DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA Presidential folly persists in Obama
By Andrew J Bacevich
It is a commonplace of American politics: when the moving van pulls up to the
White House on Inauguration Day, it delivers not only a closet full of gray
suits and power ties, but a boatload of expectations.
A president, being the most powerful man in the world, begins history anew - so
at least Americans believe, or pretend to believe. Out with the old, sordid,
and disappointing; in with the fresh, unsullied, and hopeful. Why, with the
stroke of a pen, a new president can order the closing of an embarrassing and
controversial off-shore prison for accused terrorists held for years on end
without trial! Just like that: done.
For all sorts of reasons, the expectations raised by Barack Obama's arrival in
the Oval Office were especially high. Americans weren't the only ones affected.
How else to explain the Nobel Committee's decision to honor the new president
by transforming its Peace Prize into a Prize Anticipating Peace - more or less
the equivalent of designating the winner of the Heisman Trophy during week one
of the college football season.
If the political mood immediately prior to and following a presidential
inauguration emphasizes promise and discovery (the First Lady has biceps!), it
doesn't take long for the novelty to start wearing off. Then the narrative arc
takes a nosedive: he's breaking his promises, he's letting us down, he's not so
different after all.
The words of H L Mencken apply. "When I hear a man applauded by the mob," the
Sage of Baltimore wrote, "I always feel a pang of pity for him. All he has to
do to be hissed is to live long enough." Obama has now lived long enough to
attract his fair share of hisses, boos, and catcalls.
Along with prolonging and expanding one war in Afghanistan, the Nobel Peace
laureate has played a leading role in starting another war in Libya. Laboring
to distinguish between this administration and its predecessor, Obama's
defenders emphasize the purity of his motives.
Contemptuous of George W Bush's claim that US forces invaded oil-rich Iraq to
keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists, they readily
accept this president's insistence that the United States intervened in
oil-rich Libya to prevent genocidal slaughter. Besides, testifying to our
virtuous intent, this time we've got the French with us rather than against us.
Explaining why is a mug's game
In truth, to ascribe a single governing purpose or rationale to any large-scale
foreign policy initiative is to engage in willful distortion. In any
administration, action grows out of consensus. The existence of consensus among
any president's advisers - Lyndon B Johnson's inner circle supporting
escalation in South Vietnam back in 1965, George W's pressing for regime change
in Baghdad - does not imply across-the-board agreement as to intent.
Motive is slippery. As former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz famously
noted regarding Iraq, weapons of mass destruction merely provided the agreed
upon public rationale for war. In reality, a mix of motives probably shaped the
decision to invade. For some administration officials, there was the prospect
of eliminating a perceived source of mischief while providing an object lesson
to other would-be troublemakers.
For others, there was the promise of reasserting US hegemony over the world's
energy heartland. For others still (including Wolfowitz himself), there were
alluring visions of a region transformed, democratized, and pacified, the very
sources of Islamist terror thereby eliminated once and for all.
At least on the margins, expanding the powers of the presidency at the expense
of congress, bolstering the security of Israel, and finishing what daddy had
left undone also likely figured in the equation. Within this mix, policymakers
could pick and choose.
In the face of changing circumstances, they even claimed the prerogative of
revising their choices. Who can doubt that Bush, faced with the Big Oops - the
weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist - genuinely persuaded
himself that America's true and abiding purpose for invading Iraq had been to
liberate the Iraqi people from brutal oppression? After all, right from day one
wasn't the campaign called Operation Iraqi Freedom?
So even as journalists and historians preoccupy themselves with trying to
explain why something happened, they are playing a mug's game. However creative
or well-sourced, their answers are necessarily speculative, partial, and
ambiguous. It can't be otherwise.
Rather than why, what deserves far more attention than it generally receives is
the question of how. Here is where we find Obama and George W Bush (not to
mention Bill Clinton, George H W Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter) joined
at the hip. When it comes to the Islamic world, for more than three decades now
Washington's answer to how has been remarkably consistent: through the
determined application of hard power wielded by the United States. Simply put,
Washington's how implies a concerted emphasis on girding for and engaging in
war.
Presidents may not agree on exactly what we are trying to achieve in the
Greater Middle East (Obama wouldn't be caught dead reciting lines from Bush's
Freedom Agenda, for example), but for the past several decades, they have
agreed on means: whatever it is we want done, military might holds the key to
doing it. So today, we have the extraordinary spectacle of Obama embracing and
expanding Bush's Global War on Terror even after having permanently banished
that phrase to the Guantanamo of politically incorrect speech.
The big how - by force
Efforts to divine this administration's intent in Libya have centered on the
purported influence of the Three Harpies: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
United Nations ambassador Susan Rice, and National Security Council Human
Rights Director Samantha Power, women in positions of influence ostensibly
burdened with regret that the United States failed back in 1994 to respond
effectively to the Rwandan genocide and determined this time to get it right.
Yet this is insider stuff, which necessarily remains subject to considerable
speculation. What we can say for sure is this: by seeing the Greater Middle
East as a region of loose nails badly in need of being hammered, the current
commander-in-chief has claimed his place in the ranks of a long list of his
warrior-predecessors.
The key point is this: like those who preceded them, neither Obama nor his
Harpies (nor anyone else in a position of influence) could evidently be
bothered to assess whether the hammer actually works as advertised -
notwithstanding abundant evidence showing that it doesn't.
The sequence of military adventures set in motion when Carter promulgated his
Carter Doctrine back in 1980 makes for an interesting story but not a very
pretty one. Reagan's effort to bring peace to Lebanon ended in 1983 in a bloody
catastrophe. The nominal victory of Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which
pushed Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait, produced little except woeful
complications, which Clinton's penchant for flinging bombs and missiles about
during the 1990s did little to resolve or conceal.
The blowback stemming from our first Afghanistan intervention against the
Soviets helped create the conditions leading to 9/11 and another Afghanistan
war, now approaching its tenth anniversary with no clear end in sight. As for
George W Bush's second go at Iraq, the less said the better. Now, there is
Libya.
The question demands to be asked: Are we winning yet? And if not, why persist
in an effort for which great pain is repaid with such little gain?
Perhaps Obama found his political soul mate in Power, making her determination
to alleviate evil around the world his own. Or perhaps he is just another
calculating politician who speaks the language of ideals while pursuing less
exalted purposes. In either case, the immediate relevance of the question is
limited. The how rather than the why is determinant.
Whatever his motives, by conforming to a pre-existing American penchant for
using force in the Greater Middle East, this president has chosen the wrong
tool. In doing so, he condemns himself and the country to persisting in the
folly of his predecessors. The failure is one of imagination, but also of
courage. He promised, and we deserve something better.
Andrew J Bacevich is professor of history and international relations.
His most recent book
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War (Metropolitan Books) is
just out in paperback. To catch Timothy MacBain's latest TomCast audio
interview in which Bacevich discusses what to make of the Obama
administration's Libyan intervention, click
here, or download it to your iPod
here.
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