Democrats and National Security

[Jerseycoa]

This article in tomorrow's New York Times Magazine section does not go easy on any of our candidates, but it is an interesting discussion on national security post-9/11 and what it may mean for our party's chances for success in 2004. A long, good read.

Clark is the seniormost member of a younger generation of soldiers formed not by Vietnam, though he fought there, but by the humanitarian wars of the 90's -- by Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. What makes modern war modern for Clark is not just high-tech gadgetry but both the limitations and the opportunities provided by public opinion, international law and multilateral institutions. When I asked Clark how he would have behaved differently from Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 -- we were sitting on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport beside his campaign plane -- he said, ''You could have gone to the United Nations, and you could have asked for an international criminal tribunal on Osama bin Laden,'' thus formally declaring bin Laden a war criminal. ''You could then have gone to NATO and said: 'O.K., we want NATO for this phase. We want you to handle not only military, we want you to handle cutting of fund flow, we want you to handle harmonizing laws.''' NATO had, in fact, declared the terrorist attack a breach of the common defense pact, but the Bush administration had brushed it aside. Clark said that he would have made Afghanistan a Kosovo-style war.

On Iraq, Clark said that he would have tried ''another diplomacy round,'' and then, if Saddam Hussein failed to comply with inspectors' demands, he would have returned to the Security Council to secure an international coalition for multilateral war. (But Clark has also said that invading Iraq, rather than continuing to press the war on Al Qaeda, was ''a strategic mistake.'') After we finished talking, in fact, he flew to South Carolina, where he laid out his alternate plans for Iraq, which feature a Bosnia-type interim government with representatives from Europe, the U.S. and neighboring states and a NATO peacekeeping operation run by an American general.

Clark understands the lessons of the post-cold-war world as no other candidate does. But the post-cold-war world has already been superseded, at least from the American point of view, by something quite different -- the post-9/11 world. Clark argues persuasively that the NATO ''consensus engine'' forces member governments to ''buy into'' joint decisions. But what if the French or Germans don't want to buy into Iraq or, say, to a tough posture should Iran start violating critical nuclear safeguards? A key aspect of the neoconservative argument on terrorism, most associated with the analyst Robert Kagan, is that Europeans do not feel threatened by terrorism in the same way, or to the same degree, as Americans do; consensus-dependent institutions like NATO or the Security Council are thus likely to fail us in the clutch. Clark's answer is that if we take the concerns of our allies seriously, they will rally to our side. But they may not; Frenchmen may consider the United States, even under a benign President Clark, a greater threat to world peace than Iraq. It may be that in his years with NATO, Clark so thoroughly absorbed the European perspective that he has trouble recognizing how very deeply, and differently, Americans were affected by 9/11.

Source: The Things They Carry, January 4 2003

[La_Serpiente]

1. awesome piece

I would highly reccommend that you read it.

We had an earlier thread on it here.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=28359

[Jack_Dawson]

2. It will be THE issue

the repukes will hammer home ad nauseum. If we really want to throw Bush out of office, our candidate will need to have sound foreign policy credentials...there's just no getting around it.

[democratreformed]

3. I tend to agree with the above poster

b/c it is widely seen as being the big thing that most people like G**
B** for. Not only that, but it is the thing they have used to try and control the masses.

Also, you can see this in the article. The neocons want us to believe that terrorism is a bigger threat to us than any other nation on earth. That's one of their arguments that I have just never accepted. Maybe we lost more people in one attack, but, overall, I'm sure there are other countries who have lost just as many - just in a number of attacks.

[La_Serpiente]

4. are there any nations you have in mind?

n/t

[Intelsucks]

7. I have been saying the exact same thing for quite a while.

n/t

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Jerseycoa]

6. kick for unlocking

:kick:

[chimpymustgo]

8. Good to see this unlocked. Excellent, astute piece that

cuts to the heart of the Dems' dilemma on national security. Clark could well be just the man for the times.

[Jerseycoa]

10. I think it was a mistake

Thanks ;)

[Intelsucks]

9. This is why I believe Clark should be our man.

n/t