THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PETER BEINART

Damned if you do:

Pander and Run

By Peter Beinart

After years of struggling to define their own approach to post-Sept. 11 foreign policy, Democrats seem finally to have hit on one. It's called pandering....

The latest example came this week when Democratic senators and House members demanded that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki either retract his criticisms of Israel or forfeit his chance to address Congress....

... Maliki's forthright disagreement with the United States was a sign of political strength, one the Bush administration wisely indulged.

But not congressional Democrats. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid demanded that Maliki eat his words or be disinvited from addressing Congress....

... The Democratic Party's single biggest foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing, that they have no principles beyond political expedience. And given the party's behavior over the past several months, it is not hard to understand why.

Damned if you don't:

...We are now [in 2003] experiencing "a very explosive moment in Jewish politics," one that is rocking the traditional Jewish affiliation with the Democratic party and creating an undercurrent of anti-Semitism, said Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic magazine.

[ . . . ]

For the left, the methods employed are of secondary importance to the otherwise justified anti-imperialist struggle, so the Palestinian use of suicide bombings are seen as no more than a "misguided tactic," Beinart said.

Beinart described how traditionally liberal U.S. Jews have recoiled from that view and how they are moving away from their traditional liberal affiliations.

[ . . . ]

With the outbreak of the current intifadah, "this consensus started to crack. The liberal media have gone in one direction and the Jewish community has gone in another. The liberal media have gone left and the Jewish community has gone right."

Funny how everything liberals and/or Democrats do is a reason for voters to reject liberals and Democrats, according to self-styled liberal Democrat Peter Beinart.

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(Also see Julia on Beinart's selective memory for facts.)