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Ira
Chernus
PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
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The Democrats’ Dilemma: Or How to Lose a War and Never Know Why
Pity the poor Democratic
candidates for president, caught between Iraq and a hard place. Every day, more and more voters decide that
we must end the war and set a date to start withdrawing our troops out of Iraq. Most who will vote in the Democratic
primaries concluded long ago that we must leave Iraq, and they are unlikely to let
anyone who disagrees with them have their party’s nomination in 2008.
But what does it mean “to
leave Iraq”? Here’s where the Democratic candidates come
smack up against a hard place. There has
been a longstanding bipartisan consensus among the foreign-policy establishment
that the U.S.
must control every strategically valuable region of the world -- and none more
so than the oil heartlands of the planet.
That’s been a hard-and-fast rule of the elite for some six decades
now. No matter how hard the task may be,
the elite demands that presidents be rock-hard enough to get the job done.
So whatever “leave Iraq” might
mean, no candidate of either party likely to enter the White House on January
20, 2009 can think it means letting Iraqis alone determine their own national
policies or fate. The powers that be just won’t stand for that. They see
themselves as the guardians of world “order.” They feel a sacred obligation to
maintain “stability” throughout the imperial domains, which now means the whole
world -- regardless of what voters may think. The Democratic front-runners know
that “order” and “stability” are code words for American hegemony. They also
know that voters, especially Democratic ones, see the price of hegemony in Iraq and just don’t
want to pay it any more.
So the Democratic front-runners
must promise voters that they will end the war -- with not too many ideologically
laden ifs, ands, or buts -- while they assure the foreign-policy establishment
that they will never abandon the drive for hegemony in the Middle
East (or anywhere else). In other words, the candidates have to be
able to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.
No worries, it turns out. Fluency
in doublespeak is a prime qualification for high political office. On Iraq, Dennis
Kucinich and Bill Richardson don’t meet that test. They tell anyone and
everyone that they want “all” U.S.
troops out of Iraq,
but they register only 1-4% in the polls and are generally ignored in the media
and. The Democrats currently topping the polls, on the other hand, are proving
themselves eminently qualified in double-speak.
Clinton:
“We got it right, mostly, during the Cold War”
Hillary Clinton declares
forthrightly: “It is time to begin ending this war … Start bringing home America’s
troops … within 90 days.” Troops home: It sounds clear enough. But she is
always careful to avoid the crucial word all. A few months ago she told an
interviewer: “We have remaining vital
national security interests in Iraq … What we can do is to almost take a line
sort of north of, between Baghdad and Kirkuk, and basically put our troops into
that region.” A senior Pentagon officer
who has briefed Clinton told NPR commentatorTed
Koppel that she expects U.S.
troops to be in Iraq
when she ends her second term, in 2017.
Why all these troops? We have “very real strategic national
interests in this region,” Clinton
explains. “I will order specialized
units to engage in narrow and targeted operations against al Qaeda and other
terrorist organizations in the region. They will also provide security for U.S. troops and
personnel and train and equip Iraqi security services to keep order and promote
stability.” There would be U.S. forces to protect the Kurds and “our
efforts must also involve a regional recommitment to success in Afghanistan.” Perhaps that’s why Clinton has proposed “that we expand the Army
by 80,000 troops, that we move faster to expand the Special Forces.” Says her deputy
campaign manager, Bob Nash, "She'll be as tough as any Republican on our
enemies.".
And on our friends, he might
have added, if they don’t shape up. At the Take Back America conference in June
the candidate drew boos when she declared that "the American military has
done its job. …They gave the Iraqi government the chance to begin to
demonstrate that it understood its responsibilities … It is the Iraqi
government which has failed." It’s the old innocent-Americans-blame-the-foreigners
ploy.
More importantly, it’s the old
tough-Americans-reward-friends-who-help-America ploy. We should start
withdrawing some troops, Clinton
says, “to make it clear to the Iraqis that … we’re going to look out for
American interests, for the region’s interests.” If the Iraqi government is not
“striving for sustainable stability … we'll consider providing aid to
provincial governments and reliable non-governmental organizations that are
making progress.”
Clinton’s
message to the Iraqi leaders is clear:
You had your chance to join “the international community,” get with the U.S. program, and
reap the same benefits as the leaders of other oil-rich nations -- but you blew
it. So now you can fend for yourselves, while we look for new, more capable
allies in Iraq
and keep who-knows-how-many troops there to “protect our interests” -- and increase
our global clout. The draw-down in Iraq, our signal that we’ve given up on the
al-Maliki government, “will be a first step towards restoring Americans moral
and strategic leadership in the world,” Clinton
swears.
“America must be the world’s
leader,” she declared last month. “We must widen the scope of our strength by
leading strong alliances which can apply military force when required.” And cut
off useless puppet governments when necessary.
Hillary, like all the
candidates, is speaking to at least three audiences: the voters at home, the
foreign-policy elite, and a global elite she would have to deal with as
president. Her recent fierce criticism of the way President Bush has handled Iraq, like her
somewhat muddled antiwar rhetoric, is meant as a message of reassurance to voters,
but also to our elite -- and as a warning to foreigners: The next President
Clinton will be tough on allies as well as foes, as tough as the old cold
warriors. “We got it right, mostly,
during the Cold War. … Nothing is more urgent than for us to begin again to
rebuild a bipartisan consensus,” she said last year, in a speech that cut right
to the bottom line: “American foreign policy exists to maintain our security and
serve our national interests.” That’s what the bipartisan consensus has always
believed.
Obama and Edwards: Don’t Tread on Us
That seems to be what Barack Obama,
another loyal member of the foreign-policy establishment, believes too. “The
single most important job of any President is to protect the American people,”
he affirmed in a major foreign-policy statement last April. But “the threats we
face… can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries… The security of the
American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people.” That’s
why the U.S.
must be “leader of the free world.” It’s hard to find much difference on
foreign policy between Clinton and Obama, except that Barack is more likely to
dress up the imperial march of U.S.
interests in such old-fashioned cold war flourishes.
That delights neoconservative
guru Robert Kagan, who summed up Obama’s message succinctly: “His critique is not that we've meddled too
much but that we haven't meddled enough. … To Obama, everything and everyone
everywhere is of strategic concern to the United States.” To control everything and everyone, he wants
“the strongest, best-equipped military in the world … A 21st century military
to stay on the offense.” That, he says, will take at least 92,000 more soldiers
and Marines -- precisely the number Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has
recommended to the president.
Like Hillary, Barack would remove
all “combat brigades” but keep U.S. troops in Iraq “for a more extended period
of time” -- even “redeploy[ing] additional troops to Northern Iraq” -- to
support the Kurds, train Iraqi forces, fight al Qaeda, “reassure allies in the
Gulf,” “send a clear message to hostile countries like Iran and Syria,” and “prevent
chaos in the wider region.” “Most
importantly, some of these troops could be redeployed to Afghanistan… to stop Afghanistan from backsliding toward
instability.”
Barack also agrees with
Hillary that the Iraqi government needs a good scolding “to pressure the Iraqi
leadership to finally come to a political agreement between the warring
factions that can create some sense of stability… Only through this phased
redeployment can we send a clear message to the Iraqi factions that the U.S. is not
going to hold together this country indefinitely. … No more coddling, no more
equivocation.”
But Obama offers a carrot as
well as a stick to the Iraqis: “The redeployment could be temporarily suspended
if the parties in Iraq
reach an effective political arrangement that stabilizes the situation and they
offer us a clear and compelling rationale for maintaining certain troop levels…
The United States would not
be maintaining permanent military bases in Iraq.” What does “permanent” mean when language is
used being so subtly? It’s a question
that needs an answer but no one asks – and none is volunteered.
John Edwards offers variations
on the same themes. He wants a continuing U.S. troop presence “to prevent a
genocide, deter a regional spillover of the civil war, and prevent an Al Qaeda
safe haven.” But he goes further than either Obama or Clinton in spelling out
that we “will also need some presence in Baghdad,
inside the Green Zone, to protect the American Embassy and other personnel.”
Around the world, Edwards
would use military force for “deterring and responding to aggressors, making
sure that weak and failing states do not threaten our interests, and …
maintaining our strategic advantage against major competitor states that could
do us harm and otherwise threaten our interests.” His distinctive touch is to
stress coordinated military and civilian efforts for “stabilizing states with
weak governments… I would put stabilization first.” “Stabilization” is yet another
establishment code word for insuring U.S. control, as Edwards certainly
knows. His ultimate aim, he says, is to ensure that the U.S. will “lead
and shape the world.”
Questions Unasked, Answers
Never Volunteered
The top Democrats agree that
we must leave U.S. troops in
Iraq,
not only for selfish reasons, but because we Americans are so altruistic. We
want to prevent chaos and bring order and stabilization to Iraq -- as
if U.S.
troops were not already creating chaos and instability there every day. But among the foreign policy elite the U.S. is always
a force for order, “helping” the chaotic foreigners to achieve
“stability.” For them, it’s axiomatic
that the global “stability” that keeps us secure and prosperous is also a boon
for the people we “stabilize.” And it matters little how many foreigners we
kill in the process, as long as u.s. casualties are reduced enough to
appease public opinion at home. These
axioms are not open to question; most of the time, they don’t even cross
anyone’s mind to question.
Well, perhaps it’s time
someone started asking such questions. A
lost war should be the occasion for a great public debate on the policies and
the geopolitical assumptions that led to the war. Americans blew that
opportunity after the Vietnam war. Instead of a genuine debate, we had a few
years of apathy verging on amnesia toward foreign affairs followed by the
Reagan revolution, whose disastrous effects in foreign (and domestic) affairs
still plague us. Now, we have another precious -- and preciously bought --
opportunity to raise fundamental issues about foreign policy. But in the
mainstream, all we are getting is a false substitute for real public debate.
With an election looming, the
Democrats portray themselves as the polar opposite of the Republicans. They blame
the Iraq
fiasco entirely on Bush and the neocons, conveniently overlooking all the
support Bush got from the Democratic elite before his military venture went
sour. They talk as if the only issue
that matters is whether or not we <i>begin</i> to withdraw some troops
from Iraq
some time next year. The media report this debate in excruciating detail, with
no larger context at all. So most Americans think this is the only debate there
is, or could be.
The other debate about Iraq --
the one that may matter more in the long run -- is the one going on in the
private chambers of the policymakers, about what message they should send, not
so much to enemies as to allies. Bush, Cheney, and their supporters say the
most important message is a reassuring one: “When the U.S. starts a
fight it stays in until it wins. You can count on us.” For key Democrats, including
their congressional leaders and major candidates for the Imperial Presidency,
the primary message should be a warning: “U.S. support for friendly
governments and factions is not an open-ended blank check. If you are not
producing, we’ll find someone else who can.”
The two sides are hashing this
one out in a sometimes strident, sometimes relatively chummy manner. The
outcome will undoubtedly make a real difference, especially to the people of Iraq, but it’s
still only a dispute about tactics, never about goals, which have been agreed
on in advance.
Yet it’s those long-range goals
of the bipartisan consensus that add up to the seven-decade-old drive for
imperial hegemony, which got us into Vietnam, Iraq, and wherever we fight the
next large, disastrous war. It’s those goals that should be addressed. Someone
has to question that drive. And what better moment to do it than now, in the
midst of another failed war? Unfortunately, the leading Democratic
candidates aren’t about to take up the task. I guess it must be up to us.