Good Portents for 2007
I just wanted to point out something that gave me a lot of hope today. Sue mentioned it in the FDL comments — over at the WaPo, in response to Joe Lieberman's Op-Ed calling for a "troop surge," there are 37 pages of negative responses. When the Deborah Howell incident happened, I recognized many of the names — Paul Lukasiak, Brad DeLong, TeddySanFran and other regulars at various and sundry blogs heavily populated the pages. But as I scanned through the 37 pages of people calling out Lieberman and his magical plan for "success" in Iraq for being the folly that it most assuredly is, I didn't recognize a one. No, people just spontaneously showed up and were appalled that anyone could be promoting this kind of lunacy. The response to Lieberman's call for escallation in the war was loud, forthright and agressive — no more.
Digby points us to Brilliant at Breakfast where Ned Lamont perches near the top of Jill's "Best of 2006" list, and I wholeheartedly agree. The Vietnam war lasted for over a decade and cost the lives of 58,000 Americans. I firmly believe that if Ned Lamont had not been willing to take on Joe Lieberman, the anti-war sentiment we are now seeing would never have achieved this kind of popular acceptance. Democrats were told it was "political suicide" to mention the war in the months before November, and Ned Lamont proved that wrong. There is not a politician on Capitol Hill who will look at those 37 pages of comments and not realize that precisely the opposite is true — continued support for this war could end a political career.
People who believe that victory is measured simply by chalk marks in a win/loss column have no idea how long-term battles are waged. If this war ends one day sooner or one less person has to die because 37 pages worth of Americans tell Joe Lieberman enough with his vanity war, every bit of effort that you, or I, or Ned Lamont, or anyone else expended toward that end was worth it.
Click on the Lieberman comments. It is really amazing how people hate his idea and this war
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