Clinton vs. Obama, Iraq and ‘The Long War’ Theory

This photo is believed to be the ISIS forces moving into the Anbar province of Iraq in January 2014. (Photo: Associated Press, 2014)This article was republished by The Nation on August 13, 2014.

Tom Hayden on the Alternatives in Iraq

By Tom Hayden

Beaver County Peace Links via The Nation

Aug 12, 2014 - Hillary Clinton's flapping of her hawkish wings only intensifies the pressure on President Barack Obama to escalate US military involvement in the sectarian wars of Iraq and Syria. Domestic political considerations already are a major factor in forcing Obama to "do something" to save the Yazidis, avert "another Benghazi," and double down in the undeclared Long War against Islamic fundamentalism.

Clinton certainly was correct in arguing that Obama's statement "don't do stupid stuff" is not an organizing principle of US foreign policy. Instead of offering a new foreign policy, based for example on democracy, economic development and renewable energy however, Clinton lapsed into the very Cold War thinking she once questioned in the Sixties.

America's long war on jihadi terrorism should be modeled on the earlier Cold War against communism, Clinton said. We made "mistakes", supported many "nasty guys", did "some things we're not proud of", but the Cold War ended in American triumph with, "The defeat of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism."

Ignoring the new Cold Wars with Russia and China, Clinton's nostalgic vision is sure to be widely accepted among Americans, including many Democrats. She ignores, or may not even be familiar with, the actual Long War doctrine quietly promulgated during the past eight years by national security gurus like David Kilcullen, the top counterinsurgency adviser to General David Petraeus in Iraq.

Put simply, the Long War theorists have projected an eighty-year military conflict with militant Islam over an "arc of crisis" spanning multiple Muslim countries. Starting with 9/11, the Long War would continue through twenty presidential terms. In Kilcullen's thesis, Iraq is only a "small war" within a larger one. Since a war of such duration could never be declared officially, the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force [AUMF] stands as its feeble underlying justification.

Obama has made cautious attempts to separate himself from the Long War doctrine and even seeks to narrow or revisit the AUMF. But Obama has never named and or criticized the doctrine, presumably for fear of being accused of going soft in the War on Terrorism. Obama's true foreign policy leaning is revealed in his repeated desire to "do some nation building here at home", which many hawks view as a retreat from America's imperial role. They prefer, in Clinton's words, the posture of "aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward," rather than being, "down on yourself."

While expanding US drone attacks, intervening in Libya and Yemen, and now escalating again in Iraq, Obama has emphasized another foreign policy direction that is disturbing to hawks. Obama repeatedly argues, “There is no military solution…" to the very wars he has engaged in, or tried to disengage from. That rational observation apparently is too "radical" for a government with the largest military in the world.

Clinton thinks the better approach is a little more muscular intervention - arming the Syrian rebels, for example, combined with some "soft power" on the ground.

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Bernie Sanders for President? Another View…

By Tom Hayden

Progressive America Rising via TomHayden.com

Feb 28, 2014- Should Senator Bernie Sanders run for President in 2016? (Photo: AP, 2014.)Senator Bernie Sanders is preparing a presidential run. While it can still be called off, volunteers already are eyeing Iowa and New Hampshire, a database is being prepared, and factions being formed, and its only winter 2014.

The chief question being debated internally is whether Hillary Rodham Clinton needs a challenge to her present dominance. The Hillary defenders say the Democrats need to pave a smooth path through the Democratic primaries and avoid the crippling divisions in the Republican Party. They warn that an independent Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016 will siphon enough votes from Hillary to elect the Republican nominee, thus locking up every branch of government. That would be a disaster for the Democrats and every advocate of women's rights.

Progressive Democrats who share Bernie's agenda are likely to be troubled and divided if he runs as an independent. They say he needs to get over his emotional hostility toward the Democrats, which is rooted in their long-ago opposition to him in Vermont. They point out that Bernie already caucuses with the Senate Democrats, so that entering the Democratic primaries would be a reasonable step towards maximizing his influence.

However this is sorted out, there is a vast discontent among the Democratic rank-and-file alongside the recognition of the historic moment for women. The discontent is being channeled into a sharp progressive shift in Democratic politics, originating in the 2008 Wall Street Recession, the rise of Occupy Wall Street, the elections of Mayor De Blasio in New York, Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Senator Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts, Senator Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, and even in recent socialist stirrings in Seattle.

This shift is decidedly away from the neo-liberal, pro-Wall Street economics implemented in the Clinton era. Those Clinton policies split the party over NAFTA, the Seattle WTO protest, financial deregulation and the role of derivatives, the 2009 Wall Street bailout, the stimulus versus deficits debate, and campaign finance reform. As an immediate example of the shift, Paul Krugman, who says, "I am in general a free trader," is hoping that the NAFTA-style Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), "just fades away.” Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are already scuttling any vote on the proposal until after the November election.

Adding to the rejection of Clinton-era economic policies, Hillary also has been more hawkish on Iraq, Afghanistan and the drone wars than President Barack Obama, the congressional Democrats, and the rank-and-file. That widens the gap further.

So which Clinton will it be in 2016? More than any personalities in American politics, the Clinton family knows how to adapt. Perhaps they will slide quickly to the left. They showed up with smiles at De Blasio's inauguration, solidly supporting one of their many protégés. But at the same time, a rival Clinton protégé, Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York, is supporting tax benefits for the ultra-rich, advertising New York as a corporate investment haven, and opposing De Blasio's plan for permanent funding for pre-K based on taxing the wealthy.

Choices, choices. How far can Hillary "adjust" before the accusations of flip-flopping and opportunism consume the media space? Perhaps she will select someone like Ohio's Senator Brown as her vice-presidential nominee to appease the parties, and the AFL-CIO's populist hunger. Other deals are possible.

Meanwhile, the vacuum is there for Bernie Sanders, the most genuine representative of the party's New Deal and Progressive traditions, and the newer opposition to climate change, to hold high office in years. His commitment to Medicare-for-all is unmatched. Bernie is not as outspoken on issues like Afghanistan and Iraq, but he is a thoughtful dove in comparison to Hillary. Democrats like Bernie, which is no small asset. Additionally, he is free to run in 2016 and, if he loses, return to the Senate floor with a louder voice and longer email list.

Two things seem clear at the moment: Hillary will beat Bernie in a primary, while Bernie will pull Hillary towards a mandate for more progressive stands than she will take if running unopposed. It's unclear how much momentum Bernie might generate, but he might well amass a significant delegate bloc and, like Howard Dean, contribute to building "the democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

If Bernie runs as an independent, however, the picture is cloudy, with storms predicted.

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Battleground in the Suites

Photo: Clinton Trying to Change the Rules

Dems, the Rules
And The Audacity
Of "Nope!"

By Christopher Hayes

The first person I encounter after crossing the Duke Ellington bridge from my apartment in Northwest DC to the Marriott Hotel, the location of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee Meeting, is Helen Bradley.

A Clinton supporter who's flown in from Northern California, Bradley is standing in a red shirt with a sticker that says "Count Michigan and Florida" and a sign that says "Count Every Vote." When I ask her why she's there, she's sunny, earnest and on-message. She points at her sign and says. "For me, it's not about winning. Florida and Michigan should have a right to vote."

The Clinton supporters sitting in a coffee shop a block away are far less politic:

"I saw a picture of Michelle Obama in someone's office the other day and it made me nauseous," says one woman.

"My whole family is Republican so now we're all united around John McCain," adds another.

"I don't want a leader who wants to sit down with leaders of Muslim countries," offers a third. "He scares me."

This level of bitterness probably isn't particularly representative of Clinton supporters at large but it's sentiments like these that haunt the nightmares of Howard Dean and the DNC. Dean addresses it head-on in his opening remarks the Rules and Bylaws Committee, recalling a midnight call he received from Al Gore in the waning days of the 2004 primary, when it was clear Dean would not be the nominee. "I was very, very angry at my party for some of the things that had been done," he said. "I remember getting a call from Al Gore, pacing up and down in the hallway. Ranting and raving: what do I owe the Democratic party after the way I've been treated!?! Tell me! After twenty minutes, Al Gore said: 'Howard this is not about you. This is about your country.' At that point not even my wife could have said that to me. But whatever I had been through, he had the presidency snatched from him forty days after the election by five intellectually bankrupt Supreme Court judges. This is not about candidates. This is a story about Americans and its greatness."

High-flown rhetoric--"America and its greatness!"--is in no short supply. After all, the entire media industrial complex is here, chasing an elusive plot point in a campaign narrative that has been awkwardly stalled since the Indiana primary. And few of the assembled politicians resist the urge to righteously fulminate about the "fundamental human rights" at stake. You'd think they were on the battlefield at Lexington or on the bridge in Selma, not a meeting of party bureaucrats in a Washington hotel.


(Covering this is not what most political reporters got into the game for. The reporters in the overflow room check their Blackberries and when a meager lunch buffet is wheeled out mid-way through the meeting they descend on it like a colony of ravenous vultures.)

First on the agenda is Florida. For all the heated rhetoric, there's actually something very close to consensus on how it should be handled. The four witnesses from Florida--party official Jon Ausman, Sen. Bill Nelson, State Sen. Arthenia Joyner and Rep. Robert Wexler-- all stress that the timing of the Florida primary was largely the doing of a Republican legislature, and that the voters of the state shouldn't be completely disenfranchised, since the error was not theirs. Some on the committee point out, quite rightly, that as high as turnout was, it might have been even higher had the voters not been told their vote wouldn't count.

Even Joyner, Clinton's most impassioned supporter, who invokes the struggles against apartheid in advocating for a full seating of delegates, concedes that had voters not been told the primary wouldn't count, turnout might have been as high as 3 million. The point is that enfranchising those who did vote would in a sense, disenfranchise as many as million or more voters who didn't.

The Solomonic proposal on the table, offered by Ausman, is to cut the voting power of the delegation in half, which would result in a net gain of 19 delegates for Clinton. (Ausman also wants the state's superdelegates to be seated and given full votes). Sen. Bill Nelson, a Clinton supporter, endorses this proposal, as does the Obama campaign's surrogate, Rep. Wexler. (though they want the super-d's votes also to be halved.) Joyner, however, wants the whole kit and kaboodle. "I've been told that you ask for what you want," she says.

"In life you don't get everything you want, but I want it all." The audience applauds, the press room cracks up. This is the Clinton campaign's M.O. of maximalism on full display. Call it the audacity of "Nope!".

But Florida's just the warm-up for the far, far thornier issue of Michigan. In 2007, when Michigan jumped ahead in the primary calendar, and was stripped of its delegates, Edwards and Obama removed their names from the ballot out of deference to the decision. Clinton did not. The result was a bizarre primary in which Clinton, as the only major candidate on the ballot, won 55 percent of the vote, while supporters of other candidates (in what should be noted was a very low-turnout election) were left to write in their candidates or vote uncommitted. Outside of the US, there's a fairly long pedigree of elections being held in which prominent opponents are left off the ballot: Castro's Cuba and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, to name just two examples. By those standards, Clinton underperformed, but if the results were to stand, she would be awarded 73 delegates, with 55 delegates elected as uncommitted.

The bigwigs of Michigan Democratic politics--including DNC state chair Mark Brewer and Senator Carl Levin--have jury-rigged a solution. Using the results from the actual primary, the exit-polling which put Clinton's support at around 45 percent and Obama's around 35 percent and the 30,000 write-in votes that under Michigan law cannot count but most likely went overwhelmingly to Obama, they propose seating the full delegation with a 69-59 delegate split favoring Clinton. This would approximate an 8-point Clinton victory in the state.
Unlike the Florida compromise, though, nobody seems to be buying it.

Long-time Clinton loyalist Harold Ickes, who's the most aggressively partisan of the committee members, tells Carl Levin that simply hatching some rough allocation of the delegates in a compromise deal "does violence" to the DNC charter's call for the nominating delegations to represent a "fair reflection" of the voter's preferences. Why stop at giving Obama a net 8 delegates? he asks bitingly. Why not 10 or 20? (He expresses no opinion on the "violence" to the concept of "fair reflection" done by an election in which the leading candidate's name is not on the ballot.)

Obama surrogate and former John Edwards campaign manager David Bonior also rejects the Levin-Brewer compromise. Calling the allocation "arbitrary," he basically says that divining the actual preference of the state's voters is impossible given the circumstances and advocates simply seating the delegation at 50/50. That way the party activists from the state can attend the convention, but the hollow exercise in ersatz democracy in Michigan would have no effect on the nomination battle.

Clinton's folks, of course, find this unacceptable and for an hour everyone in the witness chair and the committee tread over the same ground: what to do with a screwy election result that wasn't supposed to count in the first place? What, under these circumstances, counts as a "fair reflection" of the voters' preferences?

The obsession with this question (combined with wireless access to the Internet and a mind that's starting to wander after nearly six hours in the overflow room) puts me in mind of Kenneth Arrow. The Nobel Prize-winning economist (and life-long Democrat) published his famous Impossibility Theorem in 1951, in which he mathematically proved that transmitting an electorate's ordinal preferences for a slate of three or more candidates in a way that doesn't do violence to our intuitive sense of democratic choice is actually impossible.
The strict conditions here may not hold (we're down to two candidates) but the larger point seems apt. The real problem here is less the content of the rules and more the fact that they're being revisited ex post-facto. Donna Brazile manages to more or less nab the final word for the morning session when she lectures Blanchard on exactly this point. "My mama always taught me to play by the rules and respect those rules," she says to enormous applause from the Obama supporters.

"My mother also taught me, I'm sure you're mother also taught you, that when you decide to change the rules, especially in the middle game and the end of the game, that is referred to as cheating."

The air seemed to tighten around that word the moment it was out of her mouth. Set against the "spirit of unity" everyone's been invoking all day it seemed taboo. But it least had the virtue of being true.

[Christopher Hayes writes blogs for the Nation, http://www.thenation.com/blogs/jstreet/325347]

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The Wrecking Crew

Hillary’s
Henchmen

By Tom Hayden

Does anyone else feel growing revulsion at the obviously amoral attacks on Barack Obama by the top henchmen of the Clinton team, James Carville and Lanny Davis?

I used to like these fellows. I met Carville when he launched his national career with the campaign of Harris Wofford for Senator on a health-care agenda. And I suppose I forgave Lanny Davis for his laborious legal spinning on behalf of an almost-impaled Bill Clinton.

But they have gone over to the dark side, becoming really nasty political operatives, however, who are offending large numbers of Democrats as they say anything to wreck Obama’s campaign. These week they even drove Anderson Cooper and Joe Klein nuts with the audacity of their spin.

Carville claims to be proud of the media attention he drew for slandering Bill Richardson as a “Judas”, as if Carville has the power to punish. Most people assume the Clintons offered Richardson more than thirty pieces of silver, but still couldn’t close the deal. Evolving far from his populist roots, Carville makes a lot of money as a consultant to Latin American candidates who favor imposing Clinton’s NAFTA-style policies on their own people, including Bolivia and Argentina. It’s all there in the incredible documentary by Rachel Boynton, Our Brand Is Crisis. And it’s not Carville alone, it’s Team Clinton trying to dominate Latin America as paid consultants, including Mark Penn.

Hillary Clinton must have her reasons for deploying these unsavory, heavy-handed male operatives. It’s sad if this is what her feminism has come to.

The script out there seems to be this. Someone splices together a few minutes out of hundreds of hours of tapes by Rev. Wright. Someone gives it to the media. It is the beginning of the six-week news void before the next primary. FOX tries to destroy Obama in order to break his his delegate and popular lead in the primaries, because FOX wants Hillary to be the nominee. When the Wright story sags, Hillary chimes in with her strange statement that you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your minister [one Freudian interpretation: she couldn’t leave her husband, but Obama could leave his congregation?]. The Clintons will escalate and escalate. Her defeat is not an option; therefore, the destruction of Obama is their last “hope”.

Only a rising tide of public disgust can stop the Clintons from these tactics, as the public reacton temporarily shelved Bill Clinton after South Carolina.

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