Americans sense that our policy is adrift and that we do not have a plan for success. Worse, they may conclude that this is what happens when we venture abroad. Someday, probably sooner rather than later, there will be another Slobodan Milosevic or another Saddam, and the profound mistakes in Iraq will make it harder to generate domestic and international political support for the use of force. That is a legacy we can ill afford.
- Sen. Joseph Biden, The New Republic, June 28, 2004
Beginning of course with the glaring lack of a genuine casus belli, there were plenty of reasons to have been opposed to the Iraq War from well before its inception, and its disastrous execution and consequences have provided a great many more for coming around to such a view in hindsight. The above, however, is decidedly not one of them, and the fact that such rhetoric fits so nicely with others of Biden’s remarks on military force should give serious pause to anyone looking to the Democratic ticket to undo the worst stupidities of the past seven-plus years.
But it squares quite well with Obama’s rhetoric, too, and this is what makes the pairing so dangerous. (I had meant to make a similar point when Hilzoy got all upset about some very similar remarks of Evan Bayh’s.) If the upshot of the increased goodwill and repaired international standing that will come from a much-deserved flogging of the GOP and a withdrawal from Iraq is a consequent lack of resistance – on the part of the international community as well as most anti-war progressives – to the next foreign misadventure (for there already are any number of other Milosevic’s and Hussein’s), we will not have come very far at all, and indeed may very well have taken a peculiar sort of step back. Americans’ present resistance to aggressive foreign meddling is a good thing, and any Presidential ticket that promises to cure us of our Iraq War Syndrome is not one to get all that excited about.
And so, after seven-plus years of foreign policy idiocy and the rapid growth of anti-war sentiment that has been its product, this is where we have ended up: with John “Stay the Course” McCain and some other “post-9/11 world” Republican on one side; and a pair of candidates with one vote between them for each of the Iraq War resolution, the PATRIOT Act, and the FISA capitulation “compromise” on the other. That Obama and Biden are surely the better of these two options does not count for much: as Radley Balko has put it in connection with the latter’s history of drug-warring, these are the issues that the Left is supposed to be good on, and the lack of a more solidly anti-war and civil libertarian contender speaks volumes about the length of the road that is yet to be traveled.
A principled anti-war voter can still pull the lever for Obama-Biden on the grounds that they’re the best chance to get us quickly and cleanly out of the Iraq mess. But what will that matter if they turn right around and end us up in another one?
Filed under: civil liberties, foreign affairs, politics, war
I do agree with your assessment of the votes for the Iraq resolution and funding, it is probably the main problem I have with Obama even though I am a very passionate supporter of his.
I do wish that the third parties had a chance. I think one of our biggest problems with our Democracy is the fact that the two parties have a stranglehold on our media and our choices. I mean think of the only third party to make a significant dent, and that was Ross Perot. Ugh, what a nightmare he was.
So what would you suggest for us to do? I do like some things the Libertarians stand for, basically their stance on war and the constitution, but a third party does not have a chance in the presidential election. Perhaps they should start with representatives and the like?
I agree that third party movements would be well-served by focusing more attention on local, state, and Congressional offices and trying to build a base in states like New Hampshire, Montana, Nevada, etc. in those ways. But I also think that supporting them in Presidential elections is important – speaking w/r/t the issues that you’ve indicated we agree on, if the Democrats can be this mediocre on war and bad on civil liberties but still retain the vote of anti-war and civil libertarian progressives because they’re “better than the GOP”, they have no real incentive to improve.
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