Rating the Presidential Candidates on Iraq, Another Agonizing Year Ahead
by Tom Hayden
While most peace activists are evaluating the Democrats, I would rank Rudolph Giuliani as the most dangerous of all the presidential candidates in a long while, because his Iraq and Iran policies are the work of the most hawkish neo-conservatives who promoted the Iraq quagmire and now want to bomb Iran as soon as possible. Though far better than Giuliani, Sen. Joseph Biden is the worst Democratic candidate because of his demand that partition be imposed on Iraq. The front-running Democrat, Sen. Hillary Clinton, is so ambiguous on Iraq that she risks losing the general election by driving enough of the progressive vote to inevitable third party candidates.
Giuliani is advised by a network of neo-con hawks led by Norman Podhoretz who call for a Cold War-type struggle against “Islamofascism”, the immediate bombing of Iran <Commentary, June 2007>, the right to assassinate the leaders of Iran and North Korea, and the assumption that all American Muslims are suspect. <NY Times>. They are a well-organized machine with millions of dollars available to attack MoveOn and bankroll campus campaigns against the new foreign enemy of Islamofascism, which they believe can and must be militarily defeated.
Principled Democrats with single-digit support at present should be considered as strong voices against the war, and possible contributors to a long-term progressive movement, but not as likely nominees. Among them, Biden, who could become secretary of state under a Democratic president, takes the most dangerous position, favoring a de-facto breakup or partitioning of Iraq, with each religious group policing its own areas. That would mean forced migration for millions of Iraqis from their homes in Shi’a-dominated Basra, for example, to Sunni-dominated Anbar province. Sen. Chris Dodd, while taking a strong position against the confirmation of Bush’s nominee for attorney general, has been murky in his anti-war views during the campaign. While supporting a 12-18 month pullout, he also wants American troops redeployed away from major Iraqi cities to the border regions and to Kurdistan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Afghanistan. <speech Oct. 12, 2006>
Bill Richardson, another candidate for a future cabinet position, takes the cleanest position of all on Iraq, promising to remove all American troops within one year while launching diplomatic efforts towards regional stability. And of course, Dennis Kucinich is an anchor for the anti-war community.
Among the current front-runners, John Edwards takes the strongest anti-war position, calling for an immediate troop withdrawal of 40-50,000 US troops, a withdrawal of remaining troops in 12-18 months, and diplomatic peace initiatives. Edwards’ position includes a significant loophole, however, for “sufficient” US troops to remain in the region to prevent a terrorist haven or ethnic genocide. Edwards also is on record favoring the intensifying of training for Iraqi security forces. <NYT, Feb. 26, 2007>
Sen. Barack Obama’s position has somewhat improved with its latest nuances. He favors a steady withdrawal taking 16 months. <NYT, Nov. 2>. Backing away from open-ended support of American trainers in the midst of a dirty sectarian war, Obama says he would support trainers only if the Baghdad regime commits to political reconciliation and reforms its sectarian police, an almost impossible scenario to imagine. Further, Obama would not allow American trainers to be placed “in harm’s way.” But he also favors an unspecified number of American troops in the region able to conduct “counter-terrorism” or return in the “short term” to Iraq in the event of genocide against civilians. Obama seems trapped between his tendency to build a “new center” and the need to sharpen his differences over Iraq with Hillary Clinton.
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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/06/5047/
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