And as Eric has duly noted the new interest in fiscal responsibility of
the Right now that a Democrat is in the White House, we should also duly
note the collapse of the anti-war Left now that Obama is president.
With Obama in office, liberals learn to love war.
By Justin Raimondo
<http://www.amconmag.com/searchr.php?m=3&start=0&end=25&v&author=Justin+
The antiwar rally at the University of Iowa was sparsely attended. The
below 30 degree weather might have had something to do with it, but Paul
Street, a local writer and one of the speakers, had another theory, as
the Daily Iowan reported:
Before the crowd of fewer than 20, Street questioned why the 'left'
locals and university officials aren't doing more to help in the
protests against the war. 'The big truth right now, whether this town's
missing-in-action progressives get it or not, is that we need to fight
the rich, not their wars,' he said, citing big corporations for wasting
their technology and funding on war.
The big truth is that the antiwar movement has largely collapsed in the
face of Barack Obama's victory: the massive antiwar marches that were a
feature of the Bush years are a thing of the past. Those ostensibly
antiwar organizations that did so much to agitate against the Iraq War
have now fallen into line behind their commander in chief and are simply
awaiting orders.
Take, for example, Moveon.org, the online activist group that ran
antiwar ads during the election-but only against Republicans-in
coalition with a group of labor unions and Americans Against Escalation
in Iraq. Behind AAEI stood three of Obama's top political operatives,
Steve Hildebrand, Paul Tewes, and Brad Woodhouse. Woodhouse is now the
Democratic National Committee's director of communications and research.
He controls the massive e-mail list culled by the Obama campaign during
the primaries and subsequently, as well as a list of all those who gave
money to the presumed peace candidate. These donors are no doubt
wondering what Obama is doing escalating the war in Afghanistan and
venturing into Pakistan.
As Greg Sargent noted over at WhoRunsGov.com, a Washington
Post-sponsored site, "Don't look now, but President Obama's announcement
today of an escalation in the American presence in Afghanistan is being
met with mostly silence-and even some support-from the most influential
liberal groups who opposed the Iraq War."
In response to inquiries, Moveon.org refused to make any public
statement about Obama's rollout of the Af-Pak escalation, although
someone described as "an official close to the group" is cited by
WhoRunsGov as confirming that "MoveOn wouldn't be saying anything in the
near term." A vague promise to poll their members was mentioned-"though
it's unclear when." Don't hold your breath.
Another Democratic Party front masquerading as a peace group, Americans
United for Change, declined to comment on the war plans of the new
administration. This astroturf organization ran $600,000 worth of
television ads in the summer of 2007, focusing like a laser on
congressional districts with Republican incumbents. Change? Not so fast.
The boldest of the peacenik sellouts, however, is Jon Soltz of VoteVets,
described by WhoRunsGov as "among the most pugnacious anti-Iraq war
groups." They came out fists flying, endorsing the escalation of the
Long War.
According to Soltz, there is "much to like in the plan," but his faves
boil down to three factors, which supposedly represent "a stark
departure" from the bad old days of the Bush administration. He applauds
the administration's recognition that "The military can't do it all."
Yet we're increasing the troop levels by some 17,000, plus 4,000
trainers to babysit the barely existent Afghan "army." We're going to
send thousands more civilians-aid workers, medical personnel, and
military contractors-to build the infrastructure lacking in Afghan
society and promote fealty to the central government in Kabul. Schools,
clinics, roads, and shopping malls will be built with American tax
dollars in order to foster trust between the Afghans, their occupiers,
and their government.
This nation-building strategy is at the core of the new
counterinsurgency doctrine championed by Gen. David Petraeus and hailed
by the policy wonks at the Center for a New American Security-the source
of many Obama administration appointees at State and the civilian upper
echelons of the Pentagon-as the key to victory on the Af-Pak front. Yet
this scheme seems no less grandiose, in terms of its scope, than the
"democracy building" campaign of the neocons, who set out to effect
lasting change in the political landscape in the region. The Obamaites
are much more ambitious: they seek to transform the economic and social
landscape.
Another factor in the Obama Af-Pak war plan that appeals to Soltz and
his fellow VoteVets is that "though it's the 'war in Afghanistan,' we
need to treat it like a region." Translation: Don't be surprised when
Obama's war spreads beyond Afghanistan's borders. "This is a regional
problem," Soltz solemnly avers, "that requires a regional solution."
Imagine if George W. Bush had gone "regional" and announced that he was
going to include Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and Iran in his plan
to "liberate" Iraq? Soltz and his sometime peacenik buddies would have
gone ballistic, denouncing this "escalation" of the conflict and
demanding that we pull back. Yet the rules for the Af-Pak region are
apparently quite different because, after all, this is Barack Obama
doing the escalating.
Soltz doesn't confront the obvious arguments against the Af-Pak plan:
How is this different from the occupation of Iraq? Aren't we creating
more enemies by bombing hapless Pakistani villagers with drones? What
about Afghanistan and Pakistan's neighbors, notably Russia-do we really
want to add them to our enemies list, as they respond with distrust to
our feeding of this fire on their frontiers?
Soltz never answers these questions because he never bothers to ask
them. He merely assumes the perfect justice and practicality of Obama's
Afghan cause. He is a soldier following orders. Like the neoconized
Republican cadre that hooted down Ron Paul as he rose to challenge the
Bush foreign policy during the GOP presidential primary debates, a
similarly brainwashed Democratic base is now cheerleading their leader
and shouting down dissenters even as this White House repeats-and
enlarges-the mistakes of the previous occupant.
The Center for American Progress, a liberal-Left think tank that
sheltered many foreign-policy analysts who opposed the Iraq War and was
beginning to develop a comprehensive critique of global interventionism,
has recently issued a report on Afghanistan that includes a number of
short-term, medium-term, and long-term (ten-year) goals, including among
the latter:
* Assist in creating an Afghan state that is able to defend itself
internally and externally, and that can provide for the basic needs of
its own people.
* Prepare for the full military withdrawal from Afghanistan
alongside continued diplomatic and economic measures to promote the
sustainable security of Afghanistan.
Simply substitute Iraq for Afghanistan, and what we get is the war
policy of the Bush era. That the center is run by John Podesta, who
served as Obama's transition chief, is perhaps explanation enough for
the complete turnaround. One wonders, however, if the center's more
anti-interventionist scholars, such as Matthew Yglesias, whose popular
blog has attracted a substantial audience, will be forced to toe the new
line-or be forced out.
One also wonders when this administration will decide to let the
American people in on the news that the Af-Pak war is slated to last at
least a decade, if not more. During the campaign, and well before that,
Joe Biden was self-righteously denouncing the Bush administration and
its journalistic amen corner for not "leveling with the American people"
and admitting the magnitude of our commitment in Iraq. Yet the
administration of which he is now part is just as evasive on the
question of an exit strategy and timeframe in Afghanistan and now
Pakistan.
Biden's counsel of restraint apparently lost out in the internal debate,
and the Hillary-Gates escalators triumphed. It is inconceivable that the
vice president would go public with his criticisms-he's no Cheney. And
opposition among the Democrats in Congress is low-key, minimal, and
effectively marginalized.
A recent headline in The Hill tells the whole sad story: "Anti-war
Democrats remain silent about Obama's policies." A pow-wow between
Barbara Lee, famous for her lone opposition in Congress to the Afghan
war early on, Lynn Woolsey, and Maxine Waters, California Democrats and
vocal opponents of "Bush's war," failed to produce a joint statement on
Obama's Afghan surge.
Divided and distracted by the economic crisis, the antiwar caucus in
Congress is effectively dissolved, although a few voices are raised in
warning and protest: we are headed for "a war without end," said
Congressman James McGovern (D-Mass.), who seems to have learned the real
lesson of the Iraq War-that occupation produces more enemies than it
subdues.
Russ Feingold says that Obama's war plan "could make the situation
worse, not better." More ominous for the administration is the criticism
coming from Sen. Carl Levin over the $1.5 billion nonmilitary aid
package for Pakistan, which Levin fears could be seen as a bribe-and an
insult. He also wonders why the Pakistanis allow the Taliban to operate
openly in the city of Quetta and questions their interest in policing
the Afghan border.
There is also a rising tide of criticism coming from the Democratic
base: visitors to the liberal website Dailykos.com are likely to
encounter antiwar screeds nearly as impassioned as those that were
posted during the Bush years, albeit written in sadness and bewilderment
rather than anger.
Within the organized antiwar movement itself, the Democratic Party
fronts like Moveon.org and VoteVets are increasingly isolated as more
representative groups shift to the forefront: "It's a shame President
Obama believes he can pursue the same militaristic strategy as his
predecessors and produce a different result," says Kevin Martin,
executive director of Peace Action. Tom Andrews, executive director of
Win Without War, takes a similar stance:
I regret that President Obama, in his desire to protect our nation from
a genuine threat, has outlined a policy that will undermine our
security, not enhance it. In short, the president's policy is playing
into the hands of Al Qaeda and the Taliban by providing them with a
cause that unites and strengthens them.
This is precisely correct, and it echoes what Michael Scheuer, the
former CIA officer and chief of the Agency's bin Laden unit, says in
Imperial Hubris:
U.S., British, and other coalition forces are trying to govern
apparently ungovernable postwar states in Afghanistan and Iraq, while
simultaneously fighting growing Islamist insurgencies in each-a state of
affairs our leaders call victory. In conducting these activities, and
the conventional military campaigns preceding them, U.S. forces and
policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world,
something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but
incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it fair
to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden's only
indispensable ally.
Those words were written in 2004, and since then nothing has changed: we
are still acting as bin Laden's greatest recruiter and ally. Scheuer's
is the classical realist view, which makes American interests, narrowly
conceived, the central organizing principle and starting point of a
rational foreign policy.
During the Bush era, there was a growing convergence of Republican
realists and antiwar liberals. Yet in the age of Obama, it seems, many
of the latter are getting in touch with their inner hawk.
President Obama is often compared to FDR or John F. Kennedy, but I agree
with Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, who worries that he's
more likely to turn out to be another Lyndon Baines Johnson-a president
who triumphed against a perceived warmonger at the polls and embodied
liberal hopes on the domestic scene but was then driven from office by a
war-weary electorate and an insurgency within his own party. Add a
rapidly expiring economy at home to an increasingly unpopular war-or
series of wars-abroad, and you have a recipe for disaster: Obama's
Vietnam and the Democratic Party's Waterloo.
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