Democrats and Defense

I don't get it... so you are saying that "our party" (you, placing yourself in the group) should embrace the PNAC stance? I'm not sure you're quoting for "us" here. If you are going to quote this stuff, please clarify what _you_ mean by "defense" because I'm taking i'm finding it taken w a y out of context so very often.

I feel a big part of what is wrong in the party these days is the lack of clear vision and cohesiveness of statement.

The point is that for all the screaming and moaning and groaning over the PNAC agenda (something which, btw, I've come to see some of the light of, although I don't believe the good intentions of the original authors are what is motivating it) the Democrats offered no alternative. They gave Bush all the power he needed to do what he wanted, they tried to ignore defense issues in last November's elections, and they overall have just tried to avoid taking a stand on the issue while criticizing the current plan at every turn.

There does need to be a war on terrorism. It does involve getting the Arab world to recognize the need to modernize. It does involve settling the Palestinian situation. And it will often involve fighting, invasion, and military coercion.

I don't think Bush is going about it the right way by deciding we don't need the worlds help. But I also don't think the Democrat's have shown any interest in coming up with an alternative. Their current spectrum of positions ranges from Pat Buchananite isolationism (Kucinich) to Me-Too Bushism (Lieberman) but not a single one of the current candidates has a better solution that might solve the problems of islamic fundamentalism, and a complete lack of modernity and liberal institutions in the Arab world.

This is one of the reasons I liked Hart. He proposed a solution to the Democrats before the November election - full-scale, US supported UN military occupation of Iraq that would have made this effort much more legitimate in the eyes of the world, and locked everyone up into the same agenda so we wouldn't have the sniping thats going on now from the European front. The Democrats, in their infinite wisdom, decided to ignore the war, figuring they couldn't take on Bush, so why bother. That was their undoing in November, and it will 100% assure their total defeat in 2004.

If the Democrats want a chance at winning, and fixing our domestic situation, and maybe repairing some of the damage done to our international reputation, they need to get serious on Defense.

"I feel a big part of what is wrong in the party these days is the lack of clear vision and cohesiveness of statement."

I agree with this 100% btw.

I understand and agree with your point that the Democrats have not offered an alternative. I'm fairly pissed off about that in fact.... but I think that is beside the point and does not change the righteousness of the approach you described above one iota.

You’ve often told me that bickering about if our initiative in Iraq is just or not is a moot point now and should not be discussed. An off-base analogy of that would be something like me saying, after, Jake rapes your mom, “Wozz, what’s done is done… forget about it already.”

Ok, that was a bit much.. I admit it, but it made my point.

you wrote:

"There does need to be a war on terrorism. It does involve getting the Arab world to recognize the need to modernize. It does involve settling the Palestinian situation. And it will often involve fighting, invasion, and military coercion."

I agree that the Palestinian situation does need to be settled, or at least put into a settled state at this point. We’re too far into that one and it’s too messed up to abandon now.

But you fail to provide any reason whatsoever why the rest of it needs to happen. Why exactly do we need to be at all involved in the reigion again?

Poor, intensely religious, middle easterners hate their oppressive governments and fear cultural imperialism deleting their culture, values and way of life. Their morality runs orthogonal to things like the TV show “Fear Factor” and Britney Spears. Who are you to say that they need to recognize the need to modernize? Is your above statement not exactly what they are angry about?

It’s in everyone’s best interest to sell us oil. Short of us being a failed colonizing force that will always continue.

The PNAC principles are really focused around maintaining and expanding American global “leadership” and not fighting terrorism. A non-American could understandably be afraid of this.

Democracy, it seems, is great when it is touted as a way to liberate oppressed people, but it isn’t even considered in a global sense when it comes to foreign policy.

My biggest worry is that the PNAC stance doesn’t seem to have a clear “end game”. What is it exactly? Beating down everyone who hates us until we’re safe? Do _you_ really think that that will work?

How many Americans died of the flu last year? How many died in 9/11? We have a vaccine for the flu.

I’ve been kind of intentionally antagonistic in this, and my prior, post. I’m really just trying to drum up some debate on these topics because I personally would like to see more of it on 0xdeadbeef, and I think that the debate is important, for me at least. So, no hard feelings… and I wish we would ALL post more blog comments. :)

Don't get me wrong. I'm not signing up to be a PNAC fellow or anything. However...

The Arab world needs to modernize. 9/11 was a direct result of a medieval mindset that says flying planes into buildings and killing thousands is an appropriate response to American women walking around unveiled in Saudi. Now granted, I'm simplifying a lot to make a point. That point is that the Islamic, specifically Arab, culture never had its Reformation. Liberal institutions (fair courts, civil liberties, democratic elections) don't work in Arab Islamic countries because the society doesn't recognize their worth. The separation of Church and State so central to liberal democracy are not only foreign concepts to the Arab world, they are hostile to the very nature of Islam as it has historically developed within Arab society.

Without liberal institutions, the Arab world will never be able to peacefully compete in a rapidly liberalizing modern world. This breeds resentment which combines with the hostility of Islam towards liberal concepts and leads to the popularity of leaders like Bin Laden, who successfully uses the powerful tools of the liberal world to poke it in the eye.

Now there are certainly examples of liberalized Arab Islamic countries - Qatar, UAE, etc - but these operate entirely at the whim of their supreme ruler, whoever that might be. If that ruler were to fall, they probably wouldn't survive whoever came next. These leaders who do recognize the value of liberal institutions are going to be very important in leading (by example) the Arab culture into the modern world. Thus the importance of rebuilding Iraq right.

Over the years, there have been rumblings from the westernized Arab elite that Arab society needs to be slowly moved into the modern world for its own good, but a combination of easy oil money, the Palestinian problem, and corrupt leaders have kept this from happening. And of course, complicit in all of this is the US.

Invading Iraq, in the PNAC view, is the kick in the pants to the Arab world to get itself moving, in one way or the other - hopefully towards modern liberalism but possibly towards medieval fundamentalism. A liberal democratic Iraq with large oil reserves would be a powerful example for the rest of the Arab world to follow. In addition, it allows us to get out of Saudi Arabia while still being able to protect our interests in the region.

This is the gamble of the PNAC strategy. Since it is such a gamble, and the US is so complicit in the making of the problem, my position would be that it requires the whole world working together to make it work. Bush and friends (including PNAC) disagree and think the US can accomplish this through sheer might. Since Bush seems to be losing interest in the REAL work of the strategy - the war was the easy part - the whole thing may be doomed to failure. If thats the case, hopefully the liberal world will be smarter than Bush and step in to clean up his mess - both for our sake and the future of the Arab world.

Also to clarify. The reason why it's our business is because they're attacking us. Withdrawing from the region will not solve the problem, not to mention leaving behind problems we were complicit in creating for someone else to clean up - something which the left is quick to criticize in other cases but for some reason not here. We still lead the modern liberal world, and will still be their target of choice.

Another aspect of the medieval-think that has been demonstrated by Bin Laden, Hussein, and others is that any retreat by us will be perceived as a victory, and will spur them on to attack harder and faster.

There's no withdrawing from this situation. We're in it whether we like it or not, so we'd best do what we can to try and fix it.

We spent the 90's reaping the benefits of ignoring the rest of the world. This was a HUGE mistake, and 9/11 was the result. If we don't get fully engaged now, we will have learned nothing. We're a de-facto empire whether we like it or not. If we choose to ignore that fact, its not going to make the rest of the world any less resentful.

Also, a stylistic point. One of the nice things about blog's, trackback-enabled blogs especially, is the ability to carry on a conversation between them. The comments area is fine for short messages, but not the best tool for long discussion. Just post your commentary on your blog with a link to my blog item, and send a trackback ping (or turn on auto-discover). I find I think and express myself clearer in a blog entry than in comments generally.

One other thing which I think I haven't made clear. I don't buy into the general PNAC strategy of pre-emptive war for whatever reason. I just think in this particular case it makes some sense, and this particular case has been the pet cause of most of the PNAC'ers for a while. I can't think of many other places where it would make sense (to me) to use.