[Peace-discuss] Who supports/opposes Obama's war?

[C. G. Estabrook]

 From
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/09/08/when-satire-becomes-reality/

...the same gang of shysters and would-be world-conquerors is busy creating – 
and, when necessary, recreating – its own self-referential reality. In 
Washington, D.C., it’s very easy to fall into this kind of thinking. Because it 
doesn’t matter which of the two state-approved parties is in power at the 
moment. When it comes to foreign policy, both agree on the fundamentals, i.e., 
the absolute imperative of maintaining a globe-spanning empire of satraps and 
military bases, like cold sores running across the face of the world.

Hosted by reluctant and resentful "allies," for the most part precarious 
protectorates perpetually teetering on the brink of collapse, this growing 
enterprise feeds an increasing horde of tax-eaters, government contractors, 
foreign lobbyists, and "national security" profiteers such as Blackwater and 
Halliburton. In short, a lucrative and ever-expanding industry has grown up 
around America’s imperial conceits, one that provides a ready-made – and fully 
bipartisan – constituency for interventionism worldwide. It’s just a question of 
adapting to the style of whatever administration is in power.

To say the War Party is making inroads in Obama’s Washington is a definite 
understatement. In the councils of state and the "mainstream" media, they’re 
firmly in the drivers’ seat and determined to head right over the Afghan cliff – 
except for one problem. The American people are recovering from the Bizarro 
Effect, or at least a great many of them are, because it looks like a majority 
are now opposing our Afghan crusade...

	***

Polls show the Af-Pak campaign is losing the support of ordinary Americans, and 
a real mobilization of the elites – on the Right as well as the liberal "Left" – 
is required to drown out the rising chorus of dissent. The defection of a 
prominent conservative has them in a real tizzy, and they are spinning furiously 
to explain why no one should be paying attention to Will or, indeed, to anyone 
who deviates from the Washington consensus that perpetual war is our necessary 
fate...

	***

The bile directed at Will underscores the War Party’s horror at the sight of 
real conservatives suddenly rediscovering prudence and applying it to foreign 
policy. It also highlights the soft underbelly of the bipartisan pro-war Popular 
Front that has controlled the conduct of American foreign policy since the end 
of World War II. Postwar "conservatives" were increasingly willing to overlook 
the exponential growth of government in order to gain liberal acquiescence for 
unrestrained militarism: indeed, this arrangement worked quite well during the 
Vietnam era, until a popular revolt short-circuited the deal, just as it worked 
for all the years of the Bush Interregnum, as Democrats voted funds for the war 
and larded up military appropriations bills with plenty of good old-fashioned 
pork even after they gained control of Congress.

As the debate over domestic politics, such as healthcare legislation, reaches an 
impasse, look for some sort of grand compromise – a tradeoff. It’s no accident 
that the neocons are now urging the Republicans to back away from populist 
"extremism," and among the signers of the FPI letters is one David Frum, who has 
become a vocal opponent of Rush Limbaugh and other intransigents, seeking to 
moderate the radical populism that energizes the GOP base. Frum, a Canadian who 
excoriated conservatives and libertarians – myself included – as "traitors" for 
opposing the Iraq war, is now turning on his erstwhile friends at National 
Review and has started his own "New Majority" Web site, where he regularly 
inveighs against right-wing populism (especially Ron Paul) and urges Republicans 
to compromise when it comes to healthcare. But he is ready to go to the 
barricades to uphold the Republican "principle" of mass murder as the preferred 
way of dealing with our problems overseas...

	***

What the neocons fear most is people like George Will: thinking conservatives 
who are beholden to no orthodoxy except their commitment to a rational 
interpretation of the facts and the preservation of our old Republic against the 
depredations of the prideful and the opportunists among us. Will won’t "deal," 
and neither will Pat Buchanan – another conservative much demonized by the 
neocon Right as well as the Left – and neither will the editors of such 
publications as The American Conservative, Chronicles, and, yes, even this Web 
site, all of whom are part of a growing popular movement that questions both the 
practicality and morality of maintaining an empire. I have long maintained in 
this space that the defection of a significant portion of "movement" 
conservatives from the ranks of the War Party would spell doom for the 
bipartisan interventionist "consensus" and inaugurate a new era of questioning 
the very basis of our failed foreign policy. Will’s defection is the first step, 
and I have the feeling – a good feeling – there’s more where he came from...

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