US Troops In Iraq For Another Century?

So what if they are?

No one has any idea how long a US presence in Iraq may be either necessary or desired (by the Iraqis in particular.) When Republican John McCain made his seemingly off-the-cuff comment, he was not making a policy statement. Anyone with even a quarter of an intact neocortex should have known that.

Apparently the current presidential campaign has stupefied the Democratic establishment. And many in the mainstream media. From the shock and horror spewing forth from the left hemisphere of the political world one might think that McCain had espoused a policy of never-ending war with hectatombs every year for decades to come.

Get a grip!

Let's get a couple of areas straight.

The surge worked. The US is no longer running a real risk of losing in Iraq. We have met the minimal goal of not losing. Behind the now thinning shield of US combat forces, the Iraqi National Army as well as the Government of Iraq have developed capacities, improved services, and provided stability, which is not being shattered by the occasional spectacular vehicle or suicide bombing of a soft civilian target. (Such as today's VBIED attack near a market in a Shiite section of Baghdad.)

The success of the surge and the concomitant improvements of Iraqi institutions and structures are the reason we no longer hear the Democratic congress-wallahs making mighty moans and shrieks of dismay regarding unmet milestones as they were a year ago. If the provincial elections in Iraq come off without widespread violence or enervating corruption, it will be fair to assess that the US has achieved not only its minimal post-invasion goal of not losing, but that the future of Iraq is in Iraqi hands,

Hands that will not need holding.

The US forces will not be in country to either hold hands or "guide" development.

They will be there for the same reason US troops remained in Europe following World War II and Korea following the armistice of 1953. Before going to the reasons for the long lasting US presence in Europe, Japan and Korea, consider that our military has been in Europe and Japan for sixty-three years and in Korea for fifty-five years.

Sixty-three and fifty-five years. Best chunk of a century for the first and a good chunk of one for the second. (Golly, kind of makes it obvious why McCain popped out with the one hundred years figure, doesn't it?)

The reason the US maintained forces on the ground in these venues under various Status of Forces Agreements was simple and self-evident. Keep the peace. Not only through the high-profile deterrence of cross-border invasion directed against the Soviet Union and its clients.

Sure, the deterrent mission was the one that got all the attention. But, it wasn't the only peace keeping consequence of the US presence.

The presence of the outsiders (us) also provided a useful matrix for maintaining internal peace. More than a few European statesmen and politicians wanted the US to stay in Europe even as the crowds were chanting "Yankee, go home," as they feared a recrudescence of German militarism should the Yanks pack up and leave. In Japan quiet talks in private with political, academic and journalistic personalities indicated that the US presence was an important tool for maintaining domestic order during many of the past six decades.

The US presence in South Korea has been important not only for raising a cautionary flag in the face of the less than totally predictable North Korean dictatorship, it has also served as a completely unappreciated insurance policy for the thugs in Pyongyang. As long as the US were in the South, a Southern invasion of the North was unlikely in the extreme.

Also the US bases in South Korea have served to inhibit some of the more boisterous potentials in South Korean domestic politics. It's not that the Ugly Americans have done anything at all to directly influence the more extreme elements of the Korean political spectrum. They haven't.

It is enough that they are there. With an unknown capacity and motivation for intervention.

That may not be a nice, warm and fuzzy thought, but it is an element of reality wherever US forces are based in significant number--particularly after a war.

The current Iraqi-US negotiations over a Status of Forces Agreement will conclude satisfactorily. With the exception of the increasingly irrelevant Sadrists and the even more marginal Association of Muslim Scholars, the leading political parties in Iraq favor a continued US presence. There is no doubt but the Kurds not only favor it, but are damn near demanding, "Yankees! Stay Here!"

Assuming that neither the rump of neocon cretins through continued insistence on provisions which do or may appear to threaten the sensitive sense of national sovereignty in Iraq and that the Democrats-in-search-of-an-issue don't scuttle the SOFA, it will be signed. US troops will stay in Iraq.

At this point the loudest applause should come, not from Baghdad and not from Washington, but from Tehran. Iran has always feared a replay of the Iraq-Iran War. For Tehran and for the Iranian public it was a disaster that could have been much worse. The mullahocracy ought to appreciate that no country where the US has maintained troops has invaded its neighbor.

So, how long will the troops stay?

Beats me, sez the Geek. McCain might have been right--or not. It doesn't matter in the real world.

It only seems to matter in the less than half-real world of presidential campaigns.

The Voice of America (And Barrak Obama) Needs To Get A Grip

Established back in 1942 as a primary, reliable source of news, the VOA has long prided itself on using the propaganda of the truth and maintaining strict neutrality on domestic political affairs. By and large it has been both truthful and impartial over the past two thirds of a century.

That's why the Geek regrets seeing it fall off the wagon of truthful, impartial and accurate reporting. VOA blew it with a treatment of the foreign policy views of Senator Barrak Obama. Not the views, per se. Rather in how the outlet framed the senator's positions. Take a look at the article in question: http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-06-13-voa13.cfm.

VOA quotes "experts" (only one is identified and quoted by name) as saying that Senator Obama's foreign policy stance is in the "mainstream" of US experience during the past century. Consider the following assessment.

His views reflect some of the foreign policy positions of previous American presidents, particularly those of the Democratic party. Harry Truman, John Kennedy and others stressed that the promotion of democracy and human rights cannot be separated from the struggle against poverty and despair.

The quote makes presidents, Cold Warriors of the most determined sort, out to be a collection of social workers and do-gooders. Get a grip!

The historical record shows clearly that the two named presidents as well as others unnamed used the promotion of democracy, the underscoring of human rights as well as campaigns for economic development and (to a limited extent only) economic justice as tactical weapons in the strategic confrontation with both Moscow and Beijing sponsored communism. In the same way and to the same end both Truman and Kennedy used armed force.

The first in Korea. The second in Cuba, Laos and South Vietnam.

These two Democratic presidents as well as others ranging from Wilson to Lyndon Johnson saw that strategic goals were only achievable through the correct mix of tactics, the proper balance of the several elements of national power.

None would have eschewed the utility of military force--whether actually employed or merely threatened. Senator Obama, pace Voice of America, has given no plausible indication that he understands the military to be an instrument of national power.

This does not mean that either Truman or Kennedy were eager to seek war. Indeed, every historical indicator is to the contrary. Both men were combat veterans. They undoubtedly would have agreed with Senator McCain's statement that "only a fool or a fraud" would glorify war (or, the Geek adds, seek it.)

Senator Obama may have spent a few childhood years in Indonesia but he has not seen a microsecond of combat. Whether his youthful observation of an Asian-Muslim culture represents the basis for a "unique perspective in the conduct of foreign affairs" is at best doubtful.

VOA quoted Peter Beinart, a US foreign policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, as saying,

There's more of a sense in Obama, echoing back to [President] Woodrow Wilson, of the idea that we are in a world of common threats, things like global warming, public health threats, economic instability, threaten us as well as other nations so they have to be dealt with through cooperation.

Either the CFR has fallen on tough intellectual times or Beinart was desperately misquoted. The Geek hopes it was the second.

Why?

Because Peter Beinart's analysis is as historically wrong as a cat barking. Leaving aside the risible anachronisms of global warming, etc, it is important to note two historical realities about the Princeton University political science professor turned politician, Wilson.

Wilson was willing, even eager, to sit at the head of the post-World War I peace conference. He knew that only American participation in the two and a half year old war would allow him to do that. He had a vision, an ideal, of the world being made safe from big power war through the creation of an international league. He was willing to purchase that vision with the blood of American men. Roughly ten times as many Americans died in the next eighteen months than have died in Iraq to date to buy the Man From Princeton his ticket at the head of the peace table.

What did the sacrifice get Wilson? The US? The world?

Quick answer. World War II.

If Senator Obama is Wilson reincarnate, the world had better watch out.

The second fact about President Wilson ignored by the VOA "expert" is simply that the idealistic, moralistic, church-going Presbyterian ordered more US military interventions than any other American president to date. It might also be mentioned that all of these were unilateral. No UN fig leaf back then to cover American policy genitalia.

The Voice of America offered a defense of Senator Obama's strongly criticised willingness to meet with leaders of countries hostile to the US. The defense? Read on--

Obama has dismissed such criticism, saying previous presidents including Republican Ronald Reagan met with America's enemies.

What he failed to state was the self-evident: Reagan's meetings were well-staffed and briefed in advance. President Reagan had an agenda. Even so, the strongly anti-nuclear weapons oriented president went over the edge--more than once. It took intense effort on the part of others in his administration to get the nuclear arms limitation and reduction talks back on line. That they were ultimately successful owes much less to our efforts than to those of the Soviet leader.

Summit talks are dangerous. Even with careful preparation they are a human minefield. The US-USSR summits from Vienna on show this clearly. A nice smile and a childhood in Indonesia won't change that.

Neither will fascination with a half-Black, half-White candidate overseas. Here's the CFR expert again--

The fact that he's lived in Indonesia, which is a Muslim country, but also that he himself has roots outside the United States and that he has roots in the Third World, I think will be a powerful thing for people around the world and that will have an impact on their leaders.

Right. Sure.

If the Geek were a leader of a hostile state, he would be licking his lips and sharpening his knife for the encounter with the Nice (Naive) Young Man From Chicago. The Geek might even paraphrase one of the Commander Guy's less felicitous phrases, "Bring him on!"