Negotiating Isn't AppeasementBush, McCain and other conservatives are on the wrong side of history when they dismiss Obama's foreign policy.J. Peter Scoblic, The New Republic Published: Tuesday, May 20, 2008
In a speech to the Israeli parliament Thursday, President Bush took a swipe at Barack Obama for his willingness to negotiate with evil regimes. "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is--the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." But if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight. The modern conservative movement was founded in no small part on the idea that presidents Truman and Eisenhower were "appeasing" the Soviets. The logic went something like this: Because communism was evil, the United States should seek to destroy it, not coexist with it; the bipartisan policy of containment, which sought to prevent the further spread of communism, was a moral and strategic folly because it implied long-term coexistence with Moscow. Conservative foreign policy guru James Burnham wrote entire books claiming that containment--which, after the Cold War, would be credited with defeating the Soviet Union--constituted "appeasement." ¶ ¶Containment, negotiation, nuclear stability--each of these things helped protect the United States and end the Cold War. And yet, at the time, conservatives thought each was synonymous with appeasement. The Bush administration has been little different, refusing for years to talk to North Korea or Iran about their nuclear programs because it wanted to defeat evil, not talk to it. The result was that Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon and Iran's uranium program continued unfettered. (By contrast, when the administration negotiated with Libya--an act that its chief arms controller, John Bolton, had previously derided as, yes, "appeasement"--it succeeded in eliminating Tripoli's nuclear program.) Alas, John McCain accused President Clinton of "appeasement" for engaging North Korea, instead calling for "rogue state rollback," and now he dismisses the idea of negotiations with Iran. Given conservatism's historical record, Obama's inclination to negotiate seems only sensible. When will conservatives learn that it is 2008, not 1938? J. Peter Scoblic, executive editor of The New Republic, is the author of the newly released U.S. vs. Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security.This article originally appeared in The Los Angeles Times.--->full article
"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is--the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
But if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight.
The modern conservative movement was founded in no small part on the idea that presidents Truman and Eisenhower were "appeasing" the Soviets. The logic went something like this: Because communism was evil, the United States should seek to destroy it, not coexist with it; the bipartisan policy of containment, which sought to prevent the further spread of communism, was a moral and strategic folly because it implied long-term coexistence with Moscow. Conservative foreign policy guru James Burnham wrote entire books claiming that containment--which, after the Cold War, would be credited with defeating the Soviet Union--constituted "appeasement." ¶ ¶Containment, negotiation, nuclear stability--each of these things helped protect the United States and end the Cold War. And yet, at the time, conservatives thought each was synonymous with appeasement.
The Bush administration has been little different, refusing for years to talk to North Korea or Iran about their nuclear programs because it wanted to defeat evil, not talk to it. The result was that Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon and Iran's uranium program continued unfettered. (By contrast, when the administration negotiated with Libya--an act that its chief arms controller, John Bolton, had previously derided as, yes, "appeasement"--it succeeded in eliminating Tripoli's nuclear program.)
Alas, John McCain accused President Clinton of "appeasement" for engaging North Korea, instead calling for "rogue state rollback," and now he dismisses the idea of negotiations with Iran. Given conservatism's historical record, Obama's inclination to negotiate seems only sensible. When will conservatives learn that it is 2008, not 1938?
J. Peter Scoblic, executive editor of The New Republic, is the author of the newly released U.S. vs. Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security.This article originally appeared in The Los Angeles Times.--->full article
Capture the FlagThe Editors, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, May 28, 2008
For the past month, Barack Obama has been determined to sap the charisma from his campaign. In his quest for the elusive white working class, he has steered away from the type of oratory that once made middle-aged men act like "American Idol" fans. By remaking his stage presence--lots of nerdy detail, lots of combative rhetoric--he finally managed to bring Hillary Clinton's impressive electoral machinery to a screeching halt. But, in the course of assuming this new political persona, he ditched one of his most potent themes. It was a theme that coursed through his best speeches, like the one he gave after winning the Iowa caucus, and it prompted genuinely stirring moments. A few minutes into his victory speech, he had just finished a refrain about people "choosing hope over fear ... choosing unity over division" when, out of the crowd, there suddenly arose a chant. It was a chant that, while familiar to hockey fans and Republicans, was not one typically associated with Democrats. Obama's supporters were chanting "USA! USA!" This patriotism was at the very core of Obama's original appeal--the undercurrent of his "one nation" speech at the 2004 convention and his "only in America" autobiographical narrative. And you can understand why it has produced such raw displays of national pride: At a time when Newsweek publishes covers about American decline and polling shows mass despair about the trajectory of the country, Obama's story captures the best about the dynamism and fluidity of our society. It's a shot of idealism when the conversations about our foreign policy and economy have slipped into a despairing realism. ¶ ¶It's his ability to respect and accommodate that Obama should be able to use to great effect against McCain this November. Although McCain himself was once considered an unorthodox politician, he's largely abandoned his heterodox streak. Indeed, the facts are on Obama's side when he argues that a McCain presidency will be, in essence, a third term for the policies of George W. Bush--from Iraq to health care to, perhaps most importantly, the economy. The last issue is Obama's most obvious opening. It's not just the fact that we're headed into a recession and McCain has admitted to having a limited knowledge of economics; it's that he has shifted his position on taxation in wildly divergent directions in a relatively concentrated period of time. This provides ample ground for attack and contrast. And Obama's opposition to the gas-tax holiday was a return to the unconventional Obama. The controversy over the gas tax shows that the press (and even the public) will reward him for standing on principle in the face of potential political damage. But it was merely a first step. And, now that Obama has apparently dispatched with Hillary Clinton, it's time for him to go back to being the candidate he was when he started his campaign--a candidate of national unity and reconciliation--because that's the candidate who can win a general election.--->full article
But, in the course of assuming this new political persona, he ditched one of his most potent themes. It was a theme that coursed through his best speeches, like the one he gave after winning the Iowa caucus, and it prompted genuinely stirring moments. A few minutes into his victory speech, he had just finished a refrain about people "choosing hope over fear ... choosing unity over division" when, out of the crowd, there suddenly arose a chant. It was a chant that, while familiar to hockey fans and Republicans, was not one typically associated with Democrats. Obama's supporters were chanting "USA! USA!"
This patriotism was at the very core of Obama's original appeal--the undercurrent of his "one nation" speech at the 2004 convention and his "only in America" autobiographical narrative. And you can understand why it has produced such raw displays of national pride: At a time when Newsweek publishes covers about American decline and polling shows mass despair about the trajectory of the country, Obama's story captures the best about the dynamism and fluidity of our society. It's a shot of idealism when the conversations about our foreign policy and economy have slipped into a despairing realism. ¶ ¶It's his ability to respect and accommodate that Obama should be able to use to great effect against McCain this November. Although McCain himself was once considered an unorthodox politician, he's largely abandoned his heterodox streak. Indeed, the facts are on Obama's side when he argues that a McCain presidency will be, in essence, a third term for the policies of George W. Bush--from Iraq to health care to, perhaps most importantly, the economy. The last issue is Obama's most obvious opening. It's not just the fact that we're headed into a recession and McCain has admitted to having a limited knowledge of economics; it's that he has shifted his position on taxation in wildly divergent directions in a relatively concentrated period of time.
This provides ample ground for attack and contrast. And Obama's opposition to the gas-tax holiday was a return to the unconventional Obama. The controversy over the gas tax shows that the press (and even the public) will reward him for standing on principle in the face of potential political damage. But it was merely a first step. And, now that Obama has apparently dispatched with Hillary Clinton, it's time for him to go back to being the candidate he was when he started his campaign--a candidate of national unity and reconciliation--because that's the candidate who can win a general election.--->full article
EntanglementsIgnore what candidates say about foreign policy.Jonathan Chait, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The Iraq war is the biggest issue of the presidential campaign, and, on the surface, the voters have a clear choice before them. Barack Obama says he'll bring the troops home, and John McCain insists the troops must stay until they have achieved victory. Problem is, neither of the candidates really seems to mean exactly what he says. One of the key factors in Samantha Power's journey from Obama foreign policy adviser to ex-Obama foreign policy adviser was her casual admission, two months ago, that Obama will take new information into account when formulating his Iraq plan. "You can't make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009," she said. "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan--an operational plan--that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn't have daily access now as a result of not being the president." Hillary Clinton's campaign seized upon this scandalous admission to portray Obama as a phony. But several Clinton advisers told The New York Sun that she, too, may not follow through on her withdrawal plans. "I don't know what she would do as president," said Kenneth Pollack. "But all of my experience with her when she was First Lady is that this is a woman who would put our nation's interests first and any campaign promises a distant second." Naturally, Obama's campaign pounced. Even steadfast, resolute McCain has quietly distanced himself from his gung-ho rhetoric. A few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that, according to Dmitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, foreign policy "realists" in the Republican Party met with McCain and came away reassured that he is not the die- hard hawk he portrays himself to be. ¶ ¶Indeed, on the subject of his own country's war in Iraq, Churchill struck a less than Churchillian tone. "There is something very sinister to my mind in this mesopotamian entanglement," Churchill wrote in 1920. "Week after week and month after month for a long time we shall have a continuance of this miserable, wasteful, sporadic warfare marked from time to time certainly by minor disasters and cuttings off of troops and agents, and very possibly attended by some very grave occurrence." Does McCain actually believe we must achieve victory in Iraq at all costs? He certainly didn't believe that about Lebanon in 1983 or Somalia a decade later, forcefully advocating withdrawal in both cases. But "We're Americans. And we'll never surrender" sounds a lot better than "We're Americans. And we rarely surrender, except when the costs of fighting on outweigh the potential for success." Obama, as Michael Crowley explained in the previous issue, understands that events could change his plans (see "Barack in Iraq," May 7). But he also grasps that the risks of appearing indecisive outweigh the risks of appearing too dovish, which is why he so quickly disowned Power's remarks. Republicans have arrived at the same conclusion. A reliable barometer of the GOP's calculations is the writing of Peter Wehner, who recently left his post in the Bush administration as director of strategic initiatives, a position that roughly translates to "minister of propaganda." In a long Commentary article, Wehner detailed Obama's record of statements on Iraq, from opposing the war at the outset, to favoring its prosecution once we were in, to finally favoring withdrawal in the fall of 2006. Wehner sneeringly described this as "a record of problematically ad-hoc judgments at best, calculatingly cynical judgments at worst." My God: He's tailoring his position to fit ... changing circumstances! In the Bush administration, this kind of flexibility would never be tolerated. Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.--->full article
One of the key factors in Samantha Power's journey from Obama foreign policy adviser to ex-Obama foreign policy adviser was her casual admission, two months ago, that Obama will take new information into account when formulating his Iraq plan. "You can't make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009," she said. "He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan--an operational plan--that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn't have daily access now as a result of not being the president."
Hillary Clinton's campaign seized upon this scandalous admission to portray Obama as a phony. But several Clinton advisers told The New York Sun that she, too, may not follow through on her withdrawal plans. "I don't know what she would do as president," said Kenneth Pollack. "But all of my experience with her when she was First Lady is that this is a woman who would put our nation's interests first and any campaign promises a distant second." Naturally, Obama's campaign pounced.
Even steadfast, resolute McCain has quietly distanced himself from his gung-ho rhetoric. A few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that, according to Dmitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, foreign policy "realists" in the Republican Party met with McCain and came away reassured that he is not the die- hard hawk he portrays himself to be. ¶ ¶Indeed, on the subject of his own country's war in Iraq, Churchill struck a less than Churchillian tone. "There is something very sinister to my mind in this mesopotamian entanglement," Churchill wrote in 1920. "Week after week and month after month for a long time we shall have a continuance of this miserable, wasteful, sporadic warfare marked from time to time certainly by minor disasters and cuttings off of troops and agents, and very possibly attended by some very grave occurrence."
Does McCain actually believe we must achieve victory in Iraq at all costs? He certainly didn't believe that about Lebanon in 1983 or Somalia a decade later, forcefully advocating withdrawal in both cases. But "We're Americans. And we'll never surrender" sounds a lot better than "We're Americans. And we rarely surrender, except when the costs of fighting on outweigh the potential for success."
Obama, as Michael Crowley explained in the previous issue, understands that events could change his plans (see "Barack in Iraq," May 7). But he also grasps that the risks of appearing indecisive outweigh the risks of appearing too dovish, which is why he so quickly disowned Power's remarks. Republicans have arrived at the same conclusion. A reliable barometer of the GOP's calculations is the writing of Peter Wehner, who recently left his post in the Bush administration as director of strategic initiatives, a position that roughly translates to "minister of propaganda." In a long Commentary article, Wehner detailed Obama's record of statements on Iraq, from opposing the war at the outset, to favoring its prosecution once we were in, to finally favoring withdrawal in the fall of 2006. Wehner sneeringly described this as "a record of problematically ad-hoc judgments at best, calculatingly cynical judgments at worst." My God: He's tailoring his position to fit ... changing circumstances! In the Bush administration, this kind of flexibility would never be tolerated.
Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.--->full article
State Of The UnionsAre you an anti-gay bigot if you favor civil unions? The California court thinks so.Benjamin Wittes, The New Republic Published: Tuesay, May 20, 2008Also on TNR.com today: E.J. Graff suggests that Democrats who fear the political fallout of the gay marriage ruling are wrong-headed--from both an ethical and an electoral standpoint.
"Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as president," the Obama campaign stated oh-so-carefully in response to this week's California Supreme Court decision striking down the state's ban on gay marriage. "He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage." It was a gracious response from a man the court had just branded as the legal equivalent of a segregationist. What? You didn't read that part of the opinion? Well, I'm exaggerating a bit, and the court didn't mention Obama by name. But the opinion definitely imputes something invidious to those who believe in what Obama stands for about gay marriage. The California justices declared the right to marry a person of one's own gender a fundamental right, and they declared as well that it violates state equal protection doctrine for California to treat gay and straight couples differently for purposes of marriage. California has a domestic partnership law, which grants same-sex couples virtually all of the rights and obligations of marriage, making the current dispute one of nomenclature over the use of the word "marriage," not about the substance of marriage rights. But as their colleagues in Massachusetts did a few years ago, the California justices treated this accommodation as a kind of "separate but equal" institution--which is to say, not an equal one at all. "[Affording] access to this designation exclusively to opposite-sex couples, while providing same-sex couples access to only a novel alternative designation, realistically must be viewed as constituting significantly unequal treatment to same-sex couples," the court wrote. Those challenging the law "persuasively invoke by analogy the decisions of the United States Supreme Court finding inadequate a state's creation of a separate law school for Black students rather than granting such students access to the University of Texas Law School." ¶ ¶In the long run, however, it matters a lot how we make marriage equality a reality. It matters whether we brand the people who want to proceed incrementally as discriminators. It matters whether we take the time to persuade them democratically of what we believe. And it matters if we think so little of them that we ask judges to flip a switch and change the world and damn our fellow citizens if they dislike it. It matters, to put it differently, if our doctrines treat Barack Obama as part of the problem or as a cautious politician with constructive instincts. Nobody who regards him as the latter should be comfortable with what the California court's decision. Benjamin Wittes is a Fellow and Research Director in Public Law at The Brookings Institution and the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror. He is a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law.--->full article
It was a gracious response from a man the court had just branded as the legal equivalent of a segregationist.
What? You didn't read that part of the opinion? Well, I'm exaggerating a bit, and the court didn't mention Obama by name. But the opinion definitely imputes something invidious to those who believe in what Obama stands for about gay marriage.
The California justices declared the right to marry a person of one's own gender a fundamental right, and they declared as well that it violates state equal protection doctrine for California to treat gay and straight couples differently for purposes of marriage. California has a domestic partnership law, which grants same-sex couples virtually all of the rights and obligations of marriage, making the current dispute one of nomenclature over the use of the word "marriage," not about the substance of marriage rights. But as their colleagues in Massachusetts did a few years ago, the California justices treated this accommodation as a kind of "separate but equal" institution--which is to say, not an equal one at all.
"[Affording] access to this designation exclusively to opposite-sex couples, while providing same-sex couples access to only a novel alternative designation, realistically must be viewed as constituting significantly unequal treatment to same-sex couples," the court wrote. Those challenging the law "persuasively invoke by analogy the decisions of the United States Supreme Court finding inadequate a state's creation of a separate law school for Black students rather than granting such students access to the University of Texas Law School." ¶ ¶In the long run, however, it matters a lot how we make marriage equality a reality. It matters whether we brand the people who want to proceed incrementally as discriminators. It matters whether we take the time to persuade them democratically of what we believe. And it matters if we think so little of them that we ask judges to flip a switch and change the world and damn our fellow citizens if they dislike it.
It matters, to put it differently, if our doctrines treat Barack Obama as part of the problem or as a cautious politician with constructive instincts. Nobody who regards him as the latter should be comfortable with what the California court's decision.
Benjamin Wittes is a Fellow and Research Director in Public Law at The Brookings Institution and the author of Law and the Long War: The Future of Justice in the Age of Terror. He is a member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law.--->full article
Good News All AroundWhy Democrats are wrong to fear the political fallout from the California gay marriage ruling.E.J. Graff, The New Republic Published: Tuesday, May 20, 2008Also on TNR.com today: Benjamin Wittes argues that the California court made a critical error, and one that goes against democratic principles, by coming down so hard against civil unions.
I wish I had clocked the minutes between the time that the California marriage decision was announced, and the time that the liberal punditocracy began whining about it. Yikes, those commitment-crazy gay people are going to lose the election for the Democrats yet again! This kneejerk complaint is more than a little annoying, for several reasons. First is its sheer cynicism. Let's remember, please, that we are discussing real people's family lives. Would any Democrat complain out loud (or in print) about a win for some other presumptively Democratic constituency--labor, poor people, African Americans, Jews--without even pretending to be glad their lives are better and that the world is now more fair? According to UCLA's Williams Institute analysis of U.S. census numbers, more than 100,000 same-sex couples live in California, raising more than 70,000 children. These families have now been told that they are full citizens, entirely equal to their neighbors. Within its own borders, California's registered domestic partnership was almost (not quite) legally equivalent to marriage--and yet being told you're not good enough for the M-word still has an effect. Separate but equal isn't, as the court pointed out. For those 70,000 children especially, knowing their parents can marry has tremendous power, on the playground and in the psyche. That's even more true for the adolescents and pre-adolescents who are just (aaaiiieeee!) realizing that they want to kiss girls instead of boys, or vice versa--and who have now been told that when they grow up they will still be treated as full human beings with dignity and civil rights, no matter how cruelly their parents or fellow students may treat them today. Before bemoaning what Democrats may or may not lose or gain as a result of the California court's decision, can we at least genuflect in the general direction of being happy for the real people involved? ¶ ¶This year, smart Democrats should stress that: (a) California judges are elected, and thus democratically accountable; (b) the elected legislature has twice passed a marriage equality bill, which Arnold vetoed--saying the courts should decide, as they now have; and (c) the California justices, like everyone else in the California political system, knew perfectly well that voters will get the final word this fall. This is hardly a rogue decision from an unaccountable court. I'm not a pollyanna. Yes, there will be some backlash, although I honestly think it will be far less than some imagine. Human beings just can't stay hysterical about the same nonexistent threat forever. But could the liberal intelligentsia at least pretend, for a minute or two, to be glad that I am now a full citizen in two whole American states? E.J. Graff is a Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center resident scholar, and author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press 1999, 2004).--->full article
This kneejerk complaint is more than a little annoying, for several reasons. First is its sheer cynicism. Let's remember, please, that we are discussing real people's family lives. Would any Democrat complain out loud (or in print) about a win for some other presumptively Democratic constituency--labor, poor people, African Americans, Jews--without even pretending to be glad their lives are better and that the world is now more fair? According to UCLA's Williams Institute analysis of U.S. census numbers, more than 100,000 same-sex couples live in California, raising more than 70,000 children. These families have now been told that they are full citizens, entirely equal to their neighbors. Within its own borders, California's registered domestic partnership was almost (not quite) legally equivalent to marriage--and yet being told you're not good enough for the M-word still has an effect. Separate but equal isn't, as the court pointed out. For those 70,000 children especially, knowing their parents can marry has tremendous power, on the playground and in the psyche. That's even more true for the adolescents and pre-adolescents who are just (aaaiiieeee!) realizing that they want to kiss girls instead of boys, or vice versa--and who have now been told that when they grow up they will still be treated as full human beings with dignity and civil rights, no matter how cruelly their parents or fellow students may treat them today. Before bemoaning what Democrats may or may not lose or gain as a result of the California court's decision, can we at least genuflect in the general direction of being happy for the real people involved? ¶ ¶This year, smart Democrats should stress that: (a) California judges are elected, and thus democratically accountable; (b) the elected legislature has twice passed a marriage equality bill, which Arnold vetoed--saying the courts should decide, as they now have; and (c) the California justices, like everyone else in the California political system, knew perfectly well that voters will get the final word this fall. This is hardly a rogue decision from an unaccountable court.
I'm not a pollyanna. Yes, there will be some backlash, although I honestly think it will be far less than some imagine. Human beings just can't stay hysterical about the same nonexistent threat forever. But could the liberal intelligentsia at least pretend, for a minute or two, to be glad that I am now a full citizen in two whole American states?
E.J. Graff is a Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center resident scholar, and author of What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press 1999, 2004).--->full article
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