The recent US election was an exercise in redemption. At a time when many
throughout the world had written off the US electorate as lifeless putty in the
hands of top White House aide Karl Rove, the voters woke up to deliver the
Republican Party its worst blow in the past quarter of a century. Not only
independents and centrists voted to repudiate Republican candidates, but a
third of
evangelicals - President George W Bush's fundamentalist Christian base - voted
for Democrats.
I, too, was pleasantly surprised. In the aftermath of the 2004 presidential
elections, I predicted that the Republicans would rule for the next
quarter-century because of the formidable grassroots machinery that they had
forged, a "juggernaut" with a fundamentalist base in the so-called "red
states". Fortunately, I was wrong.
Two roads
Of course, many voted Democrat because they could no longer take the daily
scandals engulfing the Republicans in Congress. But poll after poll showed that
the two key reasons animating voters were the Iraq war and the strong feeling
that Bush was leading the country down the wrong path. In terms of the national
direction, the choice in the minds of voters on November 7 was presciently
articulated by Jonathan Schell in his 2003 book The Unconquerable World:
For
Americans, the choice is at once between two Americas, and between two futures
for the international order. In an imperial America, power would be
concentrated in the hands of the president, and checks and balances would be at
an end; civil liberties would be weakened or lost; military spending would
crowd out social spending; the gap between rich and poor would be likely to
increase; electoral politics, to the extent that they still mattered, would be
increasingly dominated by money, above all corporate money, whose influence
would trump the people's interest; the social, economic, and ecological agenda
of the country and the world would be increasingly rejected.
In contrast to this path of an "Imperial America" was that of a "Republican
America" dedicated to the creation of a cooperative world, [where] the immense
concentration of power in the executive would be broken up; power would be
divided again among the three branches, which would resume their responsibility
of checking and balancing one another as the constitution provides; civil
liberties would remain intact or be strengthened; money would be driven out of
politics, and the will of the people would be heard again; politics, and with
it the power of the people, would revive; the social, economic, and ecological
agendas of the country and the world would become the chief concern of
government.
On November 7, the US electorate clearly rejected
the imperial path.
But one cannot say with confidence that voters were very clear about what
alternative path they were choosing. It is the role of leadership to illuminate
signposts, and the big question at the moment is whether the exultant Democrats
can provide that leadership.
Iraq: Bad options all
Iraq is the test case. As many have pointed out, the Democrats have no unified
strategy on Iraq. The situation in Iraq has deteriorated to the point where
only bad choices are available.
The current Bush strategy is to shore up the Shi'ite-dominated government
militarily, and that isn't working. Bringing in more troops temporarily to
stabilize the situation, then leaving - a plan originally endorsed by 2004
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry - won't work, since the civil war
has progressed to the point where even a million troops would not make a
difference. Partitioning Iraq into three entities - the Sunni center, the
Shi'ite south, and the Kurdish north - will simply be a prelude to even greater
conflict tying down more US troops. Withdrawing to the bases or to the desert
to avoid casualties will simply raise the question: Why keep troops there at
all?
Getting Iran, Turkey and Syria to come in to create a diplomatic solution - one
that the bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton may
propose - is not going to work because no foreign-imposed settlement can
counteract the deadly domestic dynamics of a sectarian conflict that has passed
the point of no return.
Bush, of course, remains the boss when it comes to Iraq policy. It is not
likely that this stubborn man has ceased to believe in victory, which he
restated as his goal at the same press conference where he announced Donald
Rumsfeld's resignation as secretary of defense. The more Machiavellian
Republican strategists such as Karl Rove will probably want to enmesh the
Democrats in a protracted bipartisan exit strategy that will cost more Iraqi
and American lives so that by the time the 2008 presidential elections come
around, the mess in Iraq will be bipartisan as well.
As of now, the Democrats have the moral weight of the country behind them. They
have an opportunity not only to eliminate a foreign-policy millstone but to
open the road to a new relationship between the United States and the world if
they take the least bad route out of Iraq - that espoused by Congressman John
Murtha, who, perhaps among the key Democrats, knows the military realities on
the ground: immediate withdrawal. With all their inchoate feelings about wasted
American lives, "our responsibility to Iraqis", or being seen as "cutting and
running", many of those who voted for the Democrats may have some difficulty
accepting the reality that immediate withdrawal is the least bad of all the
options. But that is the function of leaders: to articulate the bitter truth
when the times demand it.
It is not likely that most Democratic politicians will embrace immediate
withdrawal of their own accord. Without more sustained pressure, the likely
course they will take is to come with a plan that will compromise with Bush,
which means another unworkable patchwork of a plan.
A military strike?
One source of pressure could be the military. It is well known that the top
brass are in a state of extreme disaffection with the civilian leadership
because they feel that Iraq is destroying US military credibility. When
Major-General William Caldwell, the senior US military spokesman in Iraq,
pronounced on October 19 that the results of the Pentagon's strategy of
focusing troops in Baghdad to assist the Iraqi military in containing the
runaway violence was "disheartening", he drove the nail in the coffin of the
Republicans' electoral chances. Most likely, the civilian leadership did not
clear his statement.
The US military in Iraq may not have yet experienced significant cases of
mutiny, but the deterioration of morale is evident in the growing incidents of
civilian killings, rape, and prisoner abuse for which an increasing number of
marines and soldiers are undergoing trial or have been sent to prison. Unlike
during the Vietnam War, US servicemen now are not conscripted. But the high
command knows that even professional militaries have their limits and that at
some point the rank and file will balk at being sent to a pointless war. Nobody
wants to die for a mistake. Nobody wants to be in the last body bag sent from
Baghdad. This is what Murtha, a decorated Vietnam veteran who has been hawkish
on most other military issues, has been telling his Democratic Party
colleagues.
Nevertheless, a de facto military mutiny like the one that swept the US army in
the last years of the Vietnam War is not likely. As Democrats and Republicans
bicker over a plan for an "honorable exit", the brass will more likely place US
units in an increasingly defensive posture to cut down on the casualty rate,
leaving the mercenary Iraqi security forces to fend for themselves. The troops
might even be ordered to hole up on the bases, with increasingly infrequent
patrols meant not to ensure security but simply to show the flag. This would be
the military equivalent of going on strike.
Challenge to the anti-war movement
The anti-war movement is to be congratulated for its role in the titanic
struggle to turn the tide of US public opinion on Iraq. Cindy Sheehan's
camp-out at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, the many acts of protest and civil
disobedience engaged in by so many others, the big protest rallies and
demonstrations, all this made a difference - a big difference.
But the movement cannot even think about relaxing for a second. The moment is
critical. Now - the immediate post-election period - is the time to raise the
ante. Now is the time for the US anti-war movement to escalate its efforts - to
mount demonstration after demonstration - to effect immediate withdrawal.
Electoral choice has created the momentum that can be translated into street
action that can, in turn, translate into strong pressure on the Democrats not
to agree to a protracted exit strategy. The movement cannot afford to squander
this momentum, for the price of stepping back and letting the Democrats come up
with the strategy will be more Iraqis and Americans dead, sacrificed for a
meaningless war with no real end in sight.
Foreign Policy in Focus columnist Walden Bello is professor of sociology
at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the
Bangkok-based institute Focus on the Global South.
