Paris, May 8, 2008 – Speaking of the dogs that do not bark, the most conspicuous silence maintained during the Democratic primary campaign was on the subject of Iraq and how, or how not, to leave it.
As the greatest single issue in the 2006 American congressional election was, by general acknowledgement, ending the war in Iraq, and the public delivered a powerful mandate to the U.S. government to end the war and get out of Iraq, why has so little been said about this by the Democratic candidates?
Many anti-war Democrats are furious because they have wanted a renewed commitment by their candidate to end the war. Instead, Hillary Clinton has made increasingly belligerent statements about how America will never surrender, and that she would never legitimate and strengthen America’s enemies (read: Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah) by talking with them. On the other hand, she asserts that she would never have voted in favor of the war had she had known then what she knows now. But that’s everyone’s alibi.
Barack Obama has been less blatantly devious but also says that “surrender” (to whom?) is not the American way. He differs with Clinton by saying that if talking with enemies was good enough for Harry Truman, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, it’s good enough for him. Who else would you talk with if you want to end a war? His Republican opponents gleefully call this stand his “Achilles’ heel.”
The taboo on talking with enemies (other than to accept their surrender) is absurd in the extreme, defying common sense. It might be dismissed as an American superstition, but actually comes from the Arab-Israeli conflict, where it has a practical purpose. For 40 years the Israelis have said that they would never negotiate with terrorists because that would only encourage terrorism. George W. Bush picked it up from them (as had previous U.S. administrations).
It has no utility in the American case. The United States, as the more powerful actor, with the most to offer its opponents, can only gain from negotiations with weaker parties able to unlock stalemates.
