Posturing against "extremes"

Scoop Jackson, neocon mentor

Barack Obama recently made a comment about wanting to move away from the outdated frameworks of "Scoop Jackson" Democrats and "Tom Hayden" Democrats on foreign policy. Scoop Jackson was Henry Jackson, a socially liberal but very hawkish Democratic Senator from Washington, who was also known as the Senator from Boeing.

One obvious problem of that way of describing the options is that Henry Jackson was one of the main godfathers of the neoconservatives. And the neocons consciously look back to Jackson as one of their inspirations; a number of the neocons bigwigs worked closely with Jackson in some capacity, including as staff members. So there really aren't any "Scoop Jackson" Democrats any more. The ones still operating in that outlook are all now Republican neocons. I mean, unless you want to count Joe Lieberman, and I'd rather not.

Unlike Scoop Jackson, Tom Hayden is still alive and kicking and actively working against the Iraq War. He's recently done a couple of Huffington Post pieces that address the Democratic candidates' positions on the Iraq War, Rating the Presidential Candidates on Iraq; Another Agonizing Year Ahead Posted 11/09/07 and An Appeal to Barack Obama 11/09/07.

He addresses Obama's "Tom Hayden Democrat" concept:

Just for the record, let me tell you my position on Iraq. I think the only alternative is to begin a global diplomatic peace offensive starting with a commitment to withdraw all our troops as rapidly as possible. That is the only way to engage the world, including the Iraqi factions, in doing something about containing the crises of refugees, reconciliation and reconstruction. It means negotiating with Iran rather than escalating to a broader war. If you want to "turn a new page", it should not be about leaving the Sixties behind. It will be about leaving behind the superpower fantasies of both the neo-conservatives and your humanitarian hawks. And yes, it is to be "suspicious", as Eisenhower and John Kennedy came to be suspicious, of the advice of any Wise Men or security experts who advocated the military occupation of Iraq. Is that position as extreme as your rhetoric assumes?

He advises Obama, "If you want to be mainstream, look to the forgotten mainstream" of the New Deal and the decent and democratic traditions in American foreign policy.

This Mugmump nonsense about "the truth lying between the two extremes" is a notion that should be flushed down the toilet along with the testosterone-based "lessons of Munich". Not because there's something wrong with compromise or that there's nothing to learn from "Munich", but because they've become buzzwords for mindless or vicious approaches to making policy. Hayden points out the basic problem with that notion of political triangulation:

The problem with setting up false polarities to position yourself in the "center," however, is that it's unproductive both politically and intellectually. ...

More disturbing is what happens to the mind by setting up these polarities. To take a "centrist" position, one calculates the equal distance between two "extremes." It doesn't matter if one "extreme" is closer to the truth. All that matters is achieving the equidistance. This means the presumably "extreme" view is prevented from having a fair hearing, which would require abandoning the imaginary center. And it invites the "extreme" to become more "extreme" in order to pull the candidate's thinking in a more progressive direction. The process of substantive thinking is corroded by the priority of political positioning. (my emphasis)

Hayden isn't making an argument here for the value of dogma or suggesting that we should forget about being realistic in viewing problems and coming up with potential solutions. He's pointing out that there can also be a middle-of-the-road radicalism that can be just as dogmatic as the so-called "extremes".

The notion of keeping a "residual force", aka, permanent bases, in Iraq indefinitely is an example of a false compromise position. An American colonial-style presence in Iraq isn't going to work, with 160,000 or 30,000 troops. That sounds like a compromise position, if we completely ignore the dynamics of the insurgency and civil in Iraq and the general American political position in the Middle East.

Hayden's other post on the Democratic Presidential candidates has a useful analysis of the various positions on withdrawal, although he seems to think that John Edwards envisions a complete pullout of combat troops from Iraq, though I thought he had also talked about leaving a residual force there.

On the Republican side, Hayden sees Benito Giuliani as the worst "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."

Hayden is critical of Clinton's position, but not so strongly as one might have guessed (brackets in original):

Sen. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee at this point, remains the most indecipherable of the candidates on Iraq. On the one hand, she pledges "to end the war" and has voted against the Bush surge and in favor of a March 2008 withdrawal deadline for combat troops. She has suggested, but not insisted on, cutting off funding for Iraqi security forces and private contractors unless reforms by the Iraqi government are guaranteed. [New York Times, Feb. 26, 2007] On the other hand, she most clearly favors leaving a large number of Americans, a "scaled down force," in Iraq indefinitely to fight al-Qaeda, train the Iraqi army, and resist Iranian encroachment. [New York Times, Nov. 2, 2007]. She cast an unsettling hawkish vote to define the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group, which may have reflected her positioning for the November election, and has telegraphed a message that Iraq is "right in the heart of the oil region...[and] directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of the region, to Israel's interests." [New York Times, Mar. 15, 2007]

Tags: barack obama, giuliani, hillary clinton, iraq war, tom hayden