Hawk-Tied Democrats
By Robert Dreyfuss
04/11/06 "Tom Paine' -- -- As the Russian foreign minister
correctly reminds us, there is a lot about the manufactured
crisis over Iran that is
déjà
vu : the axis of evil again, attempts to tie Iran to
Al Qaeda, accusations about WMD, U.S. government efforts to play
footsie with Iranian exiles, and bluster about demanding action
by the United Nations or else. One other thing looks familiar,
too: just as the Democrats meekly got in line to support the
invasion of Iraq, many (perhaps most) elected Democrats are
demanding a confrontation with Iran, too. Some, such as Hillary
Clinton, are even trying to out-Bush the president in demanding
a showdown with Iran.
To anyone who has read the latest policy
missive from the Democratic Party describing its approach to
national security, the Democrats' stance is not suprising.
At least one leading Democratic foreign policy strategist is
upset with the party's refusal to contradict the president.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Carter administration über-hawk who
become an Iraq dove, provided the bluntest commentary on why the
Democrats shy away from confronting the Bush administration’s
war-based foreign policy. Brzezinski, appearing on the April
5 "Diane Rehm Show" on NPR, noted the traditional
sad critique that Democrats fear being seen as weak or
vacillating on issues related to national security. But then he
put the real blame squarely where it belongs: on Bill and
Hillary Clinton. The former president, he said, wants his wife
to be president, and together they have determined that this
goal can best be reached by Hillary disguising herself as the
reincarnation of Maggie Thatcher. And since Hillary the Iron
Lady II is the frontrunner for the 2008 nomination, she sets the
tone for the rest of the party, said the former national
security adviser.
Unfortunately, Brzezinski is on the mark. Despite the fact
that former Vice President Al Gore is speaking out consistently
against the war in Iraq, despite the fact that Representative
John Murtha has called for an American withdrawal, despite the
fact that even John Kerry is now demanding a deadline for a U.S.
pullout, the Democratic establishment has avoided a forthright
challenge to Bush. That was obvious when, following the State of
the Union speech, the Democrats chose Virginia Governor Tim
Kaine to give a befuddled, Mr. Nice Guy response, whose refrain
was that the Democrats have “a better way.”
In the last week of March, with great hullabaloo, the
Democrats presented a 123-page document called “Real
Security: Protecting America and Restoring Our Leadership in the
World .” The party leaders designed the document as an
answer to President Bush’s wreckage-strewn disaster of a U.S.
national security and foreign policy. Instead, the Democrats
could only manage a mealy-mouthed mishmash of half-measures,
tepid critiques and bravado disguised as toughness. Much of it
is said to have been “produced by the House and Senate
Democrats.” But in fact the main architects of the document
appear to have been a host of warmed-over Clintonians and the
Hillary-linked Center for American Progress, a centrist
thinktank. No surprise, then, that the self-same Center for
American Progress, in its March 31 “Progress Report,” attacked
the media, including The New York Times , CNN, and
others, for ignoring the “Real Security” document. In fact, if
it was newsworthy at all, it was because it only confirmed that
the Democrats are so weighed down by the likes of Hillary
Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Jane Harman and Rahm Emanuel that they
are utterly incapable of anything like bold new thinking on
national security.
Rather than call for an end to the war in Iraq by setting a
timetable, starting a drawdown of forces, and allowing the Arab
League and the United Nations to play the lead role in
stabilizing Iraq, the Democrats call for what can only be called
“Bush Lite.” Like Bush, they insist that the key to stabilizing
Iraq is the endless quest to recruit, train, and equip Iraqi
security forces. In the paper, they present no strategy for
getting out of Iraq, instead calling on President Bush to come
up with “a plan.” That said, the Democrats’ document goes on and
on with things like “better pay for the troops,” “more funding
for body armor and other equipment,” “reimbursing soldiers and
families for body armor” and “more funding for up-armored
Humvees.” Is the biggest problem facing America in Iraq the
fact that our troops need more body armor and tougher Humvees?
As the Iraqi forces take over, the United States can begin what
the Democrats call a “responsible redeployment” of U.S. forces,
whatever that means. They certainly do not call for ending the
war, and they don’t even go as far the Center for American
Progress’ own, workable plan to get U.S. troops out of Iraq by
the end of 2007.
Rather than call for an end to the so-called Long War, the
war-without-end “global war on terrorism,” the Democrats call
for an escalation, including doubling the size of the U.S.
Special Forces and instituting self-defeating sanctions-type
measures such as a plan to “[bar] foreign subsidiaries of U.S.
companies from doing business with countries considered sponsors
of terrorism.” And how do they suggest we deal with the Al
Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11? They will “eliminate bin Laden,
destroy terrorist networks like Al Qaeda, finish the job in
Afghanistan, and end the threat posed by the Taliban.” The
document is mum on how this will be accomplished.
Rather than call for downsizing the bloated U.S. military,
which under President Bush has enjoyed a breathtaking expansion
that rivals Ronald Reagan’s early 1980s buildup, the Democrats
call for even more military spending, hiring more spies,
increasing the deployable army by 30,000 troops, expanding the
National Guard, and rebuilding “a state-of-the-art military by
making the needed investments in equipment and manpower.” They
say: “The president’s budget fails to include $21 billion in
requested military needs—the largest amount denied since 9/11.”
So, giving the Pentagon the billions it wants is “a better way”?
Rather than trying to ease the national hysteria over
homeland security, the Democrats want to escalate that, too,
with vast new spending to make every possible terrorist target
safe from attack. They want to spend billions more on
intelligence, $8 billion more make ports, airports, mass
transportation and other facilities super-secure, $5 billion
more to boost police and fire resources, and so on. Nowhere in
the document do they suggest dismantling the Homeland Security
Department, repealing the USA Patriot Act, barring the U.S.
military from involvement in law enforcement and domestic
spying, dismantling the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, and
other measures to ensure that America’s domestic response to
terrorism is appropriate to the scale of the threat.
To their credit, the Democrats do criticize Bush for
manipulating the intelligence used as a pretext for the war in
Iraq, for invading Iraq without any plan for what would follow,
for launching wars that created more terrorists than they
killed, for unleashing a foreign policy that isolated the United
States and alienated us from our traditional allies, and so on.
But by paying exceeding deference to the party’s hawks, and
being overly careful not to give Republicans a chance to portray
Democrats as peaceniks (heaven forbid!), the Democratic
establishment has once again plopped itself down far behind the
advanced ranks of its supporters. Poll after poll shows that
American voters are disgusted with Bush’s foreign policy and
that they are no longer buying his snake oil. One recent
poll —by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee no
less—revealed that on issues of national security Americans
favor Democrats over Republicans by 41 to 39 per cent, more than
erasing the double-digit gaps that have long plagued Democrats
on this issue. That, alone, ought to be evidence enough that the
Dems can be far bolder than what turns up in the “Real Security”
document. Sadly, because it lacks the bold thinking to
distinguish them from the Bush worldview, the Democrats’ latest
paper, like the administration’s own “National Strategy for
Victory in Iraq” (November 2005) will soon be forgotten.
Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How
the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (Henry
Holt/Metropolitan Books, 2005). Dreyfuss is a freelance
writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and
national security issues. He is a contributing editor at
The Nation, a contributing writer at Mother Jones,
a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and a
frequent contributor to Rolling Stone.He can be reached
through his website:
www.robertdreyfuss.com
© 2006 TomPaine.com
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