[Peace-discuss] Asking a man to be the last to die for a mistake

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Published on Thursday, July 29, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Why Are Democrats Afraid of Peace?
by Ira Chernus
 
If you give a speech at the Democratic National Convention, 
there are some simple rules you have to follow. First, 
somewhere in your speech, you must mention John Kerry's 
heroic exploits in the Vietnam war. Second, you must never 
ever mention that Kerry first rose to prominence as a leader 
of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In fact, if you are even 
a delegate to the convention, you must not show any support 
for the ideal of peace, or you risk have the Democrats' hired 
goons swoop down on you and confiscate your peace signs and 
regalia.

Why are the Democrats so afraid of peace? Part of the answer 
lies in the third rule for speakers. You must not commit the 
Party to any specific promises or programs. Just stick to 
platitudes, platitudes. Keep it all so vague that even George 
W. could endorse nearly everything you say.

The Dems are taking no chances. They assume that they have 
the peace movement's votes in their hip pocket. But they 
haven't figured out what the rest of the country wants to 
hear. They do need a weatherman to know which way the 
political wind blows. So they are playing this one as 
conservative as a gray-suited Republican banker.

They know that W. must run as the indispensable strong leader 
in a time of war. That's the only issue on which he ever gets 
approval from more than half the voters. So no paisley and 
tie-dye talk of peace for him.

If that seems to be working in October, the Democrats don't 
want Kerry saddled with any taint of being a peace candidate. 
They want him to be able to out- tough guy the tough guy. On 
the other hand, if opposition to the Iraq war continues to 
rise, Kerry can skewer Bush as an inept war leader. Nothing 
wrong with fighting a war, the new JFK will say. I've done 
it. But I know how to do it right.

Every word coming from Boston this week is crafted to appeal 
to the 16 or so states where the election will be decided. 
But there is another vital audience that Democratic leaders 
never forget: the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, 
stretching from Georgetown to the Council on Foreign 
Relations to the Kennedy School at Harvard. No president can 
govern effectively without their support. Lyndon Johnson and 
Jimmy Carter learned that the hard way. Both ended up as one-
term presidents because they would not toe the 
establishment's line.

Now it's W's turn. When he went to war in Iraq, this elite 
filled the op-ed pages (and no doubt the private corridors of 
power) with fair warning to him. You want to impose U.S. 
hegemony on Iraq? Fine and dandy. We know you'll win the war. 
But just make sure you win the peace and impose order on the 
postwar chaos. Don't leave us presiding over a fractured, 
rebellious, ungovernable Iraq.

That's exactly what W. did leave us with, of course. Now the 
establishment is ready to turn him out and give Kerry a 
chance. In return for their support, Kerry must promise to 
play their game. One crucial move in that game is for the 
U.S. to make occasional credible threats of war. The fiasco 
in Iraq has made that much harder.

Consider just one not so far-fetched scenario. The Bush 
administration has funded its enormous military budgets and 
tax cuts for the rich by borrowing huge sums from China. 
Suppose the Chinese bankers, who are a pretty conservative 
bunch themselves, see trouble on the financial horizon and 
want to call in some of their loans. That could topple the 
whole economy here.

We can't just assume that the Chinese have enough sense to 
see it would ruin them too. The U.S. has to have a dependable 
big stick to intimidate the Chinese. But if we can't even run 
Iraq successfully, how can we think about threatening a 
serious opponent like China? The Chinese would just laugh at 
us.

The foreign policy establishment knows that the whole world 
is watching. Every word that comes out of Boston this week is 
heard in capitals around the globe. Every word is taken as a 
signal of what a Kerry administration would do.

The Democrats are trying as hard as they can to make those 
signals indecipherable. They want to make sure there is 
nothing that the establishment might fear as a sign of 
American weakness. If the Democrats so much as hint that they 
might tilt toward an antiwar stance, the kind of stance Kerry 
once took so bravely, they could lose the vital support of 
the foreign policy establishment.

But it's a dangerous deal. Kerry became famous as an antiwar 
leader when he asked: "How do you ask a man to be the last to 
die for a mistake?" He may win the establishment's support, 
and the election, only to find himself one day as president, 
asking a man to be the last to die for a mistake.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the 
University of Colorado at Boulder chernus at colorado.edu 
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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