Ever since I chose two months ago to support Barack Obama as the better remaining choice after John Edwards left the presidential race, I’ve not had second thoughts. But neither have I made a secret of my misgivings about various policy stances of the Senator from Illinois. Nowhere have these misgivings been stronger than when it comes to reshaping foreign policy, in general, dealing with the military-industrial-congressional complex, in particular, and, most immediately, figuring out what the United States should do next in Iraq.
While much campaign discussion among partisans has focused on the differences between what Senator Obama said in his October 2, 2002, speech about Iraq and what Senator Clinton said in her October 10 speech before she voted on the authorization to use force, what matters now has very little to do with they said and did more than five years ago. What matters is where we go from here in the sixth year of occupation.
During Tuesday’s hearings on Iraq, as refreshing as it would be – and as accurate – neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton (nor any other Senator who questions General David Petraeus) will say "imperialist" in reference to the bloody U.S. visitation on Iraq or its larger foreign policy. Nor "hegemony." Whether it be politicians, or textbook writers, or megamedia mavens, or, sadly, many historians, America simply cannot be attached to "empire" no matter the evidence. It’s just so ... un-American.
What can be expected from the Democrats in the hearings are frowns, snarkiness, and some questions about the specific tint and choice of brush-strokes in how Petraeus and Crocker paint their post-"surge" evaluation. Some of the questioning will have a superficially tough quality. There will be a contrast between Senator McCain’s approach and that of the Democrats.
McCain has already begun his attack:
"I do not believe that anyone should make promises as a candidate for president that they cannot keep if elected," McCain said, in a clear swipe at dueling Democrats Obama and Clinton.
"To promise a withdrawal of our forces from Iraq, regardless of the calamitous consequences to the Iraqi people, our most vital interests, and the future of the Middle East, is the height of irresponsibility. It is a failure of leadership," he said.
"We must once again reject, as we did in early 2007, the calls for a reckless and irresponsible withdrawal of our forces just at the moment when they are succeeding," McCain said in a speech in Kansas.
Clinton and Obama have, of course, spoken in favor of reducing troops, but what McCain cannot do without weakening his argument is point out that both Democratic Senators have, as Chris Bowers has noted for seven months, proposed leaving tens of thousands of residual troops in Iraq for an indefinite period, about 60,000 by Bowers’s calculations.
As he wrote Friday:
Second, it has been clear for literally a year now that both Obama and Clinton (and Biden and Dodd) were proposing residual forces in Iraq of this size. This is publicly available information, and it has been around for some time. While both Kahl and the Obama campaign deny that the plan represents the position of the Obama campaign, the fact is that the answer I received last night on residual forces, just like the answers I had been receiving on residual forces during 2007, is exactly the same as the Center for a New American Security plan. It is exactly the same list of troop missions, only without the estimate on the number of troops.
This isn't something that the Clinton campaign should crow about, because the 60,000-troop plan is also exactly the same as their residual force plan. If anything, unless their proposals have changed, the Clinton campaign's plan is worse, since their residual force missions are listed as definite rather than as possible, and also listed as happening in Iraq, instead of some possibly happening in a neighboring country. The simple fact is that once Edwards dropped out, there was no longer any meaningful difference between the remaining Democratic candidates on residual forces. As such, residual did not play a role in determining who I would support in the primary.
Come November, assuming a Democrat wins the Presidency, progressives seeking an end to U.S. imperialism in Iraq, and the beginning of a decades-long effort to reduce the influence and impact of the military-industrial-congressional complex domestically and abroad, will not get much of a breather. Bowers says it well:
The simple, and depressing, fact is that we will not end our military participation in the war in Iraq just by winning a big trifecta in the 2008 elections. In order to build a truly progressive governing majority in this and other areas, we will have to keep fighting long afterwards. To put it one way, progressives will need our own residual troops in a Democratic administration.
Progressive activists will have our work cut out for us in getting the Democrats to shape a post-Cold War, post-9/11 foreign policy that flings off the pernicious myth of American exceptionalism and overcomes the denial that the U.S. has an empire and a "bipartisan" imperial mindset. It won't be easy and we can expect repeated setbacks. But only with a Democrat in the White House backed by ample majorities in the House and Senate does our work have even a ghost of a chance for success.