Obama has essentially been following in this same tradition: opposed to the war in Iraq, but otherwise in favor of a very active role in the world up to and including new military engagements and very keen to declare his support for military action in places other than Iraq by the U.S. and allied militaries. So when progressives listen to Obama’s answers on foreign policy, they tend to cringe because they recognize perfectly well that Obama sounds just like the opposition on most issues related to U.S. policies abroad.There are two big reasons that Obama was in a unique position to counter McCain this year. The first one being, of course, that he had opposed the war from the beginning – he was against it before it began, unlike all the other serious Democratic candidates for the candidacy. Obama could legitimately point to that stance and say, “I was correct and John McCain was not,” and not get hit for changing their minds when the winds blew foul. The second is that, as Larison points out, Obama has long supported a rather hawkish, liberal interventionist foreign policy vision. Progressives like myself who would like to see a much more restrained use of US military force outside our borders may cringe a bit at that (and extremely limited interventionists like Larison will of course move from cringing to wincing), but the fact is that Obama has a legitimate history of pro-military opinions.
It’s a sorry state of affairs, but the simple fact is that, in general, Americans like wars. We usually win them and they allow people to feel morally superior to other nations. The stab-in-the-back narrative that conservatives have carefully built up around the failure of the Vietnam War and the rosey-hued paeans to World War II and “the greatest generation” have left Americans with an extremely warped sense of what it means to fight a war, let alone the kind of grinding counterinsurgency that the Iraq War has turned into. Americans are used to wars that resemble videogames – quick, on television, and over when the TV goes off. The Iraq war has not done much to inconvenience people yet. We’re still waiting for the bill to come due. Right now, it’s popular to be on the side of war.
There is a popular narrative surrounding Democrats that says they’re weak and aren’t able to carry through wars, unlike the tough, manly Republicans who can get the job done. There’s a lot of blame for this prevailing attitude, not least of which lands squarely on the shoulders of Democrats themselves for constantly running away from this fight. John McCain himself certainly hasn’t done the nation any favors with his constant reiteration of “country first,” as if the Democrats were intending to put someone else (Iran, maybe? Hollywood?) in front of “real” America. I think that John McCain, as a citizen and a human being, should be ashamed of himself, but I won’t loose any sleep waiting for an apology.
The problem comes from the fact that before this mentality can change we have to have a strong Democrat to disprove it. This meme has been an unusually hardy one, and just like the one that insists that Republicans are the party of fiscal sanity, it seems to be a pretty hardy weed. It’s taken a long time for both of these to change. I would love to see a candidate articulate a muscular, responsible and non-dogmatic noninterventionism. When that candidate appears on the scene, I’ll be happy to vote for them. But I don’t think anyone running on such a platform could be elected in this United States. The Republicans, while being manifestly more irresponsible, would have a field day. The media would have none of it in their constant quest for a charismatic strongman. And I don’t think the public would take it seriously.
I think Larison is incorrect, however, when he says that Obama sounds just like the other side. As someone even more committed to noninterventionism than I would call myself, I think he too quickly falls into painting both with the same brush. Obama is far more likely to be considered in his application of force, and far more likely to seek out accord in utilizing it. I don’t think that this will in and of itself lead to a more judicious and just use of force – bad wars can certainly be started this way – but I do think it’s far less likely than what John McCain will offer us.
Perhaps Obama isn’t the candidate I’d want in all respects. Maybe the next guy would be. But Obama can’t be worse than the candidate who promises to double down on all of Bush’s mistakes.
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2 comments:
Stab in the back? Historically loaded language. Very interesting post...
McCain, like a lot of conservatives since Reagan, have convinced themselves that Vietnam was “winnable,” although most of them seem to elide what exactly it was we would have “won,” as well as the horrific costs of such a victory. McCain sees the world in a Manichean sense – split between good and evil. From a Salon article on McCain’s views of Vietnam:
Indeed, what is most striking about McCain's attitude toward Vietnam is his insistence that we could have won -- that we should have won -- with more bombs and more casualties. In 1998, he spoke on the 30th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. "Like a lot of Vietnam veterans, I believed and still believe that the war was winnable," he said. "I do not believe that it was winnable at an acceptable cost in the short or probably even the long term using the strategy of attrition which we employed there to such tragic results. I do believe that had we taken the war to the North and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately would have prevailed." Five years later, he said much the same thing to the Council on Foreign Relations. "We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal."
With all of McCain’s rhetoric about “country first” and Obama “putting politics before country,” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to call McCain and a lot of other conservatives’ views on Vietnam (and Iraq) a “stab-in-the-back” argument. It’s right there, waiting to be made.
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