in Barack Obama, Liberals, Syria
Remember how the left’s concern with the slightest signs of sexual harassment disappeared when it threatened to ensnare Bill Clinton? (That episode also had the benefit of causing liberals to see the defects of the independent counsel statute; while railing against Ken Starr, they failed to perceive his great Machiavellian deed.) Well, the left is suddenly revealing their anti-war principles really only apply to Republican presidents.Of course, what is revealed is that their anti-war principles are closely connected to their essential cowardice. Ed Asner has admitted as much, saying they don’t want to criticize Obama on Syria because of Obama’s race. From the Hollywood Reporter: “A lot of people don’t want to feel anti-black by being opposed to Obama.” Give that man a Kennedy Profile in Courage Award (heh).
David Sirota wonders, “What Ever Happened to the Anti-War Movement?”
A mere 72 hours after President Obama delivered an encomium honoring the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, he announced his intention to pound yet another country with bombs. The oxymoron last week was noteworthy for how little attention it received. Yes, a president memorialized an anti-war activist who derided the U.S. government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” Then that same president quickly proposed yet more violence — this time in Syria.
Among a political press corps that rarely challenges the Washington principle of “kill foreigners first, ask questions later,” almost nobody mentioned the contradiction. Even worse, as Congress now debates whether to launch yet another military campaign in the Middle East, the anti-war movement that Dr. King represented — and that so vigorously opposed the last war — is largely silent. Sure, there have been a few perfunctory emails from liberal groups, but there seems to be little prospect for mass protest, raising questions about whether an anti-war movement even exists anymore.
Sirota has no trouble figuring this out:
So what happened to that movement? The shorter answer is: It was a victim of partisanship.
That’s the conclusion that emerges from a recent study by professors at the University of Michigan and Indiana University. Evaluating surveys of more than 5,300 anti-war protestors from 2007 to 2009, the researchers discovered that the many protestors who self-identified as Democrats “withdrew from anti-war protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success” in the 2008 presidential election.
Seriously? We needed social science to figure this out?
Funny thing is, this has been obvious long before the Syrians disturbed Obama’s golf swing, but as we know liberals are slow learners–when they learn at all. Matt Walsh admits on his blog on “The Legend of the Anti-War Liberal”:
Gather ’round, folks, ’cause I wanna tell you a story. This here is a legend. It’s a folk legend passed down through the generations. My daddy told it to me, his daddy told it to him, and now I’m tellin’ it to you.
See, as the story goes, a long, long, long time ago — way back in 2003 — there were these people called “Anti-War Liberals.” They were called “anti-war” because they were really, really, super-duper opposed to war. They believed in peace, you see? They didn’t think any country should be runnin’ around shootin’ and killin’ all willy nilly-like. These Anti-War Liberal folks knew that we had no right to be invadin’ another nation just to take its resources, or put a military base on its soil. They said we should mind our own got-danged business and stop interferin’ in them international type affairs. . .
But the Anti-War Liberals ain’t around. Perhaps they were all kidnapped by pirates or abducted by aliens. Or, another theory is that they’re just a bunch of cowardly fraudulent posers who never gave a crap about war in the first place.
I dunno. I’m goin’ with the pirates, personally.
So that’s the story of the Mysterious Vanishing Anti-War Liberal. Some folks say that they’re still out there. Maybe they’re right. Some nights I swear I can still smell a waft of body odor, sandals and cheap weed in the air.
The interesting question going forward is whether anyone–including the media–will every take the anti-war left seriously again when the next Republican president contemplates military action.
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