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TechnoratiTwo of the other Democratic hopefuls should move fast to exploit Clinton and Obama's obvious weak spot over withdrawing US forces.
Hidden in plain sight is the one issue still capable of blowing up the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
It isn't Iran, outsider-insider, lobbyist relations or healthcare.
It's the war in Iraq.
The mass media illusion - and also delusion - is that the Democrats, generally, are "anti-war", especially in contrast to the Bush/Cheney-tethered Republicans. Vaguely, anti-war is meant to suggest favourable disposition to ending the madness.
But the suggestion is false. The truth that could yet destabilise the race and consign consultant Mark Penn's inevitability lectures about client Hillary Clinton to the trash can is that the major candidates are not as anti-war as they seem.
And in the two most important cases, they are arguably not anti-war at all, merely anti-Bush. With varying emphases Clinton and Barack Obama have yet to take a deep breath and propose a plausible end to either an American combat role in the conflict, the ongoing, de facto US occupation of the broken country or a quasi-colonial role in its alleged governance. They remain Bush-lite.
Two of the candidates - above all Bill Richardson but also John Edwards - have a quite different vision of their first year as potential presidents. What isn't clear is whether either is willing to make this crucial difference of opinion the issue down the stretch before the Iowa caucuses and the first primaries are held. If either or both do, the political equation could still change.
The solid clue to these differences popped up in the last of the Democrats' joint appearances, when moderator Tim Russert asked the top tier individually if any of them were prepared to pledge that all combat troops would be gone from Iraq by the end of a first presidential term in 2013. Clinton and Obama said they were not - truthfully.
Edwards, for some reason sucked along in the undertow, chimed in a third refusal. That was a mistake, as he has subsequently realised if not exactly acknowledged. The truth is that Edwards is an American version of the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, who has skillfully reduced the British armed presence to no more than 2,500 people, all stationed outside the often murderous city of Basra on the sensible premise that his nation's security is not threatened if Shia militia X chooses to stage a fire fight with Shia militia Y on any given day.
Edwards envisages an American presence that is gradually, over the course of a year, reduced to a single brigade (perhaps double the size of the current British force), whose sole mission would be the protection of the American diplomatic and aid missions in the country. Any peacenik can live with that.
Richardson would go further: everyone with a gun all the way out of the country within six to eight months. It's a pace that borders on the precipitous but that was chosen by the New Mexico governor after consultation with people who know the region well.
One of them is Bruce Riedel - both a CIA and a National Security Council staff veteran - who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Centre for Middle East Policy. In a Foreign Affairs article last spring, Riedel, as a true believer in a worldwide campaign against violent extremism and the endangered mission in Afghanistan, made a sound case for military disengagement from Iraq, calling it "more of a trap than an opportunity". The case can also be made soundly by those who know that whatever chance the fractured country has will come from international reconstruction and diplomatic toil, not no-end-in-sight combat.
Clinton has argued that a commitment to end the US role as combat-occupier is impossible until she takes office and discovers the true state of things. Her position is fatuous. She is already in possession of all the information needed to take a position one way or the other. The stance she takes, vaguely promising to end the war if President Bush hasn't, is not even close to the clarity Americans should insist upon.
If anything, Obama is worse. He still talks of a reduced US military presence, prowling the hinterland in search of al-Qaida in Iraq remnants and policing the country's borders. What neither candidate has been willing to say is how small a force and how much less than the ridiculous, nearly $10bn monthly pace of war spending he and she is prepared to support.
This is why Obama has spent so much time this fall celebrating his opposition to the US invasion five years ago and attempting to make an issue of Clinton's recent vote for a Senate resolution branding Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organisation. He talks about his past and Iran's future so much because he cannot talk effectively about the war in Iraq's future.
Following the most recent Democratic debate, nothing happened in the press, which should teach Edwards and Richardson that the press in not capable of leading a debate about anything important this cycle. If there is to be a stretch drive dominated by important differences over the most important issue they will have to lead it themselves.
The opportunity, worth seizing, comes next week in Philadelphia at the next joint appearance of the candidates.
Tom Oliphant is a former journalist and columnist for the Boston Globe. His book, Utter Incompetents - Ego and Ideology in the Age of Bush, is published in November 2007.
© 2007 The Guardian
14 Comments so far
Show AllIt's really lazy thinking to say the dems and the repugs are the same. Elect dems and we'll get better judges, environmental regs, labor regs, more energy conservation and renewables, redeployment in Iraq, no Iran war, less media consolidation, net neutrality, healthcare...just to name a few.
Hell it ain't perfect, but you have to remember the candidates are presented by a corporate controlled MSM that defines what the "center" is, meanwhile most voters are too busy with other things to follow what's really going on. I've resigned myself to just hoping the pendulum swings back significantly in the other direction.
Uncommondreamer -- touche
What Oliphant doesn't get is the fact that the U.S. Military Industrial Complex and Big Oil have decided that U.S. troops in Iraq is a permanent state of affairs. Hillary and Obama have also sold out to these special interests in the belief (maybe correct?) that neither of them can win without accepting the status quo.
Meanwhile a willing and compliant media reinforces the illusion of an informed public and a fair and balanced election. Any candidate (i.e. Dennis Kucinich) who even has the gall to suggest an immediate withdrawal is seriously marginalized and written off by the MSM as a nut bar who 'doesn't understand the complexity of the issues involved'.
The only way U.S. troops will ever leave Iraq is if they are kicked out of Iraq. The perpetual state of violence that has been synonymous with Iraq since the invasion is something both the Republicans and Democrats can live with. It is the 'cost of doing business' and as anybody familiar with Washington will tell you, the U.S. military is nothing more than a tool to protect special interests abroad.
The 'War on Terror' is a perfect excuse to remain in Iraq forever because all it takes is one loony a year to blow himself up and then the Administration can claim that the war isn't over yet.
The so-called War on Terror will never end because it is too profitable.
Yup, Dennis is the man. If elected, he might even send Bush and Cheney to the Hague...
Vote for Dennis.
As Wm Rowlander suggests and uncommomdreamer gives historical perspective to, once the mission changes opinions and actions will change dramatically.
Once the mission in the Middle East changes from one of domination, humiliation and occupation opinions and actions will change dramatically.
With Bush/Cheney stating progress from the beginning for the mission of domination, and the "top tier" DLC Democrats slavering for the chance at an imperial presidency, there seems to be one clear constitutionally mandated action for changing the mission: impeachment.
There is one presidential candidate calling for this action - impeachment - that will cause the greatest act in human social governance history, shunning the transnational corporate management of domination and humiliation and unchain the American Spirit to it's greater power in this time of climate upheaval.
Support Kucinich, call to impeach!
There is a place in Turkey called Gallipoli. Thousands of British, Anzac and Turkish troops died there during protracted battles in 1915. When the defending Turks fought the Brits to a standstill and the Brits decided to withdraw (cut and run), the British High Command predicted some 20000 casualties during withdrawal. The Brits left, as the Turks watched without firing a shot...
Sometimes, the best thing an army can do is leave.
FYI, there's another candidate (or 2) mr O forgot.
Can anybody guess?
Why is this biased and narrow minded obvious stuff repeated on common dreams? It's becoming like reader's digested.
Unfortunately Mammon decides who wins. The candidates have no choice in the matter.
There is a lovely town in the north of France called Dunkirk. Sixty seven years ago, a British army was trapped in a no-win situation by the Wehrmacht, and its French allies were preparing for occupation. Rather than worry about whether a withdrawal would "embolden the enemy," the Tommies got into the little boats that came for them, and they sailed home.
Sometimes, the best thing an army can do is leave.
Al Gore, speaking of the objective, recently said [about our goal]: "To get our troops out of there as soon as possible while simultaneously observing the moral duty that all of us share — including those of us who opposed this war in the first instance — to remove our troops in a way that doesn't do further avoidable damage to the people who live there."
Congress needs to first begin a debate on a resolution on the question of abandoning the goal of forcing the Iraqi Parliament to pass the Iraq Hydrocarbon Law and the expected Production Sharing Agreements that would greatly favor American oil companies. They can easily have a national consensus about that.
Democratic candidates must begin demanding that the United States tilt in favor of the Sunnis to handle the oil revenues of Iraq. They, the Sunni, would then have to work out the sharing arrangements with the Shia and Kurds to get the oil out of the ground.
The matter of reconstruction, reparations and infrastructure building must be in the hands of the Shia and Kurds. Their goal must be to build a true nation there that will homogenize the people and end sectarian tensions.
By bifurcating efforts we can expect a self-interest balance among the warring factions.
The United States must then withdraw to guard the six oil pipelines and the banking in and out of the country so that the oil money flows through the Sunnis. We have seen that the Shia cannot resolve to treat the Sunnis fairly and this will otherwise perpetuate the civil war contrary to the method suggested by Gore.
The United States must then turn over the tasks the new exit strategy entails to the UN and get out.
"Edwards envisages an American presence that is gradually, over the course of a year, reduced to a single brigade (perhaps double the size of the current British force), whose sole mission would be the protection of the American diplomatic and aid missions in the country. Any peacenik can live with that."
I'm no peacenik. Just a human being who was born in and lives in the US. But I can't live with a single brigade in Iraq. Nor could the members of that brigade. Nor could the Iraqis.
The Iraqis will not allow "American (sic) diplomatic and aid missions" in the country. As the Iraqis continue to push occupation forces out of Iraq, every US military (and mercenary) and diplomatic person is a target. As are nearly all civilians, journalists, etc.
If there is a single brigade left at the end, they won't exactly be looked on any more beneficiently than the invaders and occupiers before them. They will be slaughtered. That's what war means.
When will Oliphant and others, like Edwards, finally admit to the fact that the US military/political machine has been brought to a standstill in Iraq?
When will they admit to the fact that the US never had any other motives in being there than to control Iraqi oil and increase US/Israeli hegemony over the region?
Where do they get this fantastic (as in fantasy) idea that the US government and military will ever have anything positive to contribute to Iraq other than funds for reparations and an apology for the mass murder already committed, the destruction of the nation and massive pollution that will extend generations?
The withdrawl from Iraq will be bloody, unorganized, chaotic and horrible, as is any military defeat (or victory for that matter). But we must do it as soon as possible because the alternative -- our continued violent, belligerent, murderous, polluting presence -- is worse, as hard as that is to imagine.
Dream on, Oliphant. What you are seeing is a one-party system operating the way a one-party system operates. By next November, a war against Iran will be raging -- a gift from Bush to whomever takes over. That will make it possible for Congress and the White House to make a smooth transition into 4 or 8 more years of war.
The title of this Article sounded promising until I read it! Disappointing in one word...They just don't get it..General Odom opined correctly; ".."The president has let (the Iraq war) proceed on automatic pilot, making no corrections in the face of accumulating evidence that his strategy is failing and cannot be rescued. He lets the United States fly further and further into trouble, squandering its influence, money and blood, facilitating the gains of our enemies."
US MUST LEAVE IRAQ LAST YEAR...