The War's End

A person affiliated with a rival campaign directed my attention to this Ted Koppel commentary on NPR in which he observes:

I ran into an old source the other day who held a senior position at the Pentagon until his retirement. He occasionally briefs Senator Clinton on the situation in the Gulf. She told him that if she were elected president and then re-elected four years later she would still expect U.S. troops to be in Iraq at the end of her second term.

I find that the tendency when I talk to people leaning in a Clintonish direction is that they express confidence, as Clinton herself does in the debates, that all of the Democrats will, if elected, move rapidly to end the war. If anything, I think the stronger argument for Clinton is the reverse -- that while she seems disinclined to really end the war, it's not clear that her main rivals are inclined to do so either. Neither Edwards nor Obama has, after all, exactly come out swinging against Clinton on Iraq in a forward looking sense. There have been some indications that Clinton's envisioned "residual" force would be bigger than what other candidates have in mind, but her main rivals haven't argued this explicitly.

Comments

This is a sad fact, but it is certainly true. However, I'm fairly certain that Clinton will not only continue the war, I'm worried her advisers will convince her that Iran may be a good idea as well. I have no proof, but I trust my judgement. I don't know that Obama or Edwards will end the war, but I'm sure Clinton won't. I'd rather not have a Democratic President if the war won't end anyway, leave the Republicans the full parents of the damned thing.

Posted by soullite | June 12, 2007 5:46 PM

Again, it's just possible that there's a reason that Obama and Edwards aren't going after her on things like "ending the war": it might be that the general direction she's heading--having some residual force there--is the technically strongly suggested policy.

She could still be an abomination (I think would be) on foreign policy grounds. But it sometimes seems that there's a tendency not to treat the residual force thing very seriously.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 12, 2007 5:51 PM

I think there's a good reason the other candidates don't attack Clinton on withdrawal. They themselves realize that some sort of presence is going to be required, while dealing with the situation is a very complicated affair.

To me, the question with this sort of attacks is at what point a candidate will assess his political position in the primaries to be perilous enough so that he can unleash it.

Sometimes political weakness signals the time for policy boldness.

Posted by Nick Kaufman | June 12, 2007 6:02 PM

Perhaps HRC's mind will change if she is indeed president in 2010, we're still in Iraq, and her approval ratings are in the thirties.

Posted by ProfD | June 12, 2007 6:05 PM

This thing is really gonna be a repeat of Vietnam. Nixon said he was gonna end the war, and look what happened.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 12, 2007 6:10 PM

We are not leaving Iraq, and the resource wars have only begun.

There will be another event, or obvious irreversible trend that will again generate a grudging consensus among the DC elite for an expanded war.

A $200 oil spike, or $100 sustained should scare everybody silly. It will make American politics chaotic at best, stable at worst. There isn't time to wean us off. I don't even blame politicians. They can't take the chance.

I think a lot about what I should feel about this.

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 12, 2007 6:14 PM

Nixon said he was gonna end the war, and look what happened.

Well, you got to admit, he did end the war . . . eventually . . .

Posted by rea | June 12, 2007 6:16 PM

It was Ford who ended the war, no?

I'm guessing the Clinton people believe that the residual force won't be getting into any confrontations since it won't be patrolling the streets, so it won't really be a war anymore.

Posted by JP | June 12, 2007 6:28 PM

My Green friends laugh at me. But I just laugh right back at them, because being a Green is no less futile than being an anti-war Democrat.

Ha! Ha! Ha! We have a jolly old time, just laughing and laughing.

Posted by John Emerson | June 12, 2007 7:24 PM

"so it won't really be a war anymore."

More'n likely, will remain a war for some Iraqis. I think there are now about three million in Syria, Lebanon, etc.

I get tired of 5 years of this shit. I knew 9/11/01 what was gonna happen, and called for a massive mobilization then.

I knew the Republicans would wage war on the ME using shock & shocked troops, air power, cash, and brutality. I knew the peaceniks & progressives would oppose the war and call for an end, and be laughably ineffective.

And I knew it wouldn't be mostly Americans that suffered.

Two choices:1)Status quo indefinately, which may devolve to a go "long" strategy...50k on bases, air power. That means IED's and Americans leveling neighborhoods in response...forever. Some American casualties, but not too bad. Much Military/Industrial spending. Bad domestic politics.

And hell in the ME with many Arabs etc dying. Probably millions, maybe tens of millions.

2)WWIV. 5 million Americans for five years. Or ten million. Or 50. Or whatever it takes to occupy and freaking pacify. That is, and always was, the only moral war under the Conventions. The freaking militias are a violation of the Conventions. They should have been shut down and disarmed on day one.

No, it is not about the war. The war was going to happen, and so will the next one. It is about how the war was fought, and I spent 5 minutes in the Hague and Geneva documents and knew the rules were there for a reason. This is a monstrous war crime.

You are not going to stop the war. This is not Vietnam. Iraq has 20% of the reserves with an indefinitely fragile infrastructure.

That we fight this war "on the cheap" with whimpers and half-hearted protest, shows that we are all willing loyal citizens of an Empire.

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 12, 2007 7:26 PM

The general direction she's heading--having some residual force there--is the technically strongly suggested policy.

Translation: the Democratic and Republican foreign policy establishments draw their ideas from the same well, and public opinion for them public pinion is just an insignificant nuisance.

Posted by John Emerson | June 12, 2007 7:28 PM

What's crucial, surely, is WHERE she intends to keep them permanently in Iraq. The argument for keeping a longtime presence in Kurdish Iraq is tremendously stronger than the argument for us trying to stay anywhere else.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | June 12, 2007 7:56 PM

Yes, Bruce, you are right. It is mega-important for American troops to be involved in any fighting between Turkey and the Kurds. As Borat would say: not!

Until there is a grass roots movement demanding the withdrawal of the American troops, the brainless beltway elite will keep them in Iraq. They will pretend that the Iraqis secretly want them. They will find this out from senior American military men. That's how Tom Ricks found out that Moqtada Al Sadr, whose mind has been so read like a book by American strategists, would secretly be all lovey-dovey about a permanent force of American troops.

Well, at least this is the latest bogus plan. I was half afraid we would be hearing, every day, about the need to attack Iran, but that need seems not to have caught on. Instead, it is the need, now that the Dems have played the Iraq war like a stradivarius, to seriously think about staying there for the next eight years. I wonder if this serious thinking involves, oh, things like how much that would cost. I mean, having the diet war, the children's plate of American guts, oh, and 300,000 Iraqi bodies, nicely sauted, on the side. And we'll split a course of Iraqi refugees - hey, and being a benign hyperpower and all, we'll agree to take in a carefully selected 8 000 or so!

The next presidential election is only a station in this fight, which is obviously about the effects of democracy impoverishment, the parasitic relationship between the D.C. economy and the Defense department, and the radical narrowing of dissent and even reporting in the press.

Let's hope Biden gets his way, so we can watch the Dem candidates squirm as they try to lie about their Iraqi plans in some upcoming debate.

It does look increasingly like there was more to the recent dem failure to put any conditions on the supplemental than met the eye. This is the Dem plan.

Posted by roger | June 12, 2007 8:26 PM

My reservations about Senator Clinton lie in the national security realm. I feel that she is trying so hard to combat the image of a "soft woman" candidate that she may be compromising her own beliefs in order to present a hard image for the public spectra. To date, the war has cost over $340 billion dollars—money which could have been spent much more wisely and with better end results. It is estimated, for example, that the expenditure of a mere $19 billion would eliminate starvation and malnutrition worldwide. In a time when the current defense budget is $522 billion, the goal of eradicating world hunger is clearly well within reach. Thus, it is clear that the occupation of Iraq needs to end, and it needs to end now without regard to what this will do to United States interest in Iraq’s oil.

Posted by Jessica | June 12, 2007 8:45 PM

It should be noted, and anyone who disagrees with me on this is really kidding themselves, that any Democratic President elected who does not end the war will be a one term President. If they leave a residual force behind, and that force takes substantial casualties, they will also be a one term President. The Base will abandon even their most beloved leader if they get burned on this one.

Posted by soullite | June 12, 2007 8:50 PM

the Democratic and Republican foreign policy establishments draw their ideas from the same well, and public opinion for them public pinion is just an insignificant nuisance.

And? How did you like the war public opinion helped get us into?

Agree with roger that leaving the troops in potential Kurdistan doesn't seem, intuitively, like the greatest of all possible plans.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 12, 2007 8:51 PM

A few random thoughts:

1) Of course it's likely we're still going to have troops in Iraq in 2010. Unless somehow Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul gets elected.

2) "It was Ford who ended the war, no?"

No. Nixon effectively ended the U.S. military involvement in the war in 1973, after signing an armistice agreement with North Vietnam, but he promised South Vietnam, that if North Vietnam tried to invade again (as they had in 1972), we'd back them up with air power and military aid. Then came Watergate, Nixon's resignation, and the Dems sweeping to power in Congress in 1974. Then the Dems passed a law cutting off funds for any military aid or support to South Vietnam.

In 1975, North Vietnam invaded again. At that point, the U.S. military presence on the ground was 50 embassy Marines. Ford's hands were tied by Congress, so he did nothing. A few months later, Saigon fell. The only thing the U.S. Navy was allowed to do was to evacuate our embassy and provide air cover for that evacuation (operation Frequent Wind). As an aside, a few million folks died in the immediate aftermath of this, but no one was much troubled by it.

3) $100 per barrel oil! $200 per barrel oil! Bob McManus, I know you hate America, but you don't hate making money, do you? I am assuming you are leveraged to the hilt to take advantage of this prediction of yours. You buying oil options? Stock in oil companies? Call options on stock in oil companies? What do you like? I confess, I just own a few shares of this little refiner FTO, but that's more of a play on gas prices.

Posted by Fred | June 12, 2007 9:05 PM

Iraq is Korea, remember? They're gonna end the war with an armistice, and then hang around for a few more half-centuries.

I think Clinton is as serious as anybody about her desire to end the war, but this is a separate matter in her mind from the issue of a long-term US presence in Iraq. She is not going to end the war in the most direct way, by calling back all of those soldiers and tanks and planes and hummers, and bringing them home. But she does think she is going to end the war in some other (no doubt clever) way, a way which allows the US to stay in Iraq for as long as it wants. Her long-term plans for Iraq are probably not much different than Bush's - but she thinks she is just much smarter than Bush, and can wrap up the war in some way he can't, while preserving an occupation.

Even this "residual force" talk, which in itself is enough to spook a lot of Democrats, is deceptive. The implication is that the force will be part of a gradual wind-down of hostilities during a protracted "after-war" period, and will only be there to fight off or intimidate a few remaining terrorists, and keep (other) foreigners out of Iraq, as the country rights itself and develops the capacity to govern and defend itself - at which time the US will leave.

But the long-term presence in Iraq that has been prepared since the beginning of the war, and construction of which continues to this day, is not just some kind of protracted mop-up operation, or even a tactical prize in in the "war on terror". It is a long-term strategic presence, whose aims go beyond ongoing problems with terrorism or feisty antagonistic regimes of the current moment.

We're not still in Okinawa, to consider an analogy, to prevent Japanese kamikazes from taking Tokyo, or just to defend and prevent foreign intervention in Japan - although the latter is still part of the reason. We're there because, as with any other imperial power, the US needs a major, permanent military presence in every region it seeks to dominate, to project force and power and advance its interests through intimidation no matter what contingencies arise. Washington has decided that the Middle East is a place where the American military needs to be, with a substantial permanent capability and sufficiently menacing presence, enough to beat down any regional challengers that pop up, either now or twenty or forty years from now, and to ward off strategic competitors looking for a bigger piece of the action.

Clinton knows that is what the war is really all about, and she is basically on board with it. And that's why she knows we'll be in Iraq eight years, sixteen years, thirty-two years or sixty-four years from now - at least if things go according to Washington plans.

Remember that whole thing about the "New American Century", and the erstwhile "project" toward the same? That's the way all of official Washington thinks. The only things they disagree about are the extent to which the project should rely on brute force, blunt statements, and offers our friends and enemies can't refuse; and the extent to which it should rely on subtlety, charm and gracious cajoling of vassals.

Eventually, perhaps the presidential debate about Iraq will move out of the constricted realm in which almost all the candidates just offer one or another version of the "tactical errors" story, and move into long term stategic questions about precisely what kind of country the US wants to be over the long haul - and whether anyone outside Washington has anything to say about it.

Posted by Dan Kervick | June 12, 2007 9:21 PM

Israeli Billionaire Haim Saban has raised 1 Million dollars for Hillary in the past few months. As I have noted before, the Israel Lobby owns much of the Democratic leadership -- with the exception of Nancy Pelosi and probably Howard Dean.

As Saban has noted, the Lobby is deeply concerned about doing something NOW about the threat a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel.

By contrast, I think the Israel Lobby views civil war and chaos within Iraq to be a feature,not a bug, since such chaos greatly weakens Iraq and prevents it from becoming a threat to Israel.
The people wanting to create a strong puppet government in Iraq are Big Oil not the Israel Lobby.

So I think Hillary will pull US troops out of Iraq quickly -- in order to free them up for a potential fight with Iran.

Posted by Don Williams | June 12, 2007 9:47 PM

I was struck in Koppel's piece by his apparent view that the only serious position is that US vital interests require a military presence for years to come. There was no indication that he saw any role in this decision for the Iraqis themselves, despite the polling data indicating that a majority favors withdrawal within about a year. It wouldn't be the first time a country said no to continued US presence. If Koppel were truly the cynic he claims to be, he might consider questioning this received wisdom.

Posted by Steve | June 12, 2007 10:18 PM

And? How did you like the war public opinion helped get us into?

The hawks like public opinion fine when they're able to engineer it with misinformation, as they did in 2003. They ignore it when it goes against them, as it has recently.

The Iraq War was in no sense a response to hawkish public opinion. Opinion leaders were promoting it already as early as 1996 or so, and Bush and Cheney were committed to it well before 9/11. In 2002-3 a massive PR campaign brought the public around, but even then there was more opposition to the war than the media would have us believe. There was war fever right after 9/11, but the Iraq War is something different.

Posted by John Emerson | June 13, 2007 8:28 AM

I expect the U.S. to attack Iran before that country has another presidential electional. They can't risk Ahmadinejad losing, depriving their anti-Iran propaganda of its 'Wicked Man'.

Posted by David Tomlin | June 13, 2007 9:37 AM

We need to get out of Iraq now. It scares me to think that the "top tier" Dem candidates are being misleading when it comes to redeployment from Iraq. It's positively frightening.

I'm supporting a more honest candidate with the right ideas and plans. I hope you'll consider signing Governor Richardson's petition for complete withdrawal from Iraq:

http://action.richardsonforpresident.com/page/content/deauthorizenow/

Posted by CNYAlison | June 13, 2007 10:39 AM

"We need to get out of Iraq now"

Question for the anti-war folks: If we pulled out of Iraq now, wouldn't we be more likely to attack Iran?

Posted by Fred | June 13, 2007 1:01 PM

My guess is that if a Democrat gets elected and doesn't quickly end the war (meaning getting ALL American troops out of Iraq except perhaps Kurdistan), said Democrat is going to face massive street demonstrations (in addition to cratering in the polls). I don't think Hillary realizes: (1) how wrong she was to support the Iraq War initially; (2) how wrong she was to continue to support the war; (3) the fact that her readings re: the politics of hawkishness and dovishness for female Democratic candidates is less important than the lives of our brave servicemen and women; and (4) the vast majority of any electorate that votes for her in November 2008 would be comprised of people who are vehemently opposed to the war, including a number who would vote Republican if they believed that the Republican rather than the Democrat would end the war.

I will continue to repeat my refrain-- Hillary will not be the nominee, because her continued support for the Iraq War disqualifies her from obtaining a nomination dependent on the votes of anti-war Democrats. But if she did win the election, she is living in a fantasy world if she envisions that she could continue to occupy Iraq for another 4, let alone 8, years, and that the American people would allow her to do this.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 13, 2007 3:05 PM

Fred is a pro-war whack job still trying to relive Vietnam. He could stand to be a bit less smug too. If a Democrat gets elected, and doesn't end the war, things are likely to get real ugly real fast. I really doubt they'll be making a many public appearances, and not because they're worried about hecklers.

Posted by soullite | June 13, 2007 6:06 PM

Total Withdrawal + Diplomacy

There are 2 frontrunners (Clinton and Obama due to their national name recognition and fundraising) and 2 challengers (Edwards and Richardson both are polling at or above 10% in Iowa and New Hampshire).

Only one of these candidates is calling for a total withdrawal of our forces from Iraq within a year of taking office combined with a diplomatic offensive. That candidate is Richardson. He has the credibility and foreign policy expereince to deliver on his commitment.

Posted by Stephen Cassidy | June 13, 2007 6:31 PM

Remember that whole thing about the "New American Century", and the erstwhile "project" toward the same? That's the way all of official Washington thinks.
-- Posted by Dan Kervick

Agreed. After all, it's their power.

Posted by Gary Sugar | June 13, 2007 7:08 PM