Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Martin Peretz Invents a Peace Party –updated–

Is Peretz campaigning for Joe Lieberman or for more Israeli bombings? It's
hard to tell, but both points aren't in America's best interest and they won't
do Israel, Lebanon or Iraq any good either. The Arab League is now siding with Lebanon, no-holds-barred. But with Peretz now calling Lamont “a run-of-the-mill
contemporary commercant with unusually easy access to capital”, truth has flown the campaign for good. His Wall
Street Journal article today is a classic. Evidently Marty has not seen this.
Lots of last minute money
pouring in to poor Joe. Hey, but that's not even the worst of it.

And so we wait… Whether Ned Lamont will win tomorrow's race will not be known
until Connecticut decides. But the latest drivel from Martin Peretz inspired
me to remind everyone that The
New Republic endorsed Joe Lieberman for president in 2004, with many DC Democrats still in his corner. Does it get any
more Republican? Seriously, why throw George W. Bush and the rubber stamping Republicans a life raft? Let 'em go down, en masse.

Secondly, this whole spin on the
non-existent “anti-war” Democratic Party is just nonsense. I wrote
about it last week, but offer
it again, because evidently Martin Peretz and others aren't listening. It's
also good to note that the people making Lieberman's case are mostly Republican.
They're Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and many others in the ranks
of the party in power, with Martin Peretz on top.

Now I know people said that Peretz wasn't really for Lieberman
when TNR endorsed him in 2004. However, last time I looked he was on the board
of directors. I also don't remember any articles Mr. Peretz wrote himself saying
Lieberman wasn't his choice. Slapping Joe Lieberman's mug on the cover, though the image is no longer available on the web, was also
a dead giveaway, if you ask me. Sure, there were articles opposing the Lieberman
endorsement inside, but the issue still stands for all to see. Besides, the
inside baseball of the pick is lost on people. They see the cover and make the
judgment. Nuance doesn't count on magazine covers, which scream stance and point
of view, particularly where endorsements are concerned.

But being lectured by the likes of Martin Peretz on a muscular foreign policy
is just laughable, especially where America's interests are concerned. He actually
still believes Iraq was a good fight to wage, thus he is hopelessly lost in
unreality. His desperate attempt to save Joe is all balled up in his own efforts
to stay relevant in the Democratic Party. He and the
Moose can commiserate if Lieberman loses. Lanny can bring the scotch. Frankly,
I feel for the writers at The New Republic who deserve better from their board
members. Here's a snippet from his Wall Street Journal article.

We have been here before. Left-wing Democrats are once again fielding single-issue “peace candidates,” and the one in Connecticut, like several in the 1970s, is a middle-aged patrician, seeking office de haut en bas, and almost entirely because he can. It's really quite remarkable how someone like Ned Lamont, from the stock of Morgan partner Thomas Lamont and that most high-born American Stalinist, Corliss Lamont, still sends a chill of “having arrived” up the spines of his suburban supporters simply by asking them to support him. Superficially, one may think of those who thought they were already middle class just by being enthusiasts of Franklin Roosevelt, who descended from the Hudson River Dutch aristocracy. But when FDR ran for, and was elected, president in 1932, he had already been a state senator, assistant secretary of the Navy and governor of New York. He had demonstrated abilities. (snip) Almost every Democrat feels obliged to offer fraternal solidarity to Israel, and Mr. Lamont is no exception. But here, too, he blithely assumes that the Palestinians could be easily conciliated. All that it would have needed was President Bush's attention. Mr. Lamont has repeated the accusation, disproved by the “road map” and Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza, that Mr. Bush paid little or even no attention to the festering conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. And has Mr. Lamont noticed that the Palestinians are now ruled, and by their own choice, by Hamas? Is Hamas, too, just a few good arguments away from peace? Lieberman The “peace” Democrats are back. It's a dream come true for Karl Rove.

Excuse me, Marty – may I call you Marty? – but your bias is showing
again.

Unless the United States gets back to being an honest broker in the Middle
East we will continue to be threatened abroad and at home. However, Peretz isn't
interested in America's best interest. It's all about Israel, southern Lebanon
be damned, a free Lebanon be damned. Because with every bomb Israel drops they
are creating more supporters of Hezbollah, a faction that was voted into the
government through elections. Remember those, Marty?

Oh, and by the way, according to CNN, Israel has just warned the people of
southern Lebanon to get inside, get off the roads, get ready, stay indoors.
At 3:00 p.m. eastern time bombings will commence in southern Lebanon.

As for the Arab League, the Secretary General of the Arab League Amr Moussa
said through an interview broadcast on CNN that Arab leaders no longer condemn
the taking of the Israeli soldiers. The civilian slaughters in Lebanon have collapsed any modicum of
moral authority Israel once had.

So much for hearts and minds. See Iraq. So goes the greater Middle East? What
say you, Marty?

UPDATE (1:30 p.m.): Via Max Sawicky at TPMCafe, Jack Shafer's oldie but goodie on Mr. Paretz is a doozy. You'll love it.

… … In time, most writers publish a paragraph or two they should yank back. Peretz's came in a particularly windy “Diarist” in the March 10, 1986, New Republic. The column started out about Palm Beach charities, segued to strategic minerals, skipped off to the subject of Cory Aquino, and then settled once again on those nationless, violent Arabs. “[N]onviolence is foreign to the political culture of Arabs generally and of the Palestinians particularly,” Peretz wrote. “It is a failure of the collective imagination for which no one is to blame.” Peretz's chief nemesis, the Nation's Alexander Cockburn, pounced on the column a week later, calling Peretz a racist and insisting that the Palestinians had shown remarkable restraint under occupation. Vanity Fair's James Wolcott homed in on the same Peretzism in 1988, deriding the New Republican's approach to Israeli-Arab relations as iron-fisted and ugly. When not whomping Arabs, Peretz whomps his enemies in the press—make that Israel's enemies in the press. Not that, to him, there's much difference. … The Perpetually Perfervid Peretz The New Republic co-owner practically begs me to reprint an old column.