Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Nation

I agree that if the Dems want to win in 2004, they have to lay out a principled and pragmatic alternative to Bush's failed national security policies. But it's crazy to argue, as Democratic party strategists Donna Brazile and Timothy Bergreen did in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, "What Would Scoop Do?" that we "need to return to the muscular national security principles" exemplified by Henry "Scoop" Jackson, the conservative Democratic Senator who represented Washington State from 1940-1982.

Why should Dems take their lead from a former Senator whom bellicose neocons like Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams and Douglas Feith consider their intellectual godfather?

Before mindlessly invoking Scoop Jackson as a model, consider what the late (and great) journalist Lars Erik-Nelson wrote about this hawkish ideologue in late 2000 for The New York Review of Books:

"Time and again in his career, Jackson made charges or issued demands that put America's defense capacities, falsely, in the worst possible light. At best, his exaggerations can be considered white lies intended to rouse complacent Americans to meet what he believed to be a mortal danger; at worst, he bullied his opponents and impugned their integrity, if not their patriotism...To his conservative admirers, almost all of them Republicans, Jackson was a prophet without honor in his own party...But consider Eisenhower's quite different view. There was no reason for Eisenhower to decry a military-industrial-congressional complex that was, in good faith, identifying genuine threats to the United States and devising necessary weapons to counter them, even at high cost. What Eisenhower denounced was a cabal [he considered Jackson a key member of this group] that knowingly magnified threats, relentlessly promoted worst-case scenarios, deliberately belittled the military might of the United States, and defamed opponents to promote spending on weapons that were costly and unneeded.The world and its threats may be changing, but the military-industrial-congressional complex remains with us, warning of perils that it must know in its heart are exaggerated. In the method of hyperbolic, ever-shifting, disingenuous, worst-case argument, Jackson lives."

The neocons have learned well from Jackson. Like their mentor, they've created a cabal inside the Administration, which magnifies threats and defames opponents. So why should Dems emulate a man whose polices contributed to the failed national security polices of today?

The Dems would be wise to forget "Scoop" and instead pay attention to the words of Ted Sorensen, former speechwriter to another muscular Democrat-- President John Kennedy. In a recent commencement address at American University, Sorensen lamented that:

"Both political parties now compete to sound more hawkish, to criticize as naive or even unpatriotic those who favor peaceful world cooperation. The long uneasiness with bloodletting and battle that followed Vietnam has been replaced by a new infatuation for war, a preference for invasion over persuasion." Comparable political courage is needed now, Sorensen said, "to reverse course, in JFK's phrase, away from a strategy of annihilation and back toward a strategy of peace...The US would still be a world leader, necessarily, with its preponderance of wealth and might; we would still defend our principles, security and basic interests, but we would be a leader in diplomacy, not warfare; in humanitarian operations, not military."

Listen to Ted. Dump Scoop!

After weeks of searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there's still no trace of the fearsome arsenal the Administration advertised. Back in the US, however, the Bush Administration is adding to our own stockpile of weapons of mass destruction by lifting a decade-old ban on research and testing of small nuclear weapons to allow for the development of "low yield" nukes for battlefield use.

The White House's Strangelovian nuclear policy signals a dramatic shift in US nuclear doctrine--one that undermines five decades of bipartisan efforts to delegitimize the use of nuclear weapons. What Senator Edward Kennedy called a "far-reaching and highly dangerous U-turn in our longstanding policy against the first use of nuclear weapons," was accelerated on May 20th when the Republican-controlled Senate turned back a Democratic effort to maintain the ban. "It's a one way street that can lead only to nuclear war," Kennedy warned.

If anyone needs evidence that the Administration's reckless policy is about to launch a new nuclear arms race, Russian President Vladimir Putin provided it on May 15th when he announced to the Russian Parliament his country will soon begin developing new nuclear weapons and low-yield nuclear devices of their own. His remark was met greeted by applause.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States and Russia have worked together, slowly but steadily, to scale back their strategic nuclear arsenals. There were even baby steps taken to safeguard and reduce the former Soviet Union's ill-secured weapons of mass destruction. Now, Bush's unilateral assault on decades of disarmament may revive a nuclear arms race, hinder our chances to secure "loose nukes," and lead Putin to re-invest in his country's decrepit nuclear infrastructure. Do you feel safer?

NOTE: TrueMajority is currently sponsoring a campaign allowing you to send a free fax to your elected representatives telling them to vote against "Usable Nukes." Click here for info.

While the Administration denies media reports that it has given US forces in Iraq the go-ahead to shoot looters on sight, Donald Rumsfeld, testifying last week before the Senate Appropriations Committee, promised that US forces will be "using muscle" to contain the looting. Rumsfeld also called for patience, saying of Iraq: "We can't make it like the United States in five minutes, and we know that."

Some good Senator should have asked Rumsfeld about the looting going on in Washington, DC. Politically-connected corporations with close ties to the Bush Administration are arranging lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq. (Bechtel has a contract worth up to $700 million and the Halliburton subsidiary has been authorized to take profits of up to $490 million.) And where was the Senator to point out how singularly ill-suited the Bush Administration is to the task of rebuilding Iraq?

Bush Inc.--the most resolutely anti-government Administration since before the New Deal--is brazenly indifferent to the rebuilding--or even the maintaining--of the United States. So Rumsfeld & Co's idea of making Iraq like the US may not take as much time as they think--if it means gutting the infrastructure of a country, while looting its treasury (and oil wealth) to line the pockets of war-profiteering corporations.

What is it with neocon women? They'll find any opportunity to bash the upper west side. In last Friday's Wall Street Journal, former Dan Quayle speech-writer and charter member of the rightwing, antifeminist Independent Women's Forum Lisa Schiffren shared her sex fantasies:

"I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking--how to put it?--really hot. Also, presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as a commander in chief. But mostly 'hot' as in virile, sexy and powerful. You don't see that a lot in my neighborhood, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. (I'm told there's more of it in the 'red' states.)"

Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, where are you hanging out? Not in my neighborhood, my upper west side. Haven't you walked through Riverside Park this spring? Checked out the running paths and soccer fields? What about the basketball courts at 92nd and Amsterdam?

And Lisa, on my upper west side we like our men to be "hot" in real life, not just in photo-ops. Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey (another Upper West Sider) summed it up well when, after subjecting the photographic record of Bush's combat getup to close scrutiny, she wondered if he had stuffed "socks down the front of the jumpsuit." (My gay friend Luccio says that internet images of Bush in uniform titled "Bush's Package" are wildly popular among his friends.)

The White House's Top Gun spectacle distorted reality in all sorts of ways. Why not use the photo-op to give GOP voters like Schiffren something to fantasize about at night?

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Preemptive Strike Against Hillary

Can't the Republican Presidential Task Force come up with more imaginative ways of raising money than attacking Hillary Clinton? Last week it sent out a mass mailing seeking funds to stop any prospective Clinton presidential candidacy.

"If Republicans don't take immediate steps to counter her," writes Senator George Allen, chair of the Republican Senatorial Committee, "Senator Hillary Clinton will continue to rise unimpeded to the very pinnacle of power in Washington and we will see the dawning of a new, more liberal Clinton era."

Spare me. The specter of Hillary Clinton as Senator--and now President--may be one of the great rightwing moneymaking gambits of our time. (Also one of the most fraudulent given Hillary's longtime centrist record.) HillaryNo.com helped Rudy Giuliani, her then assumed rival for the New York Senate, haul in an unprecedented 19 million dollars in campaign contributions. Since then, scores of rightwing writers have cashed in by pillorying Hillary. Conservative publishing houses have grown fat from Hillary-bashing. Talk radio's revenues would be cut in half without the Clintons, and Hannity, Scarborough, Savage and O'Reilly could go out of business without Hillary to kick around. (Rightwing attack-journalist turned repentant whistleblower David Brock's Blinded by the Right usefully explained the machinery of the anti-Clinton propaganda machine in which he thrived for many years.)

At least retailers are no longer reporting brisk sales in nine-inch Hillary voodoo dolls or doormats bearing her likeness. And maybe someday the Presidential Task Force, whatever that is, will similiarly retire its tired pitches and find a new scapegoat to try to exploit.

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Where are the WMD?

With each passing day it appears more likely that Saddam Hussein did NOT possess usable weapons of mass destruction, and therefore did not pose an urgent threat to US, regional or international security. The UN inspectors could have been given more time to complete their job. Ironically, while Saddam rarely, if ever, cooperated fully with UN inspectors, he did let them in. The Bush Administration is currently denying them access into postwar Iraq altogether.