These midterm elections really are all about Iraq. It is not certain how the elections will come out, although the polling indicates that the Republicans will emerge from them with substantially less power. As far as the President goes, he is already operating in a diminished capacity. In New Jersey, Tom Kean Jr. is campaigning for Robert Menendez’s Senate seat and calling for Rumsfeld to be fired. Republican candidates all over the country are questioning the course of the war and the leadership decisions that have gotten us to this point. The intelligence community has gone on the record as saying the war is making us more susceptible to terrorism and weaker in international relations. The military has sent out their retired generals to warn against starting a shooting war in Iran.
But, still, it will be in Congress where the real changes will come. Perhaps nothing would be more helpful than winning the Senate and having Carl Levin take over the Armed Services Committee. Levin favors a phased withdrawal. It will probably happen a lot faster with Levin in charge than it would with John Warner in charge, even though Warner just returned from Iraq and warned that we need to make some changes.
In the House, should the Democrats take control, there will be a big battle between Steny Hoyer and John Murtha over the position of Majority Leader. Neither one of them is likely to question the basics of American foreign policy, only the neo-conservative details. After all, they are down there in Washington getting advice from Zbigniew Brzezinski author of The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. He’s a member of the Honorary Council of Advisors for the American Turkish Council (remember Sibel Edmonds, and the Dennis Hastert bribes). He’s Chair of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya and Chairman and originator of the American-Ukranian Advisory Committee. He’s also on the Advisory Board for the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Other former and current notables from the USACC? Jim Baker, Henry Kissinger, John Sununu, Dick Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, and Richard Armitage. If you think this clan isn’t all about the Central Asian oil, I got a bridge in Badgdad to sell you.
So, how much will change? That all depends. But things are not likely to change on the fundamentals. This will be a longer process of reassessing America’s role in the world and it won’t be fully embraced until the Cold Warriors are retired and a new generation of Americans takes control of our foreign polcies and relations.
For now, the power is likely to shift away from the neo-conservatives and to people like Brzezinski, Baker, and Scowcroft. That will be a marked improvement, but we have to remember that it was their policies that led to the rise of al-Qaeda in the first place. It will be a new generation of Democrats that will be the one’s to figure out how to go forward into the 21st-Century. Many of them will be elected in November. Many of them are on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.
These elections will be instrumental in repudiating the foreign policies of the Bush administration, but it will be quite some time before we get the kind of real changes that will truly make us safer.
In 2004 most GOP candidates were traveling downstream in their “swiftboats” attacking every Democratic candidate that dared to criticize the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. In 2006 you not only can’t find the GOP “swiftboat”, you can’t find a Republican candidate willing to jump in and try to navigate the hapless dingy against the strong current of voter dissatisfaction with the seemingly never ending war.
One, voters appear to have decided that the President’s plan is a failure. Two, despite the fact that the Democrats haven’t actually offered a cohesive or comprehensive alternative plan, voters are convinced any change might be better than more of the same. That stands to help Democrats on November 7th…but it also means that voters are hoping for change come November 8th…and that may prove to be the beginning of an even larger problem for both parties.
In my opinion, it will behoove both parties to find some tangible solutions to the Iraq mess if they hope to have any success in 2008. If one thinks voters are unhappy now, imagine their mood if Iraq is still at the top of their list of issues two years from now.
Read more here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
Since WWII the US has pursued a policy of control of raw materials and finished goods. We have used a variety of techniques, from soft like the IMF to hard like invasions.
This has all been in response to the (unstated) desire of the American people to have the world’s richest per capita lifestyle. The results have been just as desired: SUV’s, McMansions, runaway obesity and other trappings of materialism. One of the key components of this has been the existence and support of a huge military enterprise. This now encompassed half the discretionary federal budget.
This pursuit of increasing material wealth has been maintained no matter which party has been in power. What has differed is the degree to which social services would be supported at the same time. The expectations of the public have become so shifted over the period that those who would have been considered conservative hawks in Eisenhower’s time are now considered centrist Dems (like Murtha). This upcoming election will just throw this change into stark relief, many of those running are DINO’s (like Webb and Duckworth).
To expect a change in direction (apart from the immediate running of the wars) is unrealistic. This effort to dominate the world is unsustainable. The “left” in the Democratic party wants to use negotiation and cooperation, while the neo-cons want to use force or the threat of force. What they all agree on, however, is that maintaining our standard of living is paramount. We can either acknowledge that the American Century is over (we haven’t won a major war since WWII) and start to “right size” our economy or we can expect to face increasing unrest and resistance from the rest of the world as the demands on raw materials become greater.
As Pogo said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
It is a lot more complicated than that.
Many nations have embraced the West’s practices and prospered. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong are shining examples of this. We are witnessing the slow rise of India based on the same entrepenurial and democratic spirit that drove America forward.
We also had good reasons to secure our access to energy supplies in the Middle East both during World War Two, and afterwards. We still have good reasons to do so.
It isn’t as simple as saying we wanted to have McMansions and SUV’s. Although, if you run for office on the promise of scarcer and more expensive gas, lower incomes, and a standard of living closer to the global average, you are going to have your head handed to you.
Democrats, after all, are generally opposed to our laborers working for lower wages with less benefits. If we took your argument literally, we should fully support unfettered globalization because our laborers shouldn’t get paid more than a Pakistani rug maker.
Every nation pursues its advantage and tries to secure a better standard of living for their citizens. At least, every decent nation does this. Saddam didn’t do it. North Korea doesn’t do it. But decent leaders try to provide for their people, whether it is pork barrel projects, tax cuts, a cleaner environment, better paying jobs, better retirement security, better education, better health care.
Our mission is not to piss away the advantages of being America on some principle of fairness. Our mission is to find a sustainable way of maintaining our prosperity without unduly taking away the prosperity of others.
Obviously, neo-conservatism is a major step in the wrong direction. And the old system was unsustainable. We need new ideas.
And those ideas are going to come from a newer generation, not the generations that brought us Vietnam and Iraq.
My current hobby horse is to claim that this is unrealistic. I’m not running for office and so I don’t have to worry about political suicide by bringing up the subject. Neither do most bloggers. It is my contention that it will be impossible to maintain our standard of living at present levels for much longer. Whether this means ten years or fifty I can’t predict. If you exclude the top 5% of the US we have already seen an effective decline of 10-15% over the past decade or so.
My most recent diary on the subject is here:
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/10/10/17619/333
My rough calculations indicate that a sustainable US economy would have per capita wealth about on the level of Bulgaria. A big change from McMansions, but not terrible. The Bulgarians are getting along at this level. We can either plan for such a transition or let events overtake us. So far we are choosing door #2 (Katrina).
History shows many societies declining from their peak and we don’t have to go back to Rome for examples.
All mainstream politicians and economists promise growth as the solution to society’s problems. There are a few who think otherwise. I suggest starting with Herman Daly. Here is a sample:
Steady State Economics