PNAC Democrats

In a TAP Online article published yesterday, Michael Lind devises a term worth putting into circulation -- "PNAC Democrats" -- to describe Democrats who sometimes agree to sign letters written and circulated by neoconservative clearinghouse the Project for a New American Century. This is a mode of behavior that, I think, has to stop. Unlike Lind, I don't think it's the case that anyone who signed any of these letters is, ipso facto, a full-bore neocon himself. Some of the things their letters say are defensible. Nevertheless, signing them is not defensible.

When PNAC Democrats like Peter Beinart, Ivo Daalder, Michele Flournoy, Will Marshall, Michael O'Hanlon, and James Steinberg do something like sign PNAC's letter on the need for more American ground forces they serve to further cement the notion that people like Frank Gaffney, Bill Kristol, Cliff May, Daniel McKivegan, Danielle Pletka, and Gary Schmitt should be taken seriously as authorities on national security policy. Well, they shouldn't be taken seriously. And nobody serious about improving America's national security should be publicly collaborating with them.