But I Thought The Left Was Anti-War

A headline in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer screams, “McDermott On Health Care Reform: ‘This is war'”:

As West Seattle Democrats convened to hear their congressman talk health care, the loudest noise came from the political left – a group of elderly singers called the Raging Grannies.

The appearance of Rep. Jim McDermott Wednesday evening did draw a small group of protesters decrying what they argue is the threat of government health care. “If we went to a single-payer system it would bankrupt the country,” said protester Thomas Schafer.

But the greatest number of people turning out at the Hall at Fauntleroy came to demand health care reform and a so-called “public option,” in which a government-run program would compete against private insurers.

The blood lust was on the left.

It usually is when Baghdad Jim is involved. Here’s a reminder from 2002 courtesy of George Will:

Hitler found “Lord Haw Haw” — William Joyce, who broadcast German propaganda to Britain during the Second World War — in the dregs of British extremism. But Saddam Hussein finds American collaborators among senior congressional Democrats.

Not since Jane Fonda posed for photographers at a Hanoi antiaircraft gun has there been anything like Rep. Jim McDermott, speaking to ABC’s “This Week” from Baghdad, saying Americans should take Saddam Hussein at his word but should not take President Bush at his. . . .

Bonior, until recently second-ranking in the House Democratic leadership, said sources no less reliable than Hussein’s minions told them that inspectors would have an “unrestricted ability to go where they want.” McDermott said: “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their value — at their face value.” And: “I think the president would mislead the American people.”

McDermott and Bonior are two specimens of what Lenin, referring to Westerners who denied the existence of Lenin’s police-state terror, called “useful idiots.”

They were willing to placate Saddam Hussein to keep him on the throne, but when it comes to say, the majority of Americans? “This is war,” he declared to cheers. “This is a war over whether Americans can have health security and economic security.”

Roll over Von Clausewitz! Or, to mash-up William James and Edwin Starr: The moral equivalent of war — what is it good for?

Clearly, we need a Congress that will declare peace with the American people and bring the Obatroops back home…