The Liberal Hawks
Posted on Tue Aug 14, 2007 at 11:39:11 AM EST
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I used to think I was a liberal hawk. After all, I considered the Soviet Union an Evil Empire, believe that the US involvement in Vietnam was defensible though ultimately a strategic mistake, strongly supported Desert Storm and the war against the Taliban and Al Qaida in Aghanistan and agree with Barack Obama that if the US has actionable intelligence about Al Qaida in Pakistan, the US should strike if Pakistan will not. That's pretty hawkish you must admit.
But Glenn Greenwald disabuses me of this notion:
[T]here is virtually no debate within the foreign policy establishment about whether the U.S. has the right to continue to intervene and attack and invade and occupy other countries in the absence of those countries attacking us. . . . [I]t is an implicit, unexamined belief among our foreign policy elites that the U.S. is entitled, more or less, to use military force even in the absence of being attacked or threatened with attack.
When the heck did this happen? Even Iraq was sold as a "growing and gathering threat." And that was the big debate about preventive vs. preemptive war. The idea of preemptive war is one launched in the face of an imminent threat. General Wes Clark explained it well in 2002:
The President and his national security team must deploy imagination, leverage, and patience in crafting UN engagement. In the near term, time is on our side, and we should endeavor to use the UN if at all possible. This may require a period of time for inspections or even the development of a more intrusive inspection program, if necessary backed by force. This is foremost an effort to gain world-wide legitimacy for US concerns and possible later action, but it may also impede Saddam’s weapons programs and further constrain his freedom of action. Yes, there is a risk that inspections would fail to provide the evidence of his weapons programs, but the difficulties of dealing with this outcome are more than offset by opportunity to gain allies and support in the campaign against Saddam. . . . Force should be used as the last resort; after all diplomatic means have been exhausted, unless information indicates that further delay would present an immediate risk to the assembled forces and organizations. This action should not be categorized as “preemptive.”
In January 2004, Clark said:
Let me be clear: I have always been against George Bush's war in Iraq. Not because Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat. But because Saddam wasn't an imminent threat. Not because it wasn't right to confront Iraq. But because President Bush failed to use every diplomatic weapon at his disposal before deploying our service men and women.
(Emphasis supplied.) Of course, Iraq was a strategic blunder of historic proportions not only because the niceties of international law were not observed. It was a blunder mainly because of the predicatble catastrophe that followed.
But let's not let this point of international law just be elided. The United States has at least honored the letter of that international norm because it was extremely wise to set that standard. To wit, it is in the best interests of the United States if the need for an imminent threat be the standard to justify the use of military force. and not just as a question of international prestige. It is common sense. Who does not agree that military force should only be used as a last resort? When is military force the last resort? When an attack has occurred or is imminent.
Now here is my question, when did it become foreign policy orthodoxy, as opposed to neocon insanity, that this is not the norm? Greenwald quotes one Michael Cohen to this effect. Is Michael Cohen insane? Is that now how we define liberal hawks? If so, that must be changed and people like Michael Cohen and Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack must be excluded from Democratic administrations, indeed, from the Democratic side of the foreign policy debate. Their views are extreme and dangerous.
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