A front-page piece on today’s Daily Kos gives an insight into a mindset that’s all-too prevalent on the modern left. “As U.S. casualties have continued to drop,” Kossack Brandon Friedman writes, “many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: ‘Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?'” There was a “quiet panic” that the surge might be working? That we might be winning the war? Hey, it’s Friedman’s turn of phrase, not mine. Now, Brandon Friedman doesn’t fit the stereotype of the typical Kos Kid typing away in fury in his mother’s basement. In truth, that stereotype isn’t accurate at all. The typical Kos Kid is middle-aged, has some disposable income, and in some cases left his mother’s basement months ago. But even having dispelled that myth, it’s worth pointing out exactly who Brandon Friedman is. Friedman is the vice-president of the anti-Iraq war organization VoteVets.org. He served in the infantry in both Iraq and Afghanistan before coming home in 2003. He’s also the author of a book called “The War I Always Wanted.” Publisher’s Weekly website describes Freidman’s book as a “cynical but appealing memoir by a lieutenant in the elite 101st Airborne (that) recounts his unpleasant times fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. After a quick review of his youth (shy, smart, dreaming of glory), Friedman describes his unit’s deployment to Afghanistan after 9/11 to fight the Taliban. Its mission turns out to be guarding an air base, four months of demoralizing boredom followed by urgent orders into battle. The result is an exhausting 11-hour march high into freezing mountains, where the soldiers arrive as the fighting ends. A year later, as American forces invade Iraq in March 2003, Friedman’s unit advances almost to Baghdad without encountering resistance but yearning to fight. There follows three months of dull occupation duty until, to everyone’s horror, a grenade kills two soldiers on patrol, and the insurgency begins. The author accepts that America needed to fight in Afghanistan, but can’t fathom why we invaded Iraq. He does not re-enlist.” Given his background of serving our country, it’s impossible to believe Friedman was really rooting against the surge, even if he had developed a healthy hatred for George W. Bush. Perhaps Friedman hadn’t considered the implications of his verb and adverb. Probably the best way to deal with Brandon Friedman’s blog-post is to leave the author and his motives out of it. Better to focus on what he reports seeing on the “anti-Bush side of the aisle:” “Quiet panic” over the possibility that George W. Bush may have been right and that the surge may be working. Has there ever been a more damning assessment of the modern left written by one of its own?
