War parties

Democrats just as committed to war as Republicans

And that goes for Connecticut Democratic US Senate primary challenger Ned Lamont every bit as much as it does for the fifth-column, pro-Bush Democratic incumbent Joe Lieberman.

I wrote about the letter signed by Democratic senators opposing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's statements condemning the Israeli attack on Lebanon here.

After that post, it came out that DNC Chair Howard Dean in Palm Beach had called Malaki an "anti-Semite". This Monday article by Stanley Rogouski on Counterpunch is a particularly good read on the pro-war nature of the Democratic Party:

Let's look at what Maliki actually said.

"The Israeli attacks and air strikes are completely destroying Lebanon's infrastructure. I condemn these aggressions and call on the Arab League foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo to take quick action to stop these aggressions. We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression."

What's striking about this statement is not that it's anti-Semitic but that it's decidedly not anti-Semitic. If this is the most anti-Semitic thing that the Democratic Party could dig up from the Arab world than the problem of "anti-Semitism" we here about so much in the Middle East is a lie. Indeed, for an Islamic theocrat and Shiite politician, Maliki sounds an awful lot like a secular leftist politician in Western Europe, and that was what so angered Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid and Dick Durbin. Any of them could have easily gone to the Memri (an organization set up by Israeli intelligence to publish the most inflammatory anti-Semitic and anti-American statements coming out of the Arab world) website and picked out something from the platform of the Dawa party about the status of women or gays, or about the Sunni minority in Iraq that would make your hair stand on end. So why pick out a rare statement by an Arab politician which denounces the Israeli government but says nothing about Jews or Zionism or anything else we'd find offensive?

Rouguski writes this about Ned Lamont and the Israeli war on Lebanon:

Ned Lamont is safely pro-Israel. The statement on his website leaves no room for doubt. "At this critical time in the Middle East," Lamont says. "I believe that when Israel's security is threatened, the United States must unambiguously stand with our ally to be sure that it is safe and secure. On this principle, Americans are united." But the Democratic party rank and file that's behind Lamont's campaign, the grassroots, or "netroots" as they are popularly known, is not. In fact, they're exploding with anti-Israel sentiment. For the first time in recent memory, the American people are not united and don't stand unambiguously with Israel.

Curious. On the netroots point, I'm not sure who Rouguski is talking about. As far as I can tell, Atrios, the biggest major-blogger Lamont supporter, has had very little to say about Lamont's strong pro-war stance with respect to Israel.

Update: I'd actually found this before I posted, but I forgot to mention... Billmon had a great piece on the ``War Party'' a couple of days ago. This is an excellent critique of the true lack of any meaningful anti-war positions to be found amongst Democrats:

But there's one big problem with all this hyperventilating: It wildly exaggerates the anti-war fevor that Ned Lamont supposedly represents. Oh I know Ned says he's anti-war, but he only means the war in Iraq. The war in Lebanon, on the other hand, is just fine by him. And he's already pledged he'll be just as staunch a friend of Israel and the Israel lobby in this war as Holy Joe ever was or ever could be. So bombs away.

Thanks, Billmon.