On Sat, 5 Jul 2008, Doug Henwood wrote:
> What you see isn't always what you get.
Well that's certainly always true, especially when it comes to forecasting foreign policy. The flipside of that is that it makes it perfectly rational to rest your position on hope because frankly, that's all you've got in either case. God only knows what these guys will actually end up doing in the face of the next surprise.
> Of course, being the vigorous war supporter, McCain has cover for
> getting out. While Obama, the "peace" candidate, will have to prove
> himself to be sufficiently bellicose to run the empire.
That's one guess. The opposite is that McCain has been an incredibly bellicose motherfucker all his life and Obama is a Pussy like Me, and those basic character differences will mainly dictate how much they talk and how much they shoot.
I think the idea that Democrats "have to prove themselves bellicose enough to run an empire" was true doing the cold war when they had to prove themselves sufficiently anti-communist. Back then everyone accepted on some level that demonstrations of force were all those commies understood, and a perceived weakness in sector A would lead to land grabs and revolts in other places.
But in the post cold war, and especially in the post-Iraq world, there isn't at all a consensus among the ruling class that military force is a solution for problems; there are a lot of very conservative establishment figures who think it causes a lot more problems than it fixes; and for whatever bellicose policy you recommend, there will be a dozen admirals and generals who will tell you it's bonkers.
IMHO, the main source of new military adventures in the post cold war period has been miltaristic opportunism, the idea of Hey, Now That the Cold War's Over We Can, And It Might Work, so Why Don't We Try? And the main establishment that has unsuccessfully set itself against these things has been the military and many parts of the intelligence apparatus.
Which is very unlike the Cold War, when the dominant part of the military and security apparatus was the hawks.
So if a Dem president didn't want to start a new adventure, it would be easy to find the most unimpeachable military-imperialist support for it. There's a lot of imperial desire for going back to jaw-jaw. Lots of the tough talk might be compensatory.
As far as getting out of Iraq is concerned, neither has said they are going to do it. Obama's said he's going to half do it and I think he probably will. I wouldn't be surprised if McCain half did it while saying he wouldn't. But I also wouldn't be surprised if he didn't do it at all -- it would be totally justified based on his statements. But the idea that McCain is more likely to do this half draw-down, or to start it sooner, or more likely to go beyond it -- that seems to me completely unwarranted.
In other words, it's just a hope :o)
Michael