A recent article posted at Common Dreams points to a upcoming "civil war" between the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council and the antiwar wing of the Democratic party. Saying that "it will take a divisive, all-out political civil war to scrub the anti-war orthodoxy out of the party's agenda," DLC founder Al From and President Bruce Reed seem bent on shifting the Democratic Party into a "kinder, gentler" version of the Republicans. Of course, that goal has already been achieved in great part due to the DLC endorsed presidency of Bill Clinton. The DLC leadership seems to oppose Republican foreign policy only in regards to specific details, not on substance. In a recent statement on their website the DLC states their positions calling for a return to the "tough-minded internationalism" of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy. Echoing the campaign rhetoric of failed presidential candidate John Kerry, the DLC states that the Democratic Party needs to be willing "to use force to defend our interests and values; support for open trade and a globalizing world economy; and active promotion of individual liberty and democracy around the world."
This platform is not different from the Republican position in any meaningful sense, and is just as delusional. A simple examination of U.S. history clearly shows that U.S. internationalism has never been about "the active promotion of individual liberty and democracy." Rather, the vast majority of U.S. military interventions have functioned to protect American interests in spite of other people's aspirations toward freedom or democracy.
In another refutation of reality, the DLC document states "Our party will not cede to President Bush the high ground of liberal values in foreign policy debates. In fact, Mr. Bush risks discrediting democracy by offering it as a panacea for the Muslim world's ills and by applying it selectively -- for example, to Iraq and the Palestinians but not to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Russia." Any sane observer would ask how exactly the U.S. is a sponsor of democracy for Palestinians when the historical record clearly shows that the U.S. has gone to extraordinary lengths to provide Israel with the material, legal, and diplomatic support necessary for the occupation of Palestine to continue. As to Iraq, to refer to an illegal invasion followed by a brutal occupation as an "application of Democracy" is a rather strange choice of words indeed.
As the Republican Party has shifted over the last twenty years to the extreme right, groups such as the DLC have shifted the Democrats toward the middle ground (or to the right of it). The reasons for this are that the DLC is a corporate sponsored organization. Their strategy, which worked for a while in the Clinton years, is to suck up to corporate power while posturing as somehow "liberal". In there calling for an abandonment of the anti-war wing of the Democratic party, the DLC has more clearly than other showed their allegiance to imperialism and corporate power.
