War and Peace

Read an interesting article or two over the past week about Obama, McCain, and their views on the Middle East. Given that the Democratic candidate was recently on a rather whirlwind-like tour of Israel, the Middle East, and Europe, it's inevitable that the major media organizations would begin speculating on the subject of what either he or McCain would do with regards to handling the Middle East's tricky political situation (read: the major conflicts brewing there).

A couple of examples of good articles on the subject from the BBC can be found here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7519411.stm In this article, the BBC discusses the impact of Obama's trip to Europe, and, not to be outdone, there's a companion piece on McCain's criticism, however polite, of Obama's Germany speech of late: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7524300.stm

Most of the speculation is on the political impact on the US election race, which is unsurprising. Most of the concern is not so much the policies of the candidates, but how their policies, ideas, and imagery will affect their target audience--the American electorate. There's a lot of good speculation out there about this, and I agree with the former article above that, at the very least, Obama has managed to win the battle for headline space. Of the two, being in Germany and getting that kind of audience is, in the words of my generation, much more awesome than giving a standard stump speech in Middle America. Maybe these sorts of things might be why he's leading in the polls again? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7518581.stm

Well, either that or the fact that McCain keeps sticking his foot in his mouth, and now we're not distracted by Clinton vs. Obama... http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/18/a_mccain_gaffe_in_jordan.html, http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/16270.html#more-16270... and let's not forget his constant issues trying to find a decent priest: http://www.whatsdrivingyoucrazy.com/blog/2008/03/01/rich-bigoted-preacher-endorses-mccaincatholic-church-whore-of-babylon/


All this is interesting... but I'm more worried about what happens after either Obama or McCain get elected. I wasn't a fan of, say, Hillary Clinton becoming the next President of the United States, largely because of my dislike for her platform. I've never been happy with her ever since the Health Care debacle she oversaw while Bill Clinton was President--she's never tried Universal Health Care since--http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/03/26/clinton-health-070326.html. The article calls her plan bureaucratic and restrictive... what it fails to mention is the sheer amount of corporate backwash she got buried under when she tried to push a public health system through. I guess the HMOs didn't like the idea of losing their monopoly on the ability to abuse their patients. Similar issues arise with her foreign policy agenda--her comment on Iran showed that while she might claim to be "experienced" when it came to foreign policy, her image of a strong-willed diplomat covered a more hawkish attitude (just like her husband during his tenure, I might add)--> http://www.cbc.ca/news/reportsfromabroad/champblog/2008/04/the_bloodying_of_barack_obama.html

McCain and Obama, meanwhile, represent slightly more unknown factors, but one might be able to hazard a guess on how they would proceed. McCain's made no secret of his desire to continue to keep US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. While he might be willing to continue to increase their numbers, even he has to pay at least lip-service to the growing distaste with the war back home. Now, any change in foreign policy compared to the current regime in Washington is probably going to be at least slightly helpful--McCain, at least, will probably try to hold a peace conference or two for the Israelis and Palestinians, but he still has to support the hawks because that's one of the core constituencies of the Republicans. His comment in this article (mostly about Obama) is telling: "When you win wars, troops come home." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7519411.stm Anybody else think he's going to be withdrawing troops anytime soon if he should win the election?

Obama talks big, and that's both what makes me hopeful and somewhat worried about him as President. Clinton talked big, but still was willing to bomb Yugoslavia, an issue which Chomsky has slammed him for on multiple occasions, and which I lack the space to cover in much depth, here. For a better summary, I suggest his book Hegemony or Survival--he basically rips up the idea that the 'ethnic cleansing' (nice word for "forced evacuation at the end of a gun) was "stopped" by the bombing. So, can Obama's big promises work?

He recently dropped in on both sides of the conflict in Israel/Palestine, paying his respects at the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, dropping in on the Palestinian leadership in Ramalla, and so forth, before heading for his appointments in Europe: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7518581.stm

He's urged Iran to come back to the debating table, and has commented on several points about holding negotiations with them, with the Cubans, with Syria, and so forth. In short, Obama's position strikes as being a more moderate one than we've seen for two decades from the US, and probably the most sane one I've heard in years. If you want to put an end to the conflicts in the Middle East, you actually do have to talk to the other side, something President Bush was less than skilled at.

At the same time, though, Obama has to appease his own supporters: the so-called "Jewish vote" back home. Some of that Jewish segment of the United States is all for dialogue and for negotiation with the other inhabitants of the Middle East. Most, I suspect, would be happy with such a course of action because they too recognize that force only begets more of itself, and to promote peace one has to show that one is willing to negotiate and to make compromises.

The other side of the "Jewish vote" back home, however, are both those Jews and Christians who unfailingly support the state of Israel, and some of its more hawkish politics. Most of the articles I've listed above about Obama in the Middle-East tend to deal with this in some detail, so I will let you read it for yourself there, but the gist is that there are a lot of hawks in America, and if Obama wants to be the next President of the United States, he has to appease them.

So, this leads to my point in all of this: while McCain and Obama may talk the talk on the campaign trail, I don't know, and neither does anyone, what they'll do when they're actually in office. It seems that many people in Germany and elsewhere like Obama (cautiously so in Israel/Palestine, but elsewhere, he's seen as something of a fresh breeze from these shores), and hope that he'll be a force for change (like the campaign slogan says). McCain comes across as more of the same from the Bush camp. Maybe he'll run the war more intelligently, but he still plans to run the war. At least he's being honest with us. I want to be able to trust Obama--indeed, he makes that desire to trust so easy!-- and believe that he'll do the right thing when he wins the election--I say when, not if, because frankly, the only way McCain can win after the disaster that has been the Bush Presidency is if Obama decides to do something really stupid like wander naked down the streets of Washington or kill a litter of puppies.

However, Obama has already received comparisons to that previous Presidential candidate and President, also seen as a "force for change," one John F Kennedy. The problem with that, of course, was that Kennedy talked the talk... but was quite okay with ordering invasions of Cuba and authorizing Nuclear Missile strikes during the Cuban Missile Crisis--see Chomsky, again, or the recent movie Fog of War by McNamara for more details on that.

Like Kennedy, Obama may just be playing to the crowd. I hope that this is not the case, but then, this is politics. And at this point, what really frightens me is not so much that Obama or McCain will flip-flop in office... it's that most of the rest of the world is really, really, really hoping that the US is not going to foul things up again. If one of the candidates makes promises, and then does the same thing as Bush, the US will have probably lost what little credibility it has left. And despite all their mistakes and all the wrong-doing in Iraq (Abu Ghraib, for example), the US is still one of the most democratic countries in the world, and has the potential to do a vast amount of good.

But if even somebody who promises "change" so much as does Obama becomes the next Emperor of the new Imperium Americana... well, say farewell to the Republic, and to any lingering feelings of trust and friendship for the US from most of the rest of the world--and goodbye to much of that potential for good I lauded earlier.

I'm hoping that won't be the case, but, like any good Cynic, I hope for the best, but prepare for the worst, just in case.

Best regards,

Chris