What's up with the rage against mildly dovish Dems?
A letter to President Biden stirs up a ruckus.
This headline isn’t quite true:
Nor are the opening paragraphs of the story:
A group of 30 House liberals is urging President Biden to dramatically shift his strategy on the Ukraine war and pursue direct negotiations with Russia, the first time prominent members of his own party have pushed him to change his approach to Ukraine.
The letter, sent to the White House on Monday and first reported by The Washington Post, could create more pressure on Biden as he tries to sustain domestic support for the war effort, at a time when the region is heading into a potentially difficult winter and Republicans are threatening to cut aid to Ukraine if they retake Congress.
If you read the letter, though, it’s much less dramatic (and a fair bit more nuanced) than how it’s portrayed.
Given the destruction created by this war for Ukraine and the world, as well as the risk of catastrophic escalation, we also believe it is in the interests of Ukraine, the United States, and the world to avoid a prolonged conflict. For this reason, we urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire. This is consistent with your recognition that “there’s going to have to be a negotiated settlement here,” and your concern that Vladimir Putin “doesn't have a way out right now, and I'm trying to figure out what we do about that.”
We are under no illusions regarding the difficulties involved in engaging Russia given its outrageous and illegal invasion of Ukraine and its decision to make additional illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory. However, if there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine.
In short: War is bad. It’s even worse if it becomes a wider war. The United States is right to assist Ukraine in defending its sovereign territory — but if there’s an opening for peace, the U.S. should push to get there. But Russia might make it hard, Russia is the wrongful aggressor, and this shouldn’t be done without Ukraine’s ability to preserve itself as a “free and independent” nation.
It’s not really a “surrender Dorothy” document.
It’s not even a so-called “rethinking” document, really, given how many caveats — about Russia’s unwillingness to negotiate, about Ukraine’s centrality to any decision-making process — are loaded into it. It’s a “give peace a chance, if there’s a chance, and there might not be” document. Pretty modest, all told, and possibly even banal, or a piece of lefty virtue-signaling. It probably doesn’t mean peace in our time. Whatever: I urge you to read the whole thing.
But hoo boy, the reaction from other left-of-center folks. A couple of examples:1
This seems like … a bit much.2 So what’s going on?
One possibility: the rise of the Tucker Carlson-J.D. Vance anti-war right has produced what might be an equal-and-opposite reaction on the left. But it’s a bit bewildering, as somebody who was around in the post-9/11 era, to see some on the right increasingly take a dovish line and some folks on the left assume the hawkish position. Was my own dovishness during those years just an act of contempt for George W. Bush? I don’t think so. I do wonder if that was the case for some folks, though. 3
Reading other folks’ motivation is probably a fool’s errand, though. So let’s take the angry Dems at their word, and assume that a genuine commitment to Ukraine’s defense is their pure and passionate position. What then?
I think they’re wrong — or at least, not entirely right.
Put aside the merits of the Ukraine-Russia war for a moment. Think back with me to that post-9/11 era. To be anti-war in those first couple of years after the attacks was to be depicted, by politicians and much of the media, as un-American. As dupes. As functional allies of the bad guys.
It was all B.S. The anti-war folks were right. The pro-war folks were wrong. Thousands upon thousands of people died miserable deaths as a result. And we’re still dealing with the fallout from the mistakes made during that era.
What that moment told me:
There should always be somebody in society shouting for peace, even when warmaking seems overwhelmingly right. Because there will always be voices for war, and often they’ll be the loudest voices. And that calls for “unity” in the face of war are usually a way of trying to shout the peace folks down.
I’m suspicious of the anti-war right, as I’ve written, because their rhetoric tends to justify and elide Russia’s aggression and place the burden for peacemaking on Ukraine, the victim of this war. That’s not what the House liberals have done. They have emphatically not called for appeasement. Instead, they’ve identified a real problem — Ukrainian people are suffering, Europeans more broadly are struggling, and by the way we don’t really want to end up in a nuclear war with Russia — and basically said: “Let’s try to make the situation better, if we can, and maybe we can’t.”
And that’s being treated as near treason. The liberals might not be right — or not entirely so, at least — but beware the voices who shout “appeasement” at anyone who dares suggest trying to find a path to peace. We’ve seen how that turns out.
I like Brian quite a bit, fwiw, but I disagree with him here.
Some of the usual suspects also weighed in. Bill Kristol: “It's time finally to reclaim this honorable term. Liberals believe in liberty and the rule of law--and in fighting for liberty, not appeasing brutal dictators.” Eliot Cohen: “Its not just the dupes, America Firsters and isolationists on the right — its their colleagues on the left we need to worry about too. A long tradition of this going back to the 30’s and 40’s. Disgrace and folly then, disgrace and folly now.” Some things never change.
“If Tucker is for it, I’m against it” probably is a wise approach to life overall, but it can occasionally be mistaken.