[Peace-discuss] George Will: Time to Leave...

[C. G. Estabrook]

    George Will, "Time to Leave Iraq," 3 Sep 09
http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2009/09/03/time_to_leave_iraq

    George Will, "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan," 1 Sep 09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083102912.html


It's certainly worth noting that a well-known conservative pundit is attacking 
the Obama administration's war policy -- attacking it more clearly in fact than 
some self-styled anti-war organizations (primarily but not exclusively the 
Democratic party front groups -- MoveOn, VoteVets, etc.).  And it's also 
significant that he apparently sees Iraq and Afghanistan as theaters of one war 
-- Obama's war, as Johnson's war became Nixon's war -- not two.

But for all that his proposals may prove an embarrassment to the administration 
-- because they represent the majority sentiment of Americans -- it nevertheless 
seems clear that Will upholds rather than rejects the long term policy of the US 
in the Middle East -- military control of energy resources for geopolitical 
advantage.

The questions he addresses in these articles are tactical, not strategic -- 
notably, what configuration of military force best serves the goal of US 
domination of the 1500-mile radius around the Persian Gulf.  That is what the 
Pentagon calls the Long War, and Will is debating the tactics within it.

His proposal bears comparison to another another plan to end a long war, that 
put forward by Richard Nixon in regard to Vietnam 40 years ago.  (Will in fact 
explicitly compares the government that the US installed in Kabul with the 
government that the US installed in Saigon.)

Those old enough to remember (see yesterday's Doonesbury) will recall that Nixon 
ran for president in 1968 as an opponent of the Democrats' war in Vietnam.  In 
the campaign he indicated that he had a plan to end the war, and many voted for 
him for that reason.  Of course the plan was a campaign gimmick -- but, unlike 
the one used by Kennedy in 1960 (the "missile gap') or Johnson in 1964 (the 
Daisy commercial), it was not an outright lie; it was more honest than Obama's 
equivocal antiwar stance in 2008.

In office, it became clear that the plan consisted of drawing down the number of 
US combat troops by forcing South Vietnamese to do the bulk of the fighting 
("Vietnamization") and greatly increasing the air war over both North and South 
Vietnam -- and eventually Laos and Cambodia.  Millions of people were murdered 
and a country was devastated, so that  others would learn not to flout American 
wishes. The revolt of the American army on the ground and the massive protest at 
home -- by 1969 about 70% of the US  public had come to regard the war as 
"fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," largely as a result of the 
impact of student protest -- led to the withdrawal of US troops (and the end of 
the draft) in 1973, but by then Vietnam was too devastated to stand as a model 
of alternative development: the primary (and successful) US war aim was to 
prevent that. (The war was primarily against South Vietnam, on which the US 
dropped more bombs that were used in all of WWII, because the Vietnamese 
wouldn't accept the government the US had picked out for them.)

In this light, Will's "comprehensively revised policy"  looks as familiar as a 
faded family photograph: Will asserts "America should do only what can be done 
from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and 
small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile 
border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters."

And why does Pakistan "actually matter"?  Because it's from populous Pakistan -- 
  with an army larger than that of the US -- that the real resistance to US 
domination of the whole Middle East threatens to arise. The point is obscure 
only to Americans (and the administration is working hard to keep it so): in an 
August poll in Pakistan, only one person in ten thought that the greatest threat 
to Pakistan came from terrorists or militants, and less than two in ten thought 
it came from India  -- while almost 60% saw the US as the greatest threat to 
Pakistan.  It's hard to deny that the poll respondents know what they're talking 
about -- and George Will in a sense agrees with them.  --CGE


Robert Naiman wrote:
> our new best friend :)