Peter Beinart has an editorial today in the Washington Post. It’s about the Democrats’ recent criticisms of Bush’s foreign policy and it’s entitled Pander and Run. I rarely agree with Peter Beinart, who is an editor-at-large for The New Republic. But in this particular case I have no choice. Beinart points to three recent incidents:
1. The Dubai Ports Deal
2. Amnesty for Iraqis that have fought the occupation
3. Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki’s speech before Congress.
In each of these cases the Democrats have taken a political vulnerability for the President and used it for full political advantage. But, in each of these cases, they have made our country less safe and the job of improving our image in the Middle East more difficult.
The Dubai Ports deal did not represent a real threat to our national security. Our Navy is based in the United Arab Emirates and they are an essential ally. Needlessly alienating them was stupid.
The proposed amnesty for Iraqi ‘insurgents’ is distasteful, to say the least, but it is also aimed at reducing the violence in Iraq. If al-Maliki needs to release some prisoners to make compromises then we should not make his life more difficult.
And it was just ridiculous to expect Maliki to denounce Hezbollah while Israel is raining bombs on southern Lebanon. Anyone that thinks that having Maliki do that would be helpful to our national security is a dunderhead.
All three of these cases represent an instance of Democrats behaving like Republicans and using a wedge issue to score cheap policial points that don’t advance any positive cause. In fact, these recent events have been positively unhelpful from any perspective other than a purely electoral one.
It’s unacceptable. I know that the GOP does this stuff to us. I’m not saying that we should always be fair to them. But when we are unfair we should be careful to at least be right on the merits. In these recent cases we’ve been wrong on the merits.
