A threat assessment

by Justin Raimondo

With Patrick J. Fitzgerald working full-time to bring the corruption at the heart of the Bush presidency to light, and other investigations into the dark heart of this administration making substantial progress, the prognosis for 2006 may seem unnaturally bright – especially if, like me, you’ve been following every twist and turn of Fitzgerald’s probe. However, it wouldn’t hurt to take a walk on the dark side, if only to tamp our expectations down to a more realistic level. This means conducting a threat assessment: that is, listing and analyzing the major factors threatening the peace of the world, looming darkly just over the horizon….

The McCain Threat – It’s the beginning of a new political season and, even though congressional elections will come before the presidential election season officially begins, already the pundits are placing their bets, naming their favorites, and speculating about the race for the White House. We live, after all, in the Imperial Age, when Congress is merely an echo chamber – at least, when it comes to foreign policy – and the question of who will occupy the throne is all-important.

The one name on everyone’s lips is John McCain: the Washington punditocracy has always been the Arizona Senator’s biggest and most enthusiastic constituency, and they are working overtime to keep his name in the spotlight as the number one contender for the GOP nomination. This is because he is supposed to be a “maverick,” at least by Washington standards – which means deviating from the party line on relatively peripheral questions (campaign finance “reform,” how much to torture, etc.) while being more royalist than the king on issues of real import (the war, blind support for Israel, and support for foreign intervention in general).

McCain invariably does well in polls, but as the war in Iraq – and, perhaps, elsewhere – begins to dominate the political landscape, and his views on this subject become more widely known, his ratings will plummet. The reason is because there is no more enthusiastic supporter of the effort to “liberate” Iraq and remake the Middle East into the Middle West than Senator McCain – not even in George W. Bush’s White House. He wants more troops, more air power, more intervention in that troubled region of the world – more “boots on the ground,” as he likes to put it, is his answer to practically every foreign policy failure of the last decade or so. That was his line during the Clinton era, when another American president attacked a country (without UN approval) that had never attacked the U.S. or threatened our legitimate interests – and he’s reiterating the same old line when it comes to Iraq. As CBS reporter Rita Braverman once gushed:

“This is key. He acknowledged: ‘I fully appreciate this means young Americans may die, and I fully appreciate I take some responsibility for that.’ McCain’s own military service and his time in that POW camp gives him, perhaps, more authority to speak than any of the other power players on this subject. Americans may not agree with him, but at least they will not have to hunt for his meanings in a maze of obfuscation. And when you listen to him, you have no doubt that his words do not come from a committee of advisors but from his own convictions.”

The problem for McCain and the McCainiacs in the media is that the American people disagree with his convictions when it comes to Iraq, and are apt to be turned off by his reckless combativeness in the foreign policy arena. As his position on this vital issue becomes more well-known, his popularity will sink – and, in the end, it may be just a few neocons like Andrew Sullivan and Bill Kristol (together at last!) touting his manly virtues.

The Hillary Threat – While the neocons in the GOP are tooting McCain’s horn the loudest, the War Party isn’t neglecting the Other Party, by any means: they always hedge their bets, and have avoided having to endure a debate over the fundamentals of American foreign policy by controlling both parties during the last six or seven presidential elections. Their ace in the hole, this time around, is Hillary Clinton.

Hillary, like McCain, is a boots-on-the-ground enthusiast, calling for the introduction of more troops into Iraq and generally criticizing the Bush White House’s conduct of the war from the right. The Hillary Threat is much more lethal – and of more import to the War Party – than that posed by the “maverick McCain” because it is imperative that any real antiwar sentiment that bubbles up from the grassroots of the Democratic party be quickly stanched, and stopped. The very idea that Americans might have a substantive debate over foreign policy fundamentals—and in the midst of an increasingly unpopular war! – fills the neocons with terror, because they know this is one argument they are bound to lose. What to do?

If they can somehow manage to lock out the antiwar opposition, deny them a hearing beyond the primaries, and control the terms of the foreign policy debate during an election year, they will have succeeded in demonstrating how a highly effective and determined minority can manipulate the levers of power and defy the popular will. By cementing their control over the machinery of both parties, the War Party ensures that anyone who questions the basic assumptions of our interventionist foreign policy is delegitimized and generally disdained by the opinion-makers and the pundits. If that doesn’t work, the offender is subjected to a smear campaign and eventually demonized as a dangerous “extremist.”

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