Germans are Worried that the Left is moving Right Posted by Shadi Hamid

I found this article from Der Spiegel International to be genuinely bizarre. It reflects, in my view, a serious misreading of American politics. The basic jist is that liberals are moving to the right on national security (apparently the author doesn't read blogs), a reality reflected by the hawkishness of the three Democratic presidential contenders. He makes a weird reference to "Barack Bush-Obama," a term which couldn't be more unfair to the only candidate who got the Iraq war right. Then this:

The wind has shifted in Washington. America, not just its president, is at war. The Democrats are still critical of the failed Iraq campaign, but they are no longer opposed to the "War on Terror" in general. It has been accepted, and not just as a metaphor.

Really? DA readers, would any of you agree with this assessment? It seems to me that the opposite has occurred. It started when John Edwards repudiated the term "Global War on Terror," and then the other candidates more or less followed suit, moving away from Bush's charged language, and redefining the the nature of the terrorism challenge, both rhetorically and substantively. Personally, I've started to decapitalize the term, to distinguish the real fight against terrorists from Bush's distinct "War on Terror" - the latter having failed miserably, antagonizing 97% of the world, alienating Muslim moderates, and emboldening terrorists the world over. Anyway, the attempt to distinguish our "war on terrorism" from the Bushies' "Global War on Terror" seems to be the trend on the Left.

Comments

[Michael Cohen]

I share Shadi's bizarre reading of this article. This guy should get out more! Personally, I have stopped using war on terror in any of my discourse. We're not a war with terrorism, we're at war with Al Qaeda, which happens to be an extremist, terrorist organization. It's about time we put that rhetorical hobbyhorse to bed.

Moving away from this language and trying to engage in a serious debate how we are to best wage this conflict is both welcome and long overdue. It's good to see that Dems are no longer being cowed into playing on the Administration's rhetorical turf.

[liberalrob]

I think you are missing the author's point of view when he wrote the article. Steingart is not saying that ALL DEMOCRATS are getting more hawkish; he is specifically referring to the top-tier candidates for the Democratic nomination, all of whom have made very strong statements on national security and the uses of national power recently.

If Steingart had instead spent some time on Daily Kos or Firedoglake or a number of the other "progressive" blogs I'm sure he would have seen, from both the posts and the comments that followed, that in fact it's the CANDIDATES who have gotten more hawkish and not Democrats as a whole. But since his focus was on the candidates and the media's reportage of their statements, I'm not surprised that he might think this shift reflected a larger movement than it in fact does.

[SteveB]

Anyway, the attempt to distinguish our "war on terrorism" from the Bushies' "Global War on Terror" seems to be the trend on the Left.

This looks like a distinction without a difference, to me (yes, I know Bush is using capital letters and you're not - a good symbolic representation of the range of "debate" in US foreign policy circles).

The fundamental mistake is that terrorism is a crime, not an act of war, and terrorists are criminals, not soldiers. Don't take my word for it; Wesley Clark says so.

Experience should have taught us that declaring "war" on widespread and diffuse aspects of human behavior doesn't work too well - war on drugs, anyone? War on poverty?

If I was a cynic (all right, even more cynical) I'd say that the strategy of launching the unwinnable war is a deliberate one: a "war" that never ends provides the bureaucrats with endlessly growing budgets and power. Add in the deliberate use of inappropriate tools (using the police to fight drug use, which is a public health problem, using the military to fight terrorism, which is a police problem) and you've got a recipe that guarantees lifetime employment and promotions for the "warriors".

But it would be cynical to say that, wouldn't it?

[karizmatic]

Actually I would agree with the earlier comment that since the author is referring to the candidates he is correct in some form. The term "war on terror" has not been effectively removed from the political debate. As a presidential candidate you may be critical of the war in Iraq but rarely do any of the candidates take more than marginal time expressing how having a war on terror itself is ridiculous. The Wesley Clark argument is a political albatross. It is either you are for the war in Iraq or against it, but either way you are still for attacking terrorists wherever they hide. This drops the debate over the war to nothing but a dispute about strategy as opposed to an overal shift in foreign policy stance.

[IM]

It is not :
Germans are Worried that the Left is moving Right

It is : Spiegel (or one Spiegel author) is worried that the (american)Left is moving right.

The spiegel doesn 't speaks for germany and the opinion of this author is rather an outlier.