If they were principled where is their voice now???
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/For-the-Left_-war-without-Bush-is-not-war-at-all-8119694-53506047.html
>>> Remember the anti-war movement? Not too long ago, the Democratic party's
>>> most loyal voters passionately opposed the war in Iraq. Democratic
>>> presidential candidates argued over who would withdraw American troops the
>>> quickest. Netroots activists regularly denounced President George W. Bush,
>>> and sometimes the U.S. military ("General Betray Us"). Cindy Sheehan, the
>>> woman whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, became a heroine when she led
>>> protests at Bush's Texas ranch.
That was then. Now, even though the United States still has roughly
130,000 troops in Iraq, and is quickly escalating the war in
Afghanistan -- 68,000 troops there by the end of this year, and
possibly more in 2010 -- anti-war voices on the Left have fallen
silent.
No group was more angrily opposed to the war in Iraq than the netroots
activists clustered around the left-wing Web site DailyKos. It's an
influential site, one of the biggest on the Web, and in the Bush years
many of its devotees took an active role in raising money and
campaigning for anti-war candidates.
In 2006, DailyKos held its first annual convention, called YearlyKos,
in Las Vegas. Amid the slightly discordant surroundings of the Riviera
Hotel casino, the webby activists spent hours discussing and planning
strategies not only to defeat Republicans but also to pressure
Democrats to oppose the war more forcefully. The gathering attracted
lots of mainstream press attention; Internet activism was the hot new
thing.
Fast forward to last weekend, when YearlyKos, renamed Netroots Nation,
held its convention in Pittsburgh. The meeting didn't draw much
coverage, but the views of those who attended are still, as they were
in 2006, a pretty good snapshot of the left wing of the Democratic
party.
The news that emerged is that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have
virtually fallen off the liberal radar screen. Kossacks (as fans of
DailyKos like to call themselves) who were consumed by the Iraq war
when George W. Bush was president are now, with Barack Obama in the
White House, not so consumed, either with Iraq or with Obama's
escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan. In fact, they barely seem
to care.
As part of a straw poll done at the convention, the Democratic
pollster Stanley Greenberg presented participants with a list of
policy priorities like health care and the environment. He asked
people to list the two priorities they believed "progressive activists
should be focusing their attention and efforts on the most." The
winner, by far, was "passing comprehensive health care reform." In
second place was enacting "green energy policies that address
environmental concerns."
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
