McCain vs. the Ideologues
There is a new rap against John McCain — that he is a neoconservative ideologue, one “who sees war as America’s ennobling enterprise,” as Matt Yglesias puts it in his comprehensive indictment, “The Militarist.”
McCain’s strident advocacy of the “surge” in Iraq is sometimes seen as political opportunism, an effort to move right in time for the Republican primaries. This interpretation both sells him short and gives him too much credit. McCain has, obviously, used his early and unequivocal enthusiasm for the surge to build bridges with the right, just as he’s eager to use the surge’s alleged success as a bludgeon with which to beat the Democratic Party. But while your typical partisan Republican member of Congress has simply backed Bush’s Iraq policy through all its twists and turns, McCain has always stayed fixed on a policy of maximum force even as the political valence of that policy has shifted. The idea that more U.S. forces should be sent to Iraq began as a line of attack on Bush popular among the hawkish wing of the Democratic Party in 2003 and early 2004, and McCain was happy to break with his party to support it.
This is a characteristically smart analysis, yet it doesn’t allow for the possibility that McCain is responding to changing evidence. Iraq’s woes have been caused by a security vacuum. What Matt is calling “a policy of maximum force” has been, pretty consistently, a policy of shrinking and ultimately eliminating this security vacuum through the use of U.S. military power and political engagement with reconcilable Iraqi political factions, some of them armed, some of them nationalist or Islamist.
Matt’s analysis would have more weight, I suspect, if McCain hadn’t changed his mind as much as he has. For example, it seems that Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, not a McCain admirer suffice it to say, feels rather differently about McCain’s consistency. Stein’s post on McCain’s supposed “flip-flop” on Iraq is highly amusing, and also very telling. As it turns out, McCain once rejected the idea of a long-term, large-scale U.S. presence in Iraq.
“I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence,” he responded. “And I don’t pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be.”
The January 2005 comments, which have not surfaced previously during the presidential campaign, represent a stunning contrast to McCain’s current rhetoric. They also run squarely against his image as having a steadfast, unwavering idea for U.S. policy in Iraq — and provide further evidence to those, including some prominent GOP foreign policy figures in the “realist” camp, who believe McCain is increasingly adopting policies shared by neoconservatives.
That is certainly one way of looking at it. Another is that the crisis in Iraq looked radically different, and was radically different, in early 2005. Rather than moving in a “neoconservative” direction — neoconservatives were divided, then as now, on the question of a long-term U.S. presence — but in the direction of filling the security vacuum. And filling the security vacuum strikes me as less an ideological notion and more about achieving the objective of a peaceful, stable Iraq. It so happens that McCain rejects the notion, widely held among the actually quite optimistic withdrawalists, that a U.S. withdrawal will lead to political reconciliation.
This notion is as ideological, and as blinkered, as the notion that U.S. servicemembers would be greeted with candies and sweets upon arriving in bourgeois, peace-loving Iraq. One gets the impression that pro-withdrawal forces on the right and left have solved the Iraq issue to their intellectual satisfaction, and so they are impatient with those — like McCain — who continue believe that the security vacuum can be closed, that Iraqi lives can be spared, and that the U.S. and its allies can achieve their objectives in the region. Like those in the reality-based community who “didn’t get” the overpowering intellectual elegance of Feithian geopolitical game-changing, McCain represents a foreign policy center that rejected, in succession, the Rumsfeldian notion that we could crush Saddam and leave, the oil-spot strategy that ignores the communal dimension of the Iraq conflict, and the case for letting Iraqis (and Iranians and Saudis and Syrians) duke it out while we somehow engage in counter-terrorism at a great distance. Instead, he has chosen to take a slow, steady, evidence-based approach to reducing sectarian violence and building mutual trust among Iraqi factions in an effort to build a decent political society.
This was not the view McCain started out with — we’ve all learned a great deal about Iraq over the course of the conflict, particularly the chastened advocates of the invasion.
But we also know that the neoconservative right doesn’t have a monopoly on calcified ideas and on reflexive reactions to what is a difficult challenge without easy solutions. (I realize that these are clichés. I’ll stop using them the moment my interlocutors do the same.) I’m particularly struck by the failure to understand the sophistication and breadth of Iran’s strategy in Iraq, which involves collaborating with a wide array of Sunni and Shia forces in different degrees, but that has also sparked a backlash among Iraqi Shia.
Why is the thought of Iraqi reconciliation following a phased American withdrawal wishful thinking? Surely the notion of moral hazards hasn’t entirely gone out of style in conservative circles . . .
It’s also worth mentioning that one of the central objections to our current Iraq policy is that it shifts manpower and resources from other strategic challenges. I have yet to hear McCain engage this viewpoint by cogently explaining why the strategic benefits of stabilizing Iraq outweigh the probable costs.
— Will · Apr 29, 03:29 PM · #
Will: “It’s also worth mentioning that one of the central objections to our current Iraq policy is that it shifts manpower and resources from other strategic challenges. I have yet to hear McCain engage this viewpoint by cogently explaining why the strategic benefits of stabilizing Iraq outweigh the probable costs.“
The first sentence simply restates the idea of opportunity cost. The question embedded in the last sentence is a good one, though.
I’m not sure where else to send our fighting brigades besides Iraq and Afghanistan, and it’s certainly not obvious that we should fully occupy Afghanistan.
The alternative to redeployment to another front is rest and rehabilitation. There is an argument there, that one of our strategic challenges is simple military “readiness” vis-a-vis our largest competitors — i.e., Russia, China, etc — and this objective is precluded by an extended occupation of Iraq. To counter this one might argue that Middle Eastern chaos is a dire short-term strategic threat — a clear and present danger to our national interest — unlike the largely theoretical expansionist designs of Russia, China or whomever, against whome we might use our Army and Marines.
America has long recognized the Middle East as an area of vital strategic interest. In that respect, isn’t the burden of persuasion, rather than being on the century-long status-quo, instead on those who would argue otherwise?
— JA · Apr 29, 04:11 PM · #
There are several major problems with what you are saying. One is specific to the issue of McCain; two represent central threads that run through all of the things I’ve read from you recently regarding Iraq.
The first thing is that you are far, far too sympathetic to John McCain, and far too credulous to his supposedly principled stand on this issue. There is no way to know to what degree his policy evolution on this issue is born out of a genuine reaction to events on the ground, and how much is rank political opportunism. I know that when I encounter a politician who has remade himself on policy so thoroughly and completely, I’m inclined to privilege the latter. But like I said, I can’t know for sure.
What I can know is what McCain would do, were Hillary Clinton to win the nomination. What he would do would be to hammer her, again and again, for changing her stance on Iraq. This is standard Republican boilerplate and he has already alluded to it on the campaign trail. So when is an “evolving vision” a mark of virtue? Can we applaud McCain for changing his thinking while he goes about attacking Hillary for changing hers? (Have you made a similar post defending Hillary?)
On a more general front regarding Iraq, you have been consistent in saying that what you want in Iraq is stability and not democracy. I disagree with you on principle on the issue of stability over democracy, and I disagree with you on an analytical level about the ability of the United States to create stability. Again, the magical thinking that pervades these attitudes towards Iraq is so powerful I find it almost impossible to argue against. What evidence compels you to believe that we can achieve stability? We have had over a year of the best possible conditions for stability in Iraq, and Iraq is not stable. The British empire also believed that they could stabilize Iraq, they too thought that they had a monopoly on the world’s moral authority, they too felt they had a white man’s burden. And where are they now? There is one group of people who have the power to stabilize Iraq, and that is the Iraqi people. When I read you saying that the United States must be “building mutual trust among Iraqi factions”, I cringe. These factions have been fighting for hundreds of years. It’s like when we talk unironically about “ending violence in Waziristan”. Warlords have been fighting among themselves in Waziristan since before there was a United States of America. The dustbin of history is littered with empires that thought they were the one true hope of mankind, who thought that they had the power to achieve anything and everything that others had failed before….
On the democracy side, also, I don’t know how to debate, because the philosophies of democracy and self-determination are so basic and primal that I can’t figure out how to do it without insulting you. I said this the last time you wrote in this space about Iraq; I wasn’t being facetious then, and I’m not now— the issue is as basic as the essential notions of the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the very notion of individual rights and respect for other international entities. I could quote Vindication of the Rights of Man or the Declaration of Independence or Gandhi; the issue is that essential. What colonial power did not genuflect towards the notion of stability? I ask again for you to follow your thinking to its logical ends. What on earth is to stop us from invading other failed states, on the premise of bringing them stability? If the maxim is as simple as this— we have come to your country to stabilize it, to bring peace to the beleaguered peoples of the earth— how are you any different, in any way, from Rudyard Kipling? I don’t buy the neocon notions of democracy-building; I don’t believe that building democracy is moral and I don’t believe that they actually want it. But at least it is an intellectual framework that is in some sense more advanced than your average European colonialist of the past. I can’t say the same about those who take as their only goal the promotion of stability.
Let me add this, because it’s important: none of this means that I have excluded your arguments. I understand that what I am saying is, in a sense, intense. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve disqualified you. I believe you have your problems with my rhetorical style, and not without cause. But whatever else is true of my argumentative excesses, I haven’t and won’t exclude your opinions.
— Freddie · Apr 29, 04:12 PM · #
Freddie: “What on earth is to stop us from invading other failed states, on the premise of bringing them stability?“
None of our premises for Iraq had to do with its internal stability, or lack thereof.
I know it’s difficult to separate the two, but our current problem has nothing to do with entry justifications — your “we have come to your country to stabilize it, to bring peace to the beleaguered peoples of the earth” — and everything to do with exit facts.
— JA · Apr 29, 04:22 PM · #
I should rephrase my original comment so that it’s more responsive to Mr. Salam’s post. I think there is an intelligent case to be made for staying in Iraq. I think that it is entirely reasonable to argue that leaving Iraq is an abdication of our moral responsibility and would produce disastrous regional consequences. I just don’t see McCain making that argument. In the Republican debates, his line of reasoning seemed to consist of two distinct arguments: 1) we have some vaguely defined commitment to the Iraqis that must be honored and 2) if we leave Al Qaeda et. al. will be emboldened and America will be less safe. Both arguments may contain a kernel of truth, but the manner in which they were presented was simplistic and ideologically charged. If McCain had presented a more introspective evaluation of the war that included some acknowledgment of the Republican Party’s grave conceptual errors, I would be more inclined to accept your characterization of his stance as non-ideological and pragmatic. Otherwise, not so much.
JA –
Deterring Russia/China/Klendathu or whatever is not the only “opportunity cost” of our occupation. We spend a lot of money in Iraq that I would rather see spent at home. Insofar as troop readiness has been eroded, this negatively impacts our ability to stabilize Afghanistan, which (I feel) poses a greater risk of becoming a terrorist enclave if the U.S. withdraws than Iraq does.
— Will · Apr 29, 08:29 PM · #
Damn, this looks like I might have to read the Yglesias article. In general I made myself not read any more of what MY — whom I generally enjoy reading — says about McCain, because the sheer asininity with which he paints McCain as some kind of subhuman, war obsessed, all-men-should-be-military troglodyte, combined with a snot-nosed brat’s inability to understand just what a military mindset is, had singlehandedly pushed me — a guy who stood on streetcorners in rain campaigning for Paul Tsongas, Mike Dukakis and Bill Bradley — from firmly in Obama’s camp, to shakily in McCain’s, on the I-think-I-maybe-know-some-politics-but-man-I-don’t-want-to-be-associated-with-those-guys theory. Still — I question your judgement reading anything Yglesias writes about McCain. He has a weird blind spot there. And any group of people who seem to think, big deal, the guy got shot down, and doesn’t the fact that he did actually make him less qualified to be President? — isn’t serious enough to read on the topic.
— Sanjay · Apr 29, 09:32 PM · #
McCain’s not “subhuman” and he’s not “less qualified” to be president than anyone else. If you think, as John McCain does, that the United States of America needs to make its foreign policy more assertive and nationalistic, then I think McCain’s as good a candidate to lead the charge as anyone else. It’s that McCain is mistaken.
— Matthew Yglesias · Apr 30, 12:45 AM · #
See, now, that’s smart commentary on McCain, and it’s what I routinely get from Drum or Marshall. But you’re pretyy comfortable psychoanalyzing him, or talking up some dream about how McCain is pushing, not a “more assertive” foreign policy, but some sort of broad militarization of American society. You’re the guy who seemed to think it delusional that Americans would respect his service record tremendously. I mean, c’mon, Mr. Yglesias.
— Sanjay · Apr 30, 09:09 AM · #
singlehandedly pushed me — a guy who stood on streetcorners in rain campaigning for Paul Tsongas, Mike Dukakis and Bill Bradley — from firmly in Obama’s camp, to shakily in McCain’s, on the I-think-I-maybe-know-some-politics-but-man-I-don’t-want-to-be-associated-with-those-guys theory
So you are perfectly comfortable changing your vote solely on the basis of the politics of resentment? Do you know how juvenile that is?
— Freddie · Apr 30, 10:02 AM · #
It isn’t juvenile at all, Freddie, and you’re silly to say it is. It’s a recognition of my limits as a person to digest political information and a sense that since I after all respect McCain and think he’s about as decent as anyone in his job, I can vote for him. I have a preference, or had, for Obama, that’s based on ideas and people that, fundamentally, I trust. And when I find that those people seem much less trustworthy, or motivated by — well, what you call “the politics of resentment” — look how MY writes about McCain! — then I worry that I have to reconsider. And I do. I make almost all decisions based on trust, and if you think you don’t, that’s just youth and inexperience talking. Again, I have the campaigning/voting history I do, Freddie, rest assured I feel no need to prove my liberal bona fides to you.
And it’s not that simple. I think MY’s anti-McCain vitriol is so excessive as to, yeah, poison my judgement — which is why I don’t read him on McCain anymore, but still read (say) Drum, DeLong…. and in all likelihood that’ll enable me to swing back to my political center of gravity (probably Obama). Hell, I don’t read Drum on abortion for essentially the same reason — he seems to think that every anti-abortion view is motivated by some kind of digust for/need to control sex, which is so ludicrously wrong that when I used to read him it pushed me towards the pro-life position. Are you telling me that deciding to support something when you hear someone you know is intelligent making consistently stupid arguments against it, is “juvenile”? I’m sorry, Freddie, but that’s just dumb of you.
A fairer criticism is that, well, I’m a liberal and don’t read fairly, and contrarianism might push me in odd directions. For example: I didn’t have a TV for over a decade, then when I got married we had a TV but couldn’t afford cable — so I’ve never yet seen Bill O’Reilly or anybody on Fox News (or, for that matter, Fox News). So everything I’ve heard about those guys is from generally left-leaning sources — that being most of what I read — and, well, some of that is a bit spittle-flecked and hysterical. So I find myself with a certain sympathy towards Fox, that would probably go away if I, y’know, got cable and started watching the thing and maybe found out that some of the spittle-flecked hysteria is justified. But, damn, that’s a lot of my money and time to learn about some news dudes that I’m not interested in. Such is life. I’m OK with it. Why aren’t you?
— Sanjay · Apr 30, 11:33 AM · #
Or, I suppose for another example in a different direction — if you still read Andrew Sullivan on Obama, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you. I mean, I pretty much know what he’s going to say, don’t you?
— Sanjay · Apr 30, 11:35 AM · #
You’re not addressing the central issue, at all. I don’t care who you vote for, could care less about your liberal bona fides, and have no particular interest in the content of your political beliefs. What I find incredibly disturbing is that you so readily switch your political beliefs solely as an exercise in opposing a political commentator who has no connection whatsoever to any of the Democratic candidates. I’m simply can’t comprehend basing who you vote for on concerns that have nothing— literally nothing at all— to do with the policy of the candidate, or of your evaluation of the character of the candidate.
Why on earth should Kevin Drum’s opinions on abortion sway you at all? There is philosophical and political content to the question of abortion. What you think about abortion should be determined by the merits of the arguments in favor or against abortion, not on the level of “I don’t like this guy, he supports the right to choose, therefore I oppose the right to choose.” I chose the word juvenile carefully; that is a frankly childish way to develop political opinions.
I also find it highly funny that you criticize Yglesias for not understanding the military mindset, when you so vociferously defend Reihan from charges of being a chicken-hawk. Those arguments operate in precisely the same way.
— Freddie · Apr 30, 12:02 PM · #
No, you’re off-base. Analyzing policy is hard, man. There’s arguments that make sense to me and I like them. Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman — men who know more about economics than I. Same for, say, Greg Mankiw and Alan Greenspan. In the end I have to choose whose arguments make most sense to me. And that’s going to depend in large part on who seems to be playing the fairer hand. Again; you make your decisions the same way, it’s just that evidently I kid myself less than you do,
Your last paragraph is simply wrong. I never defended Reihan against the chicken-hawk argument (although I think it could be done). I think that’s a valid, very interesting argument. I simply pointed out to Bo, who happens to be a fool, that he should consider whether he too has a military obligation. I think the question of whether Reihan has one is interesting and complex and he might.
“these arguments work the same way” is wrong. MY makes a lot of hash out of what he thinks McCain wants, based on that supposed military mindset. Reihan doesn’t make the same error. I can’t really find a good example of Reihan telling me, well, career military guys see the world in this way. So there’s not a criticism.
— Sanjay · Apr 30, 12:17 PM · #
Surely, of the the three remaining likely candidates this election, McCain has endured the least “psychoanalysis”. If you going to choose a candidate based on his or her enemies, McCain is the candidate with the most reasonable enemies.
— Consumatopia · Apr 30, 02:02 PM · #
I’m particularly struck by the failure to understand the sophistication and breadth of Iran’s strategy in Iraq, which involves collaborating with a wide array of Sunni and Shia forces in different degrees, but that has also sparked a backlash among Iraqi Shia.
I’m struck by that too, particularly among defenders of current strategy, which makes absolutely no sense in light of this information. The bottom line is that if Iran doesn’t want us to succeed in Iraq, we don’t get to succeed in Iraq, so every life and dollar spent in Iraq is just an utter waste. Hashing out a compromise with Iran and other regional powers has to be the starting point, not the end point, of any effort towards stability in Iraq.
— Consumatopia · Apr 30, 02:11 PM · #
Wow, Sanjay thinks Matthew Yglesias, Kevin Drum and I are idiots. That grouping forms a pretty nice (and obviously thoroughly undeserved) compliment.
Don’t worry, Sanjay, we’ll chip in and hire a Republican for you to think of as “dumb” around November this year so you can vote for Obama guilt-free.
— Bo · Apr 30, 05:00 PM · #
The bottom line is that if Iran doesn’t want us to succeed in Iraq, we don’t get to succeed in Iraq, so every life and dollar spent in Iraq is just an utter waste
Well, I think the political situation is a good bit more complicated. The main reason Iran doesn’t want us to succeed in Iraq is because of threats of attacks against Iran which could become practicable (if not practical) once Iraq was won. OTOH, Iran obviously doesn’t want a failed state on its border, since that can spill over into Iran in all sorts of ugly ways. And a Shia-dominated allied Iraq is obviously greatly in Iran’s interest, since it takes a lot of the international threats to Iran off the table. OTOH, Republicans want to stay in Iraq despite public opposition, so obviously saber-rattling with Iran helps that objective for the reason given in the first sentence. As such, there isn’t likely to be much of a rapproachment until someone who actually desires to eventually leave Iraq assumes the presidency.
— Bo · Apr 30, 05:14 PM · #
The real question for Reihan: why do we have any moral claim to Iraq that Iran does not have?
— Freddie · Apr 30, 07:48 PM · #
No, no, Bo, I don’t think Matt Yglesias or Kevin Drum are idiots (and in fact I said the opposite), that’s why it influences me when they reason badly about things — because usually they’re whip smart (as is Freddie, actually), and when aren’t, it says that something stinks. If, say, Malkin or Greenwald say something asinine it doesn’t move me one bit because I expect it.
But you’re part right!
— Sanjay · Apr 30, 09:22 PM · #
At the end of the day Iran is a poor country with a weak army, tons of internal problems, and a strong Persian identity that precludes territorial expansion into Iraq. The Iran paranoia all too evident here doesn’t seem particularly evidence-based. After all, the only reason Iran has been able to procure such a strong political presence in Iraq is due to the enthusiastic support of Iraq’s government.
On preview: Well, Sanjay, I already explained in painful detail why your idea that people who don’t support the Iraq War should sign up to fight it is wrong, even though it was so plainly idiotic I feel stupider for trying. You are, of course, free to sign up for any wars you oppose; maybe the Burmese generals could use you.
— Bo · Apr 30, 09:39 PM · #
Sanjay,
MY makes a lot of hash out of what he thinks McCain wants, based on that supposed military mindset.
Yglesias never suggested that everyone or most people in the military has a “military mindset”. He did, on the other hand, reference McCain’s many speeches, biographies, autobiographies and legislative actions, and from those hazard a guess as to what McCain wants—coming to a conclusion that others who spent a great deal of time studying McCain have agreed with.
— Consumatopia · May 1, 06:42 AM · #