Neocons and the Sinking Ship
Over the weekend, Vanity Fair released excerpts of a series of interviews with prominent neocon architects of the war in Iraq. These excerpts made the rounds on the Sunday news shows and reinforced just how vulnerable Republicans are heading into today's elections. It's hard to defend "stay the course" when even Ken Adelman is saying that the Bush Administration "turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era."
The first thing that should perhaps be said about the neocon about-face is the sheer need to save their own skins. As Juan Cole comments, "Talk about rats and a sinking ship!" Really, how else can one take Richard Perle's remarkably disingenuous claim to have had nothing to do with formulating Iraq war policy. Absolutely nothing, he tells you! "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad." It almost breaks your heart the extent to which Mr. Perle and his friends were marginalized and disenfranchized by the process. It's as if they were treated with the same contempt as the Iraqis being saved.
But beyond this, two points are particularly telling. First, these criticisms are virtually indistinct from what the Democrats are saying, or for that matter what conservative critics like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have said (remember the oft-quoted "pottery barn rule"). They amount to a disagreement not over principle but over competence. The war is bad because it's run by a bunch of knuckleheads. The fact that competence has so driven the debate is troubling for a number of reasons. It means that few are actually questioning the ideology behind the war -- especially the diminished vision of democracy and the commitment to social revolution from above. Perhaps even more importantly, it means that opposition to the war has no real social content today. It is disconnected from both a conception of domestic politics and of the U.S.'s role in the world. It has almost become a free-standing recognition that the Bush Administration is just really bad at fulfilling its goals; a belief that anyone can hold, no matter their political affiliation or commitments. So in Virginia, Webb can be a strong anti-war candidate, even though his actual politics on everything outside the war -- the war on terror, foreign policy generally, social and economic issues at home -- is virtually indistinct from his republican opponent. It is enough to recall that the man himself was Reagan's secretary of the navy.
The second point about the neocon turn is ultimately the most tragic. At this point nobody supports the war. Not the democrats. Not the military. Not even the war's intellectual defenders -- the neocons. Certainly not all those Republicans who'd otherwise have happily coasted to victory without the albatross of utter chaos in Baghdad. Yet, despite this fact, the war will continue indefinitely, for who knows how many more years. Clearly, one reason for this is that none of the remaining options is totally palatable, as none seems likely to end the violence in the country (even immediate withdrawal). But the real reason why this war will continue is that it has become a domestic football. It exists in Washington through the prism of electoral politics, and not as an Iraqi tragedy for which we as a nation are responsible.
Much has been made of how October 2006 was the turning point akin to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, when American citizens finally realized that the war was bankrupt. In a sense, that suggests that we're stuck in 1968. Everyone knows the war's wrong, bungled, a millstone, whatever. But, the war isn't ending anytime soon. More American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians died under Nixon's watch than under Johnson's, and it would take five more years for the U.S. to withdraw and seven more for Saigon to fall. In other words, the U.S. spent more time figuring out how to have "peace with honor" for politicians, then they did actually fighting the war proper.
So, in the aftermath of the elections, it seems necessary to state the sad and the obvious: enough of the gamesmanship, whether it is talk of staying the course, or setting timetables, providing benchmarks, redeploying, etc, etc. End the war now.
The first thing that should perhaps be said about the neocon about-face is the sheer need to save their own skins. As Juan Cole comments, "Talk about rats and a sinking ship!" Really, how else can one take Richard Perle's remarkably disingenuous claim to have had nothing to do with formulating Iraq war policy. Absolutely nothing, he tells you! "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad." It almost breaks your heart the extent to which Mr. Perle and his friends were marginalized and disenfranchized by the process. It's as if they were treated with the same contempt as the Iraqis being saved.
But beyond this, two points are particularly telling. First, these criticisms are virtually indistinct from what the Democrats are saying, or for that matter what conservative critics like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have said (remember the oft-quoted "pottery barn rule"). They amount to a disagreement not over principle but over competence. The war is bad because it's run by a bunch of knuckleheads. The fact that competence has so driven the debate is troubling for a number of reasons. It means that few are actually questioning the ideology behind the war -- especially the diminished vision of democracy and the commitment to social revolution from above. Perhaps even more importantly, it means that opposition to the war has no real social content today. It is disconnected from both a conception of domestic politics and of the U.S.'s role in the world. It has almost become a free-standing recognition that the Bush Administration is just really bad at fulfilling its goals; a belief that anyone can hold, no matter their political affiliation or commitments. So in Virginia, Webb can be a strong anti-war candidate, even though his actual politics on everything outside the war -- the war on terror, foreign policy generally, social and economic issues at home -- is virtually indistinct from his republican opponent. It is enough to recall that the man himself was Reagan's secretary of the navy.
The second point about the neocon turn is ultimately the most tragic. At this point nobody supports the war. Not the democrats. Not the military. Not even the war's intellectual defenders -- the neocons. Certainly not all those Republicans who'd otherwise have happily coasted to victory without the albatross of utter chaos in Baghdad. Yet, despite this fact, the war will continue indefinitely, for who knows how many more years. Clearly, one reason for this is that none of the remaining options is totally palatable, as none seems likely to end the violence in the country (even immediate withdrawal). But the real reason why this war will continue is that it has become a domestic football. It exists in Washington through the prism of electoral politics, and not as an Iraqi tragedy for which we as a nation are responsible.
Much has been made of how October 2006 was the turning point akin to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, when American citizens finally realized that the war was bankrupt. In a sense, that suggests that we're stuck in 1968. Everyone knows the war's wrong, bungled, a millstone, whatever. But, the war isn't ending anytime soon. More American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians died under Nixon's watch than under Johnson's, and it would take five more years for the U.S. to withdraw and seven more for Saigon to fall. In other words, the U.S. spent more time figuring out how to have "peace with honor" for politicians, then they did actually fighting the war proper.
So, in the aftermath of the elections, it seems necessary to state the sad and the obvious: enough of the gamesmanship, whether it is talk of staying the course, or setting timetables, providing benchmarks, redeploying, etc, etc. End the war now.
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