so-called liberals who backed the war bear much responsibility for it and the horrors that have followed in its wake. (I'm guessing that includes you, Shadi.) And Will Marshall and his DLC buddies have made a career of attacking liberals for having an insufficiently belligerent foreign policy, starting decades before anybody ever heard of the netroots. Where you got the idea that Atrios and Kos started this fight I don't know.

[Michael]

Through every word of support for invading Iraq, Will Marshall helped to take us to war. Through every word of support for the plan to invade Iraq, Will Marshall helped run this war. So when you say that he is an ok guy and a good Democrat, you are trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. It would be easier to reconcile the DLC with the RNC. With support of this war, what difference remains between them? The whole point is to stop sounding like Republicans and stop kowtowing to them. If you want to support an unnecessary and blundered war, you are not a dissenter so much as just plain wrong. The Will Marshalls can apologize for their mistake and admit they were just flat out wrong. Until then, they are intellectual jokes.

[GWPDA]

What a very silly and inchoate person you are. "Seems to imply"? How about "declares". States. "Says".

[GWPDA]

What a very silly and inchoate person you are. "Seems to imply"? How about "declares". States. "Says".

[GWPDA]

What a very silly and inchoate person you are. "Seems to imply"? How about "declares". States. "Says".

[sujal]

Respectfully, you're missing the point, Shadi.

You create a false choice here, and the core reason why that choice is false is that you called Will Marshall a "Democrat." Let's not mince words or play games here. He switched party affiliations out of convenience and more out of a sense of "holier-than-thou" aimed at the Republicans.

In other words, one can criticize Will Marshall and also criticize Republicans.

Your point about "liking" both doesn't excuse bad judgement, and Will Marshall and Joe Lieberman demonstrated the WORST judgement (and continue to do so today). Sure, they might be likable guys, but excluding them from attack is truly partisanship. It's partisan to the degree of those covering up for Tom DeLay or Duke Cunningham. These people, the folks who shouted out loud they were Democrats or Liberal and shouted they supported the war stunted debate. That's inexcusable, especially if they're the least concerned about actual outcomes rather than showing how "centrist" they are.

I mean, hell, the guys called his blog the Bull Moose as if he was some noble idealist. I never found him anything more than condescending and arrogant. His ideas, let alone the DLCs were horrible and have given us folks like Lieberman and McCain, both men who have lost their principles in supporting this war.

[sujal]

Ok, I get to go back into my hole now and hide... brain fart. I'm a CT resident and brain focused on Marshall and not Will. Sorry.

[scarshapedstar]

So much for reconciliation.

Boo-hoo. Say that in your best Joe Lieberman whine, why don't you. You peppered a bunch of bullshit with "But I like Kossacks!" Nobody cares. You're full of it.

[Haha]

I formed all my opinions about you as a writer and thinker when i read, "This, I presume, is hyperbole."

Haha, presume away, sir, with all the Devil-May-Care audacity of a vibrant mind.

[ice weasel]

Stupid or full of it?

That's the question you're follow-up leaves me with. Are you stupid or full of it? Either way, for you, it's not good.

There is no question in the mind of most people who actually think about this war that self-described democrats who, for whatever reason, did not demand better information and make a better decision. That better decision would have been, since you seem to be slow, not to go fight a war in Iraq.

Since people like marshall still can't figure out what's wrong and since marshall, and others such as joe lieberman still think the best way to score political points is to backstab the mainstream of the democratic party, then either you're stupid for not noting this or you're full of it and ignoring it.

As I said before, either way, you're mostly useless.

[megisi]

pssst, buddy ... here's a free clue for you ... your pal Will is not a Democrat.

Not now.

Not ever.

And you are mushy in the middle where it really counts.

Like you're unbaked.

Or maybe half-baked.

[Dan Kervick]

Instead of attacking a Democrat like Will Marshall, maybe he should attack the people who actually took us to war, ran the war, and blundered the war; the people refuse to ban torture, insist on undermining the constitution, cheerlead warrant-less wiretapping, and promote a "unitary executive" - they're called Republicans, and it seems Atrios has forgot about them. Atrios, instead, would like to purge the Democratic Party of dissenters and create an internal civil war where none should exist. So much for party loyalty. Which side is Atrios on? Thanks for giving the Republicans more talking points.

This is a cheesy partisan smokescreen designed to skirt the issue of Marshall's role in the war, Shadi. Will Marshall was a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization with a roster that was a who's who of neoconservatives and their fellow travelers, and that was set up to advocate for the war. He is as much a part of laying the propaganda groundwork for the war as William Kristol or Richard Perle.

That said, I'm not for purging anybody. If Will Marshall is interested in getting Democrats elected, he can take a seat in the meeting hall and pick up a canvassing assignment along with the rest of us. And he's free to spin out whatever crazy theories he likes on web sites. But he's going to have to get used to being eclipsed. The Democrats' days of taking serious advice and foreign policy marching orders from the likes of Marshall are over.

[gimmeabreak]

The whole point of my post was to explore common ground between DLCers and the DailyKos community, and to see if their roles could be complimentary, and to highlight and value what each group brings to the table. So much for reconciliation. .

Good luck with that. I presume you didn't see Harold Ford getting his nose wiped by Markos who "a few years ago wasn't respectable"*.

Yours and Will's form of DLC appeasement has been left by the wayside.

Oh, and Atrios does not waste his time on hyperbole. You will be mocked until the end of time.

*Kristol

[James]

Dude, are you seriously a PhD candidate?

I think the hollow sentiment for which you are searching in the last sentence is 'complementary'. However, your incorrect word choice does achieve a certain description of just how you think that this debate should be.

[Dan Tompkins]

I'm just back from working through various archives at the Hoover Institution, a great collection of pro- and anti- left material from the '50s. Arthur Schlesinger comes across as slightly more "liberal" than some others on the far right, but he was still willing to ruin the careers of his fellow academics because of his hostility to the left. Occasionally he debates his friend Sidney Hook, the real loony in all this, but equally often he conspires with him.

Why mention this here? Two reasons. One is that some Democrats urged an invasion if Iraq without paying much attention to the evidence that this was a very bad idea (the inspectors withdrawn two days before the invasion found no WMD; Tom Warrick's group at State worried about the sequel; State's intel unit warned Colin Powell and turned out to be right; there were nagging questions about the danger of violating sovereignty in a "war of choice"; Knight-Ridder correspondents and Pincus and Priest added to the apprehension).

Will Marshall et al have given the right wing a pretext that is tiresomely invoked: and the result is a disaster, with record killings of Muslims, including noncombatants, a huge rise in malnutrion, an imploding state and second rankm for Iraq among all the world's nations on the Foreign Policy "failed states" list. Go, Will!

Marshall and others should have seen this coming. They were closer to the center of things than I am, for sure. I do believe they deserve severe criticism. (I'm avoiding overstatement here.)

Here is part of the problem: " is Will Marshall responsible for the incompetent execution....?" The "execution" pretext is being used all over the place, by Democrats and Republicans. It offers a very convenient "out," exculpating Marshall and others. But it doesn't work. It would be better for Marshall and others to say the war has been a disaster, that many knew it would be a disaster before we went in, and that Democrats are now being linked to the disaster because of Marshall's activities. Invading a country, imposing an army of occupation, and expecting people to like it is just dumb.

Like Schlesinger, Marshall has given cover to some very bad people. (Or, has bought in with them, again like Schlesinger.)

In closing, let me say I lve this blog, and love Shadi's posts. But I don't believe he and others understand what damage the liberal inventionists have done, in Iraq or in the USA.

Best,

Dan Tompkins
pericles@temple.edu

[rcman]

Here's what I think of your friend Will:

Laocoon, follow'd by a num'rous crowd,
Ran from the fort, and cried, from far, aloud:
‘O wretched countrymen! What fury reigns?
What more than madness has possess'd your brains?
Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone?
And are Ulysses' arts no better known?
This hollow fabric either must inclose,
Within its blind recess, our secret foes;

Or 't is an engine rais'd above the town,
T' o'erlook the walls, and then to batter down.
Somewhat is sure design'd, by fraud or force:
Trust not their presents, nor admit the moose.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Horse

[brent]

I can never quite get my mind around arguments like your Mr. Hamid. You seem honestly and oddly oblivious to the central problems with a figure like Will Marshall. Forget Democrats and Republicans. Forget the war even. Will Marshall derives his relevance - his entire relevance - from his willingness to attack or otherwise denigrate progressive movements and opinions. He performs this service to validate the so called "middle" of American politics which consists of exactly zero real policy positions except a consistent willingness to rhetorically define progressive policies, against all evidence, as being away from the "middle."

This infamous "middle" of course contains no substance at all or Kossacks and others might actually be able to take it seriously and debate on its merits. No attempt to pin it down, no attempt to actually define what distinguishes this "middle" in policy terms is ever very successful Its wankery really. Political wankery but wankery nonetheless.

What really matters from a substantive point of view is that there is no position that Will Marshall stands for that wouldn't fit him comfortably into the most conservative elements of the Republican party. None. The fact that he now calls himself a Democrat is completely irrelevant to this basic truth.

So when someone claiming to embrace progressive/liberal values says "I like Will Marshall," the only reasonable response is mockery. To people who actually care about public policy, who actually think these political decisions matter, hearing admiration for someone like Will Marshall is a pretty clear indication that the person speaking does not especially care about how real political positions actually effect real people on the ground and outside of the tedious discussions of the mythical American "middle." If that mockery is a bit crude at times, well... so be it.

[uphere]

This is one of the saddest things I've ever read.

[Deadeye Dick Cheney]

As long as Republicans and DLC members equate "civility" and "moderation" and "co-operation" as "stop humiliating us with logic and reminding us of our incredible blunders", I am against civility and moderation and co-operation. None of those things were to be had when Democrats were in power, and none are to be found now that Democrats have control of Congress. What we have is only Republicans and DLC members crying "stop hurting us"! Let's not forget that Republicans did their best for the past 13 years to destroy the Democratic Party PERMANENTLY and to make the word 'liberal' an epithet. The DLC did their best to enable Republicans to do those things. If you want civility and moderation and co-operation, you've got to make the first move. I, for one, ain't ready to make nice.

[Nanorich]

You got love them Vichy Dems!

14 years of failure and they still think they should be rewarded.