Protracted War
Speaking as someone who blogged against the War on Terror since 2002, it was an easy target for anybody with a computer, access to the Internet, and common sense.
The Bush administration clearly jumped the shark with the over-the-top announcement by satellite link from Moscow of Jose Padilla’s arrest. After the summer of 2002, only true believers and the willfully blind could ignore the carnival of deceit, hypocrisy, and arrogant ambition that drove the Bush administration’s foreign policy.
Bush ran the War on Terror like an idiot and it made it easy for the rest of us to look smart.
There are, of course, encouraging signs that there are elements in the Bush administration who are content to continue with the old stupidity. The “Iranian IED” fiasco, neatly debunked by Alexander Cockburn, is an example.
But the Democratic triumph in the 2006 mid-terms has sharpened the wits and awakened the survival skills of the Bush administration. Arrogant hubris is off the table, replaced by a renewed commitment to guile, patience, and endurance.
Bush is counting on the Democrats in the Congress running out of steam and disappointing the American public. He’s dragging out the timeline for accountability with the surge, appealing for GOP unity, and preparing a political counter-attack
And it seems to be working for now. The GOP held the line on the anti-surge resolution with minimal defections, the debate on the Iraq war has for the time being been successfully reduced to the tactical issue of “martial law imposed on Baghdad by massive force—is it working?”, and Bush is getting a bounce in the polls.
And if the Edwards-blogger debacle is an indication of what will happen when the Left and the netroots bring their A game to a political scrap, I wouldn’t start choosing news drapes for the Oval office just yet.
I am no David Broder fan but, with all respect, I think lefty blog triumphalists are whistling past the graveyard.
For all the scorn we pour on that triangulating opportunist Hillary, maybe she has a crystal ball that says that come 2008 it may not be as easy to run against the Iraq war as we think, and -gag- that deluded dingbat Joe Lieberman possibly has a political future as Independent from the State of Denial.
In a significant development that is part and parcel of President Bush’s attempt to claim center ground, the job of restoring America’s international credibility and creating some freedom of movement for the U.S. has been handed over to the State Department.
President Bush has decided to sideline the neo-cons for the time being and give Condi a chance.
I’m not saying that Condi Rice is a mental giant or political genius. She’s an amoral and barely competent enabler. But she is methodical where the neo-cons were reckless, low-key where the neo-cons used a sledgehammer, and she has some idea how to exploit America’s remaining reserves of prestige and economic and military power to advance U.S. goals by paying attention to and cultivating international opinion.
If I read the cards right, Condi Rice is engaged in an effort to position the United States so that it will have the option of attacking Iran with support of a decent segment of international opinion, making it less than just a reckless effort in Bush craziness and more of a defendable foreign policy option.
Certainly Russia and China are permanently off the attack-Iran bandwagon, but Condi’s expending a lot of effort to make sure that Europe and the IAEA remain in play.
The key element is creating sufficient ambiguity so that the Western nations will no longer be certain that Bush is a war-hungry nut and give enough support to sanctions that might give the U.S. sufficient leverage to continue to exert pressure on Iran for negotiations—or sufficient pretext for an attack.
In a paradoxical development, the more moderate the Bush administration appears in foreign affairs, the better chance it has of attacking Iran, since there would then be less danger of igniting a firestorm of opposition both internationally and within U.S. diplomatic and military circles that would further discredit Bush and destroy the GOP’s chances in the 2008 election—the only consequence the Republicans really care about.
The North Korean deal is an example of the cynical new centrism of the Bush administration—a hasty giveaway to the North Koreans that seemed to do little to serve the interest of Americans and its allies in North Asia. But it gives the United States the ability to claim to its allies that war is not the inevitable outcome of American action against a member of the Axis of Evil.
Jim Lobe makes the good point that the Iran program is not relying on the same neo-con Wurlitzer that accompanied the Iraq invasion, and we might be looking at a cautious, incrementalist run-up to the war that could take us into 2008.
So maybe Holy Joe Lieberman will have to jerk off to Frank Miller’s Persians vs. civilization cartoon/movie 300 for now, and wait until next year for the real thing.
The subtlety of this approach is that primary pursuit of the realist/diplomatic track in the initial stage of the Iran campaign gives credibility to the proposition that the United States is equally considering the options of turning left to negotiation or right to war—and ambiguity creates uncertainty and passivity in the minds of potential opponents, domestically and internationally.
For people like me who have opposed the Bush foreign policy even when things were going so well, it’s easier to say that a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
I’m against pre-emptive war, I think the U.S. has to explicitly repudiate the doctrine, and I believe that the Bush presidency, as the enthusiastic inventor and practitioner of the doctrine, cannot be trusted to renounce it and should be disabled so it can’t go to war again under any circumstances.
But for people who never signed on to the concept that unprovoked aggression, even against a dictator, was bad, who first supported the war but then hid behind the incompetence dodge to become “anti-war”, what happens when a policy that could be headed toward war is conducted competently? It’s going to be a lot tougher call.
If it looks like the grownups have their hand on the wheel and it doesn’t look like Bush is going to drive the bus off the cliff again, American public opinion and allies will find it easier to shirk the debate and just go along.
Of course, the two constants in Bush’s behavior are his reckless anger and his compulsion to fail. The Bush administration is still hostage to events in Iraq. The surge is primarily a delaying tactic against the Democrats that will turn into an unconvincing spin war when, as is likely, it delivers little more than bloody stalemate. There will be plenty of chances for Bush to screw up.
But what prudent strategy is based on the idea that your opponent will blunder and fail at every opportunity? And what realistic strategy assumes that the Democratic Party will have enough appetite for the jugular to put Bush away when things go bad?
The alternate scenario should be considered.
If the debate shifts away from Bush criminal incompetence to a nuanced discussion of whether a nuclear Iran can be tolerated, whether pre-emptive war is legally and morally acceptable, and do we have the right to transform the Middle East by force and coercion, we will have to rely on the political and ethical sophistication of the American people and the moral courage and integrity of our allies...
...well, that’s a lot tougher.
We’re looking at what I call a protracted war—a veiled, protracted war against Iran by the Bush administration, and a grinding, prolonged war by the Left against the Bush administration, the risk-and-principle averse wing of the Democratic Party, and vacillating public opinion.
