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

[Robert Naiman]

Rest assured that I am not about to nominate George Will for the Nobel
Peace Prize.

However, if it leads to Republican defections on the war, it will be a
significant development.

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 4:06 PM, C. G. Estabrook<galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
>   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 :)
>
>
>



-- 
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

Senator Feingold Calls for Timetable for U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Afghanistan
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/exit-afghanistan