Brian Baird and Danny Westneat want you to know how great the surge has been and those of us in WA-03 better say uncle!
But now that it appears he was right — that the Iraq war was going better, as he claimed, and President Bush’s troop surge was working — the Southwest Washington congressman is even more of an outcast.
Now nobody much wants to talk to him about Iraq at all.
“After all that extraordinary outrage directed at me, not one person has called me up and said ‘Hey, Brian, it looks like you might have had a point after all,’ ” said Baird, in Denver for his party’s national convention this week.
“We say Bush is so blinded by ideology that he ignores the facts in the real world, and that’s true,” Baird said. “Aren’t we doing the same thing? We’re being just like Bush.”
Meanwhile, as Atrios would put it, “over there:” (props to Juan Cole.)
At least 45 people were killed and 59 injured on Tuesday in attacks, including a bloody suicide and car bomb attack in Iraq’s restive Diyala province, in some of the worst violence the country has witnessed in recent months.
A simultaneous suicide and bomb attack in Diyala province killed at least 35 people. Around 47 people were injured in the attack.
A suicide bomber got out of a car and detonated himself amid a crowd of police recruits standing in front of a police station in Jalawla town, some 60 km northeast of the Iraqi capital, witnesses told a news agency.
Seconds after the man detonated his vest, the car loaded with explosives blew up, the witnesses said.
Yep, only brown furriners being killed, so it’s all good.
Let me put this as succinctly as I can. I was willing and still am willing to entertain Baird’s opinions about what to do in Iraq, and I refused to participate in the public flogging of Baird a year ago. Of course there are reasons not to leave too hastily. But there were also valid reasons to start figuring out how to withdraw troops, and guess what, now we are doing that planning, just ahead of the 2008 election. Go figure.
But the reason Baird’s being shunned isn’t because he had a different opinion on Iraq (or the Schiavo madness, the bankruptcy bill, forestry practices or the FISA sellout) but because he keeps adopting Republican frames, ala Joe Lieberman.
Like, you know, claiming that the surge is a success and painting himself as a victim of the dirty fucking hippies, and then lecturing us about reality. Give me a break.
Sadly, Baird’s Republican opponent in the general election, Michael Delavar, who is sometimes painted as an anti-war candidate, is only anti-war in a completely insane Ron Paul sense. Delavar wants to issue letters of marquee and reprisal to fight the dirty furrin brown people, which worked great against the Barbary pirates, but the last pirate I ever saw was in Orlando, standing next to a giant mouse. Some plan.
I was probably going to vote for Baird in the general election, if for no other reason than people like Delavar who want to run an information age economy based on 18th Century economic practices are kind of scary. I like gold as much as the next guy, but there’s not enough gold in the solar system to back the dollar against our debts to China.
I’ll probably still wind up voting for Baird, but I will certainly be on the lookout for any upcoming go-getters who can run against him next cycle. It kind of pains me personally as I was a volunteer on Baird’s 1996 oh-so-close run against Rep. Linda Smith, when he lost in the end by 887 votes or so.
I know, I’ll be accused of having a “litmus test” when in fact the only test to be in the “big tent” Democratic Party is that you don’t help the other guy put up his tent. Which is exactly what Baird is doing.
At that point you’re on the other team. Not an enemy, but an opponent.
Sounds like it’s time to start finding a replacement for Baird in 2010.
It’s not enough any more to have ANY democrat, it’s time for BETTER democrats.
Thanks for the accurate snapshot of the real Brian Baird of today, not the one that is so carefully depicted in the lamestream media.
You’re willing to toss Baird under the bus for adopting “Republican frames”? How about adopting American frames for once. You know, the country you live in. Sorry comrades, Iraq will NOT be a repeat of the people’s glorious victory in Vietnam.
I only disagree with Baird on one thing, it should dirty, SMELLY, fucking hippies.
Baird is being thrown under the bus for a litany of acts against the American people as the post points out.
And no matter how you paint it and delude yourself, Iraq will go down in history as another horrible mistake of American hegemony.
Sticks and stones…
Then there was the post-surge redefinition of certain forms of violence as ‘sectarian’ and others as war-related.
The ‘success’ of the surge became immediately apparent.
However, ‘sectarian’ violence immediately increased.
It’s a mystery to me.
@4
How about adopting American frames for once.
You don’t get to define our patriotism. Period. Five plus years of this disaster and you people are still trying to tell us we’re not good Americans. Whatever.
Your canard about Vietnam is ridiculous. It has no bearing on the present situation in Iraq, other than as an inkblot test for conservatives.
Have a nice day. ;-)
If Baird’s not the best your district can do, who is?
Are the voters ready for that person?
Judging from your piece, that person is not running.
Conservatives, instead of confronting the reality that the ‘surge’ has had little to no positive effect, usually duck the issue by stating that liberals don’t want to ‘admit’ that the surge is working.
Discussion of the ‘surge’ is then subsumed under the alternate topic of liberal reluctance to ‘admit’ something. The success of the ‘surge’ is just assumed.
Zig Ziglar would approve of this tactic if you were selling a cleaning product that you really believe in. But trying to sell me the ‘surge’ with an assumptive close is not gonna work on me or the American people anymore.
Conservatives: It’s time to move over for the grownups.
@8–Not this year.
I’ve never voted for a Republican for Congress before, but will do so this year. Delavar may support a number of idiotic positions, but that’s no worse than the representation I currently recieve from Baird. If you’re waiting until 2010 for a good Democrat, and Baird is still in office, why will that be any different than this year when no one will take on an incumbent from their own party? Better to un-elect Baird now and then watch a number of very good Democrats run to unseat Delavar.
Baird ran as an anti-war candidate two years ago. Rather than stay true to those convictions he’s now changed his mind. Fair enough, so have I.
Perhaps someone should take a look back some years ago when Baird got himself out of a sexual harassment complaint by having a fellow WA Congressman threaten the political career of the female campaign staffer. Of course, she withdrew the complaint “in the best interests of the party” and left to work for other campaigns.
I have voted for Brian every time he has run for Congress since 1998, including the primary just concluded, but I have to say that his statement about the surge is pure BS, [“Congressman Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, says that since he came out in favor of the Iraq surge no one wants to talk to him about the war”](as copied from your blog) . I have written Brian several times to ask him to follow up on his presentations at town hall meetings in Pacific County last year, when he said he was going to give General Petraeus six months to test the “surge.” At the end of six months I wrote to ask what he thought. He sent a generic reply thanking me for my interest but saying nothing in answer to my question. I wrote him again just before the primary. No response, yet. I also note that his Web site says nothing about Iraq. Nothing. At least as of two weeks ago.
I am very disappointed. I respected his willingness to go against his constituents based on his convictions, and I’ll vote for him in the general election, but I don’t respect him for trying to fly under the radar since then.