The Real Difference Between Obama and McCain on Iraq
During election season, Charles Krauthammer devotes most of his precious Washington Post column space to vicious partisan diatribes meant to demonize Democratic candidates. Occasionally, however, he goes off script and says something that isn't in the official GOP talking points (usually for good reason). Yesterday was such a day.
In his Friday column, Krauthammer endeavored to explain why Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki had taken the significant step of publicly praising Barack Obama's 16 month troop withdrawal timetable, a step that clearly helped Obama politically. Krauthammer explained:
Maliki is looking ahead, beyond the withdrawal of major U.S. combat forces, and toward the next stage: the long-term relationship between America and Iraq.Translation: Maliki would prefer a President Obama to a President McCain because McCain is less likely to respect Iraqi sovereignty and more likely to try to extort various concessions from the Iraqi government prior to withdrawal.
With whom does he prefer to negotiate the status-of-forces agreement that will not be concluded during the Bush administration? Obama or McCain?
Obama, reflecting the mainstream Democratic view, simply wants to get out of Iraq as soon as possible. Two years ago, it was because the war was lost. Now, we are told, it is to save Afghanistan. The reasons change, but the conclusion is always the same. Out of Iraq. Banish the very memory. Leave as small and insignificant a residual force as possible. And no long-term bases.
McCain, like George Bush, envisions the U.S. seizing the fruits of victory of a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.
For example, we might want to retain an air base to deter Iran, protect regional allies and relieve our naval forces, which today carry much of the burden of protecting the Gulf, thus allowing redeployment elsewhere.
Any Iraqi leader would prefer a more pliant American negotiator because all countries -- we've seen this in Germany, Japan and South Korea -- want to maximize their own sovereign freedom of action while still retaining American protection.
This really is a fascinating glimpse into the neo-conservative mindset. First, there's the delusion that we can somehow maintain permanent military bases in Iraq--the heart of the Middle East--without doing more harm than good. It's as if these guys have learned nothing from recent history and have no understanding at all of the conditions that gave rise to groups like al Qaeda in the first place (one of the most significant being the presence of U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War).
The second revealing aspect of this analysis is the comparison of Iraq to Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Germany and Japan were countries that attacked the U.S. and its allies and were eventually defeated and occupied. The U.S. had every right under those circumstances to demand conditions for withdrawal and in exchange for assistance in rebuilding those countries. The situation in Iraq is not at all analogous. Iraq did not attack us, and our explicit rational for invading the country was in order to "liberate" the Iraqi people. And in doing so, we wreaked havoc on that country, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the creation of what was essentially a lawless distopia for the better part of five years. Under those circumstances, the U.S. has no right to demand conditions for the withdrawal of its troops. If the sovereign Iraqi government no longer wants us there, we have to leave.
The Korea analogy is inapt as well. The U.S. saved South Korea from invasion by the North and our troops stayed there, at the request of the South Koreans, in order to protect that country from its hostile neighbor to the North. Under those conditions, we have a right to request something in return for our assistance. The same will certainly be true of Iraq if the Iraqi government wants the U.S. to maintain a permanent military presence and provide long-term assistance. But if the Iraqi government wants us out, that's a completely different story.
The bottomline here is that Krauthammer and like-minded neocons think that the Iraqis are insufficiently grateful for this "miracle" we've bestowed upon them. They think that we've done such wonderful things there that we have the right to make certain claims upon the country (for oil and military basing rights, among other things) as a condition of our withdrawal. It's naked neo-colonialism. I'll give Krauthammer credit, though. At least he's being open about it. That's more than you can say for John McCain and most of his surrogates.
posted by A.L. at 11:21 AM
9 Comments:
It is an ongoing puzzlement to me why Krauthammer continues to command space in the Post. He sounds like an old English Colonel with new plans for India.
I do question one of your statements:
"Iraq did not attack us, and our explicit rational for invading the country was in order to "liberate" the Iraqi people."
I am almost certain that the rationale was primarily that Saddam Hussein presented a security risk with his WMD. Not that this was valid, of course.
I think you are giving Krauthammer too much credit. There is very little evidence to suggest that our policy in Iraq has been driven by strategic considerations like the desire to have bases from which we could deter Iran (it is very unclear to me how bases in Iraq would help us deter Iran; if anything, they would seem to provide Iran with vulnerable targets which they could use to deter us). Rather the decision to invade was driven by some combination of (a) the belief that Saddam had WMD and/or posed some sort of military/terrorist threat and (b) the desire to liberate Iraq and establish a democratic beacon of hope for the rest of the Middle East.
Following the collapse of rationale (a), the Administration has consistently pushed rationale (b) as the justification for continuing our efforts in Iraq. In other words, rather than simply declaring victory by virtue of the elimination of the alleged threat posed by Saddam, the Administration insisted that we stay in Iraq, rebuild Iraqi society and government, ensure democratic elections, and fight insurgents who threatened Iraq’s stability.
One might reasonably have suspected that rationale (b) was merely a high-minded pretext for the Administration’s desire to create a puppet regime in Iraq for its own selfish purposes. (It is somewhat difficult to figure out what the selfish purposes are, which is why “grabbing the oil” seems to be the most popular guess, even though it has never been clear to me exactly what this means). However, the Administration has not, in fact, tried to create a puppet government. It handed over sovereignty to the Iraqis, allowed (indeed insisted on) elections that were likely to (and did in fact) result in an Iraqi government that was not particularly pro-American (and at least as pro-Iranian than pro-American), and has recognized in both deeds and words that the Iraqi government is the final authority in Iraq. In particular, the Administration has made clear that US troops would stay in Iraq only so long as the Iraqi government wished. Maliki’s recent remarks are merely the latest illustration of the fact that the Iraqi government is genuinely independent of the United States and the Bush Administration.
I don’t read Krauthammer on a regular basis, but my recollection is that he long ago became disillusioned with the Iraqi government. Apparently he is not so thrilled with establishing a free and independent Iraq if it is actually going to be free and independent. Why exactly he would be surprised that an Iraqi government would pursue Iraqi interests, rather than American/neoconservative/Israeli interests, I am not sure. But rather than deal with the inadequacies and internal contradictions of the policies that he has advocated at such cost in American lives and treasure, he evidently would rather reinterpret those policies as part of some sort of neo-realist plan to contain Iran or otherwise advance American interests. Unfortunately, there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that such a plan exists or has ever existed, or that it has even occurred to the Administration that it might be a good idea to start working on such a plan.
Of course, it is a lot easier to pummel one’s ideological adversaries for failings, real or imagined, than it is to come up with a coherent and realistic strategy that can be pursued in the current situation. And here I am referring not just to Krauthammer, but to you. You seem to believe that by labeling Krauthammer’s position as “neo-colonialist” and (inaccurately, for the reasons I stated) equating his position with that of the Administration, you have somehow demonstrated that Obama’s approach to Iraq is superior to McCain’s.
What exactly is Obama’s approach to Iraq or to foreign policy generally? Some have argued that Obama would pursue a realist foreign policy, or at least one that is more realist than the current administration. More like Nixon, Reagan or Bush 41 and less like Carter, Clinton or GWB. Well, one can hope. But I suggest you read Obama’s speech in Berlin. In addition to the “citizen of the world” pablum, he there endorses not only some sensible conservative goals (dismantling terrorist networks and preventing Iran from going nuclear), but much of the neoconservative agenda (rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting democracy in Lebanon, standing up for the human rights of the dissidents in Burma, bloggers in Iran, and voters in Zimbabwe, stopping genocide in Dafur) and whole lot more, such as ending global warming, lifting children in Bangladesh out of poverty, sheltering refugees in Chad, eliminating AIDS and, get this, seeking a world without nuclear weapons. If Obama is even half-serious about pursuing these goals, he will make Woodrow Wilson and GWB look like hard-eyed realists in comparison.
Of course, perhaps Obama is not serious about this at all. Maybe he merely means that these would be wonderful goals if all the nations of the world would pull together to realize them, which of course is not going to happen. Maybe he is merely cynically manipulating the emotions of Europeans and others who would like the psychic benefits of idealism as long as they don’t have to bear the costs.
Well, one can hope.
MLS,
You missed three of the most important reasons for going to war in Iraq: a) to protect and increase this country's access to middle eastern oil, b) to further the Cheney/Bush/Rove domestic agenda and give Bush a chance to win in 2004, and c) because Bush wanted to outdo his pappy.
Precisely quantifying how much each of the five reasons (including your two) weighed in the ultimate decision is extremely difficult to evaluate, as we can't even figure out who participated materially in the decision, thanks to the secretive nature of the administration, and to the fact that undoubtedly the weights varied among the individuals in question. For Bush, cognitively impaired and incurious as he has always been, it may have been primarily for the reasons you gave, although I'd give a large weight to my c). However, for Cheney, I'd suggest that my item a) was a biggy, and for Rove, it was my item b) that would have made him excited.
I think your second reason, to "establish a democratic beacon of hope for the rest of the Middle East" weighed almost nothing in the decisions of those in the administration and was only floated to buy support from credulous fools. WMD, similarly, was a smoke-screen thrown up to drum up popular support. Power through stoking the fear of voters is, after all, a primary modus operandi of the GOP.
Which leaves me with the conclusion that neocon neo-colonialism and domestic politics were the primary reasons. Unfortunately for the GOP, incompetent execution of the plan meant that it backfired. It turned out, to the administration's surprise, that, although they were fairly accomplished at getting elected (although only with the help of the SCOTUS) -- they weren't any good at anything else.
c2h50h-
I don’t know that GWB was actually motivated by a desire to spread democracy, as opposed to an unconscious desire to outdo his father. Neither do you. Nor for that matter do we know what actually may motivate Obama, McCain or anyone else. If you want to make your political judgments by assuming that the “good people” are motivated by public-spiritedness and altruism, while the “bad people” are motivated by corrupt self-interest, go ahead.
My point is that the Administration’s actions in Iraq are consistent with the asserted rationale of establishing an independent democratic Iraq, and are not consistent with the objective of creating an American colony or advancing American interests in some direct way. So while it may be that GWB is not actually motivated by a noble and altruistic desire to spread democracy, we would be in the same fix if that was in fact his motivation. Indeed, I suspect we would be a lot better off if his goals were less idealistic.
I don’t understand how the invasion of Iraq was designed to “protect and expand” our access to middle east oil. In the short-term, we had access to Iraqi oil through the oil for food program, and could have increased that access simply by easing or eliminating sanctions (as most other countries would have been happy to do). Invading Iraq posed risks of serious supply disruptions in Iraq (which of course occurred) as well as threats to oil supplies in neighboring countries. Even assuming that the war had gone off without a hitch and we were able to begin immediate modernization of Iraq’s oil facilities, the benefits would not be realized for many years and accrue mostly to the Iraqis. Unless we were planning to steal all of Iraq’s oil and keep the proceeds for ourselves (of which there is no evidence whatsoever), it is difficult to see how the potential economic benefit could possibly have been seen as a significant reason for invading.
Finally, any sort of special economic advantage that we might have hoped for in invading Iraq would depend on maintaining Iraq as a client state, and, as I pointed out in my previous post, our actions in Iraq were not designed to create such a state.
MLS,
No, neither of know, nor can we know, what motivated G. W. Bush in invading Iraq. We do, however, know for a fact that Bush and other members of the administration knew the reasons (WMD) they gave out were not based on good intelligence.
When people lie to me about the reasons they do things, it makes me suspicious of their motives, but that's just me. If you're happy being lied to, enjoy it.
Here are a few random facts to try and fill in the void of your lack of understanding about oil motivations for GWII. First, one of the primary motivations for GWI was that Saddam was threatening the oil fields of Iraq, and in point of fact, France and Russia were getting preferential treatment by Saddam under Food for Oil -- your amnesia on this seems odd. It was big news at the time. Third, did you notice that American oil companies got no-bid contracts recently under the occupation? Did you think that was a coincidence?
As for maintaining Iraq as a client state, do you pay attention to the news at all? Does "permanent bases" (sorry, not permanent, just built to last decades...) mean anything to you?
It's a credit to you that you have maintained your trusting nature -- my cynicism meter gets pegged every few weeks by this administration, in spite of adjusting its maximum repeatedly.
c2h50h
I don’t know where you got the impression that I was trusting of the Administration. As I said in my original post, it is entirely reasonable to suspect the Administration’s proffered rationales for Iraqi, particularly in light of its false claims about WMD. My argument rested on the facts, not the Administration’s assertions.
Your argument is that because the Administration says something it must be false, even if evidence wholly apart from its assertions suggests that it is true.
Lets see, that argument sounds kind of familiar. Saddam denies that he has WMD. We know Saddam has lied about WMD before so he must be lying now. Therefore, Saddam has WMD. Anyone who raises doubts about whether Saddam has WMD is obviously a dupe who believes whatever Saddam says. Throw in a little more name-calling and the argument is won!
Yeah, that works out well.
MLS,
No, my argument is that, once you know someone has lied to you, you are entitled to assume that anything they say is not to be taken as true. It's not that you automatically operate on the assumption that what they say is false, it's that you look for independent evidence.
This was true of Saddam -- but there was also Scott Ritter, Hans Blix, and all the people who said not to believe Screwball.
Who, that we can trust, who backs up the administration? Nobody, that's who.
In addition, actions, where they can be verified, speak louder than words. Do you have any answer for the oil company contracts? No? I didn't think so.
“Here are a few random facts to try and fill in the void of your lack of understanding about oil motivations for GWII. First, one of the primary motivations for GWI was that Saddam was threatening the oil fields of Iraq, and in point of fact, France and Russia were getting preferential treatment by Saddam under Food for Oil -- your amnesia on this seems odd. It was big news at the time. Third, did you notice that American oil companies got no-bid contracts recently under the occupation? Did you think that was a coincidence?”
Ok, I will try this one more time. Yes it is true that Bush 41 was concerned that Saddam was threatening the oil fields of Saudi Arabia (which is what I assume you meant), as well he should have been. That didn’t cause Bush 41 to take over Iraq, even though he could have done so with relative ease after the first Gulf War. Bush 41, unlike his son, was concerned with American interests, and recognized that there was no American interest in taking over Iraq. Neoconservatives and liberals whined for years that Bush 41’s inaction led to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, which is too bad, but wasn’t a valid reason for sending American troops into Baghdad.
Oil is a fungible commodity, and whether Saddam’s oil went first to French and Russian companies or to American companies has no bearing on the overall amount of oil available on the world market. Sure, the French and Russians had a profitable business, but you can’t seriously be suggesting this had something to do with our decision to invade. Use your brain—Saddam was willing to do anything, even leave power, in order to prevent us from invading, do you think that GWB would have had a problem extorting any economic concessions if that was what he was after? Is there any evidence that GWB ever tried, or even thought about trying, to get an oil deal from Saddam?
As for the oil contracts that were recently obtained, my understanding is that these were relatively small contracts and in fact were much less than what the oil companies, and presumably the US government, wanted. This only underscores my main point, which is that the Iraqi government is looking out for its own interests, not ours. Just as the Bush Administration can’t get the Iraqi government to agree to the permanent bases it wants, it can’t get more than token economic concessions. The mere fact that the Bush Administration has tried to get some advantages for US companies, which is the least that one would expect after the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the American taxpayer on Iraq, is hardly evidence that its Iraq policy has been driven by such economic interests.
MLS,
Oil is fungible, but oil contracts to operate oil fields aren't -- and that's where oil companies make money. The middlemen get rich, you know. Any understanding you have about the contracts would be better if buttressed by a shred of evidence. What is known is that they were granted without a bidding process.
Your assertion that Saddam was willing to do anything raises the issue how, if we cannot know what would motivate Bush, et al, how you could know what Saddam would do. You are basing extensive conclusions upon hearsay and rumor, which is not wise.
What Bush ultimately will manage to get out of the Iraqi government is, at this point, unknown. Not as much as the Bush administration wants, certainly. Beyond an ungodly huge embassy, fewer than 50 permanent bases, the oil contracts, we -- and by that, I mean, specifically, you -- don't know.
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