A DIFFERENT VIETNAM SYNDROME. The war supplemental bill passed today in the House, 218-212. Last month, historian Julian Zelizer wrote a piece for the Prospect detailing the actions that Democratic congresses took in the '60s and '70s to influence the course of (and eventually end) the Vietnam War. One question that Zelizer's piece may have prompted among some readers was: Sure, but didn't the Democrats pay a lasting and devastating political price for their opposition to even that unpopular and disastrous war? That, I think, is a widespread assumption, and one that provides the context for some Democrats' continued fears about taking substantial action to end the Iraq war. I'm glad to see that someone has now decided to challenge that historical narrative, and impressed to see that the someone who has done it is none other than Peter "Fighting Faith" Beinart. As he says straightforwardly in this Time piece, "Despite today's conventional wisdom, Democrats didn't suffer in the 1970s for opposing Vietnam. And they're even less likely to pay a political price for trying to end the war in Iraq." It's worth a read.
--Sam Rosenfeld