Cold War Call to Action Wouldn't Ring True for Democrats Now

When the ADA was formed, a Democratic president, Harry S. Truman, was developing America's strategy against the spread of Soviet communism. Although Truman didn't neglect military might, his vision of "containment" put much greater emphasis on economic aid (through the Truman Doctrine for Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan for Europe) and international alliances (NATO). Truman made it easier for the ADA to embrace a positive agenda, because he set a course for the Cold War most Democrats could support.

Today it is Republican President Bush deciding the strategy in the war on terrorism. And by invading Iraq, especially amid so much international resistance, he has set a direction that most Democrats consider counterproductive. That has created a debate that guarantees the "largely negative" Democratic reaction Beinart laments.

The war in Iraq is now the principal political battleground in the war on terrorism. Since so many Democrats reject Bush's decision to invade -- or at least the way he has conducted the war -- it is inevitable that the party is being defined more by its opposition to his choices than by its own alternatives.

If a Republican had been elected president in 1948 by promising to roll back Soviet control of Eastern Europe through military invasion, the ADA generation probably would have been defined primarily by opposition to the administration's direction too.

Given the dominance of Iraq in the campaign debate, Sen. John F. Kerry made more progress in developing a positive post-9/11 Democratic national security agenda than Beinart acknowledges.

Kerry criticized Bush's management of the Iraq war, but he resisted pressure from the left to set a date for withdrawing U.S. troops. In almost every speech, Kerry insisted that combating Islamic extremism would be his top priority. He promised to expand the military, augment the special forces, launch new efforts to safeguard nuclear materials and, above all, to cooperate more closely with allies in both pursuing terrorists and encouraging economic, social and political reform in the Arab world to defuse the tensions breeding terrorism.

It wasn't a perfect agenda, but it wasn't entirely reactive either.