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Monday, May 26, 2008
‘It’s always better to talk than to shoot’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It might be hard to tell, but beneath the name-calling and posturing, John McCain and Barack Obama are actually debating two critically important questions confronting the American people:
First, under what conditions should we turn to force to resolve our differences with other nations?
Second, how willing should we be to turn to negotiations to resolve differences as a way of avoiding war?
Both candidates have a history on such issues: McCain, for example, was an early advocate of war with Iraq; Obama was an early opponent. In fact, it’s telling that most of the neoconservatives who helped drive us to war with Iraq backed McCain in the 2000 GOP primaries against George W. Bush, believing McCain to be more aggressive about the use of force.
In general, the difference between the candidates can be described in a single sentence: Both men are willing to go to war to protect America; McCain is more willing to go to war to protect American interests.
That may seem at first a subtle distinction, but it is not. Protecting America, and protecting American interests, are two very different thresholds for going to war. Defending America and her allies is always a cause worth fighting for — we should never balk at that duty, and we never will.
The invasion of Afghanistan, for example, was a clear use of force to protect America, because that country’s territory had been used to launch a devastating attack on our soil. Both McCain and Obama backed that decision.
However, sending our fellow Americans off to fight and die to advance American interests is a very different thing. Our interests, while important, don’t directly affect our security. They seek less tangible goals such as economic benefit, strategic advantage and the removal of leaders who frustrate our goals. And in general, most Americans are leery of asking their countrymen to die in pursuit of national interests rather than national security.
But as we’ve seen, there are ways around that reluctance. If you want public support for a war intended to advance national interests, you get it by deceiving the American people into believing that it is instead a war to defend America herself.
The invasion of Iraq was sold just that way, as a war to protect America against mushroom clouds that might rise over U.S. cities and unmanned aerial vehicles from Iraq that might spread smallpox or anthrax over the American landscape. Saddam Hussein was cast as the new Hitler, and anybody who dared question the need to remove him by force was condemned as a dangeous appeaser.
It’s a little late, but the American people now understand how they were fooled, which is why only 33 percent of us still believe invading Iraq was the right thing to do.
However, similar issues are now being raised by the debate over how to deal with Iran and Syria and extremist groups such as Hamas. President Bush and McCain both dismiss the possibility of negotiation with those parties, with President Bush suggesting to the Israeli Knesset that those who advocate negotiation sought “the false comfort of appeasement” like that which led to the rise of Hitler.
That talk is nonsense, and Bush knows it. While he came into office refusing to talk to North Korea, he’s now sending personal letters to Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s dictator. In Iraq, we initially refused to negotiate with Sunni groups that were launching attacks against U.S. forces; now, through negotiations, we have turned them into at least temporary allies. Even in Israel, 64 percent of adults in a recent poll said they back negotiations with Hamas, and a few days after Bush’s speech, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert announced he had begun direct negotiations with Syria, explaining that “it is always better to talk than to shoot.”
In the world that Bush and McCain occupy, that makes the Israelis appeasers. For the rest of us, it sounds like plain common sense.
