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November 05, 2004
Democrats need to embrace imperalism
The "soft-on-defense" tag continues to dog Democrats, and cost us this election. Yes, "moral values" scored slightly higher than "terrorism", but that is a composite of three separate issues: abortion, gay marriage, and religion. The number one issue for Republican voters continues to be terrorism. Talk to a Republican, and they'll tell you they don't trust a Democrat on national security.Why? Consider this quote:
"I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are."
That quote is actually from the elder Bush, but it symbolizes a cornerstone of American conservatism. America can do no wrong. The strength of nationalism is every bit as powerful as that of religion, if not more. Republicans have tagged themselves as the party of nationalism and the Democrats as that of apologizing for America.
Voters didn't buy it until Vietnam, but after that the label has stuck. Clinton's victories were, perhaps, only possible because of the short window between the Cold War and 9/11. He ran an essentially isolationist campaign to victory in 1992. That's no longer possible.
During the buildup to the war on Iraq, it attracted demonstrations around the world, many of whom condemned the war as "American imperialism", an "oil grab" etc. The mere use of these slogans echoed similar arguments that had been made against the Vietnam war -- and produced a similar backlash. Democrats' being tagged as America-blamers, plus their support for civil rights, led to their 61 percent of the popular vote in 1964 falling to 40 percent in 1972.
Iraq left Democrats in an impossible dilemma. If they opposed the war from the beginning, as Dean had, they would be tagged as America-blaming pacifists (as Dean was). If they at first supported it but then criticized Bush's incompetent execution of it, as Kerry did, they would be dismissed as flip floppers, with the lingering suspicion that they were America-blamers.
There's no way out. If you're not an America-first, hawkish nationalist, you lose elections. Period.
So does that mean that Democrats should concede the ground entirely, and become imperalists too No and yes. That is, we should NOT concede the ground, but we SHOULD become imperalists. Imperalists of a different sort.
Americans will not tolerate any criticism of their country. Fine. Then the solution is to change America's conduct so that it really is beyond reproach. Replace Bush's faux Wilsonianism with the real thing.
Bill Clinton showed the way. In 1999, he made the decision to bomb Serbia. The Chomskyite left called him an imperialist. Western Europeans fretted he'd only make the situation worse. American conservatives grumbled that no vital US interest was involved. All were wrong. Within a year of the bombing, a racist dictator had been overthrown and Serbia was moving towards a stable democracy.
Notice how the debate over Kosovo was the exact opposite of the debate over Iraq. Republicans were the crabby isolationists; Democrats were the Wilsonian idealists. Republicans lost that debate.
What would have happened if Kerry had called for all-out US military intervention in Darfur He could have accused Bush of ignoring genocide and appeasing the world's most cruel Islamist regime. He could have talked about slave raids on Christian villages. He could have said how Sudan had proven links to Osama bin Laden, unlike Iraq. He could have made Bush appear soft on confronting the evils of radical Islamism, and himself the tough, idealistic hawk. He could even have distanced himself from unpopular Europeans by criticizing their inaction on the issue, echoing this Howard Dean article.
Just think of the lines:
"The President went to war to stop a genocide that happened 13 years ago. I want to stop a genocide that's happening right now."
"What kind of a message does it send to the world if we let a regime with proven ties to Al Qaeda continue to enslave, rape, and murder hundreds of thousands of people"
He would have dispelled the notion that Democrats are pacifist at heart, unwilling to use force to defend American interests.
And most importantly -- if he won the election, he might really have ended the genocide and saved tens of thousands of lives.
The list goes on. Why are we giving $2 billion a year in military aid to Egypt's repressive dictatorship? Why is Bush so cozy with the Saudi royal family? Resurrecting the Carteresque emphasis on human rights is needed in our policy towards the corrupt Arab dictators (who, let's face it, are the prime cause of the despair that recruits terrorists).
Aggressive, hawkish talk on "getting tough" on the countries that actually produced the 9/11 hijackers would contrast with Bush's dishonest, phony war. Obviously we can't invade every country in the Arab world, but at the very least we shouldn't be selling them weapons and calling their ambassadors close friends. The Arab street hates us in no small part because we're so cozy with their oppressors.
Not only might that have won the election, it might have actually ended the threat of terrorism, and erased the bad taste of Vietnam once and for all.
Posted by Tyrone at November 5, 2004 07:05 PM