Tag team on Democracy Now!

I missed it live, but this is an interesting transcript of a debate between Norman Solomon and Sidney Blumenthal on Democracy Now! (with Amy Goodman a very active participant, as you'll see if you read down the transcript). The topics: Karl Rove, the Democrats, Iraq and Iran.

While Blumenthal was in high Washington-geek mode, full of minutae about l'affaire Rove (am I alone in finding all this Rove chatter absolutely stultefying?), Solomon took the position that it was all a distraction from the most important issue, the goddamn war:

So I think what we're seeing here, while it's very interesting palace intrigue and certainly has great historical and political importance, the kind of recasting of what is on the front burner, and ironically, public concern about Iraq itself and the implications of the U.S. war there, are to some degree being shunted aside by this controversy which, in fact, has its roots in the lies about this war.

... and went on to attack what he thinks (and I agree) is the real target: the unwillingness of either party to address (end) U.S. involvement in what everyone now agrees is an unjust war based on lies:

This goes, I think, to a deeper question, which is, can we have a sense of proportion and perspective where we don't just have two choices? Either we say it's meaningless to protect a C.I.A. agent's identities or there is nothing more important. Certainly, it's a valid issue to protect some government workers in this situation, but do we put it at the very top notch in terms of not only media coverage but also political emphasis and say that that is equivalent to the slaughter of thousands of people in Iraq, which continues because of the U.S. presence?

And I think this raises also the question of the role of the Democratic Party here. Under Howard Dean, the Democratic Party in the United States now has a pro-war position. Let me repeat that. The Democratic Party has a pro-war position as the war in Iraq continues. And so, how well-positioned is the Democratic Party and its leadership, such as it is, to raise these issues about lies on behalf of war and also raise these issues about the meaningfulness of this war.

Blumenthal takes the odd position that it doesn't matter what the Democrats' position is on the war, since they're out of power. Solomon stays on the Democrats' case, and gets a little personal on Sid:

And yet, Sid, you have been around the block a lot, and you can remember when Clinton was in the White House, and the Republicans did not have a majority of both houses, and Republicans yelled and screamed bloody murder and got the White House to start moving in their direction because they raised hell. Why are Democrats -- now admittedly, there's more unfortunate backbone in the White House now than during the Clinton years, but why are you unwilling to call upon Democrats in Congress to start raising hell against this war and hopefully begin to change the political climate of the country?

And then Amy jumps in, running an interview she had done with Wesley Clark on the bombing of R.T.S., Radio Television Serbia, that killed 16 media workers, was called a war crime by Amnesty International, and was ordered by Blumenthal's boss, Bill Clinton. I wonder if Blumenthal was expecting all of that.

Solomon, who just recently returned from Iran, really gets at the heart of the pro-war bipartisan consensus:

And I'm really concerned that there's a kind of an exceptionalism that's been carved out by many leading Democrats that what happened in the attack in Iraq was unusual and extraordinary and that the baseline of justifying missile strikes and other military attacks could come into play, and so I guess it all boils down to again: Will members of Congress and the Democratic Party and others at the grassroots -- how will they respond to an attack on Iran? Are they willing now, and I wonder if my co-guest here, Sid Blumenthal, would be willing to say straight out, clearly now, we are opposed to a U.S. missile strike on Iran?

Blumenthal says his own views are "irrelevant", but nevertheless sputters on about those mythical Iranian nukes and says a missile attack on Iran would be "counterproductive" but not unjustifiable or immoral.

Amy wraps it up with the Democrats in focus, as they should be:

And finally, just this point, which is what the whole conversation has revolved around: Did the Democrats enable the Republicans to do this in Iraq? The issue of weapons of mass destruction; the Presidential election of 2004, where the leading Democratic candidate, the Presidential Democratic candidate, John Kerry, even after it was exposed there were no WMDs, said if he knew then what he knew now, he would still vote to authorize the invasion.

Great stuff. You go, Amy. What is the point of having an opposition party if they can't even speak against an obviously immoral, unjust and costly war? Bombs were dropping on Iraq virtually every day in the late 1990s, on Clinton's watch, and Hillary, in league with the odious Joe Lieberman, is calling for 80,000 more troops—not very promising.

For now, I give the last word to MLK, whom Solomon invoked, motivating me to Google around a bit. I found this quote from his "Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break Silence" speech. Play along with me and substitute Iraq for Vietnam.

"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways."

Read the whole debate...