[R-G] Democratic candidates agree on expanded US military aggression in the Middle East

[Anthony Fenton]

Democratic candidates agree on expanded US military aggression in the  
Middle East
By Patrick Martin
5 May 2008
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/dems-m05.shtml

In dueling television appearances Sunday morning, Democratic  
presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared  
their determination to escalate US military action in the Middle East,  
disagreeing mainly over which country should be targeted first.

Obama called for a “surge” of US troops into Afghanistan, while  
Clinton reaffirmed her bloodcurdling rhetoric about the “obliteration”  
of Iran.

Both candidates demonstrated that their criticism of the Bush  
administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq does not represent  
opposition to American militarism, but rather a concern—voiced even by  
significant sections of the military itself—that the war in Iraq has  
become a diversion from other, even more important, strategic  
objectives.

Obama was interviewed on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” while  
Clinton appeared on ABC’s “This Week.”

Tim Russert, host of “Meet the Press,” cited an NBC News report that  
the Bush administration is drawing up plans for air strikes against  
Iranian weapons factories and military training facilities, on the  
pretext that these sites are helping insurgents kill US soldiers in  
Iraq. “If it could be demonstrated that was a fact, would you be in  
support of such limited attacks in Iran?” he asked Obama.

The Democratic candidate did not challenge the premise of the  
question, or recall that that Bush administration used similar  
propaganda before the invasion of Iraq, circulating claims of Iraqi  
links to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that proved bogus.  
Instead, he said he would want to “take a look at the kind of evidence  
that the administration is putting forward, what these plans are  
exactly. I’ve always said that, you know, as commander in chief, I  
don’t take military options off the table and I think it’s appropriate  
for us to plan for a whole host of contingencies.”

He went on to criticize the Bush administration because “Iran has been  
the biggest strategic beneficiary of our invasion of Iraq, they are  
stronger because of our decision to go in.” It was necessary to begin  
redeploying US combat troops and disavow plans for a permanent  
occupation of Iraq in order to strengthen the US position in the  
region, he said.

When Russert asked him another loaded question—citing the suggestion  
of the US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, that a quick withdrawal of  
US troops from Iraq could result in genocide—Obama again did not  
dispute the premise, let alone cite the estimates of more than one  
million Iraqi dead as a consequence of the US invasion and occupation.  
Instead, he reiterated his support for a “phased withdrawal” that  
would leave some US combat troops in Iraq at least until the end of  
2010.

Asked about Hillary Clinton’s statement that in the event of an  
Iranian nuclear attack on Israel, the United States military response  
would “obliterate” Iran, Obama criticized Clinton’s choice of words,  
but not her avowed policy, which would amount to using US nuclear  
weapons to annihilate a country of 71 million people.

Comparing Clinton to George W. Bush, Obama said, “We have had a  
foreign policy of bluster and saber-rattling and tough talk, and, in  
the meantime, we make a series of strategic decisions that actually  
strengthen Iran.”

When pressed by Russert, however, he said, “Israel is an ally of ours.  
It is the most important ally we have in the region, and there’s no  
doubt that we would act forcefully and appropriately on any attack...  
nuclear or otherwise.” Obama added that Clinton’s threat of nuclear  
retaliation actually constituted acceptance of the idea that Iran  
might acquire nuclear weapons, when US foreign policy should directed  
at stopping such a development.

The final foreign policy question was on Afghanistan. Russert asked  
Obama directly, “Would you, as president, be willing to have a  
military surge in Afghanistan in order to, once and for all, eliminate  
the Taliban?”

Obama responded: “Yes. I think that’s what we need. I think we need  
more troops there, I think we need to do a better job of  
reconstruction there. I think we have to be focused on Afghanistan. It  
is one of the reasons that I was opposed to the war in Iraq in the  
first place... And we’re also going to have to address the situation  
in Pakistan, where we now have, in the federated areas, Al Qaeda and  
the Taliban setting up bases there.”

The last response demonstrates most clearly that Obama is not an  
“antiwar” candidate in any genuine sense of the term. He wants (some)  
US troops out of Iraq, not to lessen the slaughter of the Iraqi people— 
as well as casualties among American soldiers—but to shift the scene  
of battle to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria or some other country, whose  
people will be targeted in the interests of American imperialism.

Clinton was interviewed for an hour by George Stephanopoulos of ABC  
News (a former top aide in the 1992 presidential campaign of her  
husband, and in the Clinton White House). She defended her comment  
about the “obliteration” of Iran, although the interviewer did not  
attempt to pin her down on the potential death toll of such a nuclear  
onslaught.

“Why would I have any regrets?” she said. “I’m asked a question about  
what I would do if Iran attacked our ally, a country that many of us  
have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for  
all kinds of reasons. And, yes, we would have massive retaliation  
against Iran.”

She also repeated her call for the United States to extend its nuclear  
“protection” to the Arab monarchies like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the  
Persian Gulf sheikhdoms—countries which, except for Jordan, are still  
nominally at war with the state of Israel, and certainly more in  
danger from Israel’s stockpile of 250 atomic bombs than from Iran’s as- 
yet-nonexistent nuclear arsenal.

Clinton reiterated one of the standard pretexts used by the Bush  
administration to justify its aggression against Iraq, saying, “We  
have to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the  
region, because I’m not so concerned about them falling into the hands  
of states, which is bad enough, as I am about falling into the hands  
of terrorists.”

She argued that a US offer of nuclear protection could forestall an  
effort by Saudi Arabia or some other Arab country to develop nuclear  
weapons on its own to offset the hypothetical Iranian bomb.

Clinton has repeatedly sought to position herself against Obama as the  
more hawkish and pro-Israeli of the Democratic candidates. Last week,  
she campaigned through North Carolina—home of one the biggest  
concentrations of US military personnel—with eight retired generals  
and admirals, including Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the  
Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Television footage of her campaign showed Clinton appearing at events  
in Fayetteville and Jacksonville (near the huge Ft. Bragg military  
base), in front of a podium backdrop decorated with the slogan  
“Solutions for a Strong Military.”

Clinton’s “obliteration” threat against Iran has produced a much  
bigger stir internationally than in the United States. Iranian  
diplomats filed a protest with the UN Security Council. A Saudi-based  
newspaper, the Arab News, described the threat as “the foreign  
politics of the madhouse,” adding that “it demonstrates the same  
doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush’s foreign relations.”

A British cabinet minister, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, told the House of  
Lords, “it is probably not prudent in today’s world to threaten to  
obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in  
such a country.”

The only significant exception to the predictable silence in the US  
media came from the Boston Globe, in an editorial headlined, “Hillary  
Strangelove,” which concluded, “A presidential candidate who lightly  
commits to obliterating Iran—and, presumably, all the children,  
parents and grandparents in Iran—should not be answering the White  
House phone at any time of day or night.”

It was notable that in their Sunday appearances, neither Obama nor  
Clinton made mention of the statement Friday by the Republican  
presidential nominee John McCain that oil was the reason for US  
military intervention in Iraq and the Persian Gulf, nor were they  
asked about it by their network interviewers.

McCain blurted out this remark at a town hall meeting at the Jewish  
Community Center in Denver, Colorado. According to press accounts,  
McCain told a crowd of 300, “My friends, I will have an energy policy  
that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on  
oil from the Middle East. That will prevent us from having ever to  
send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”

The Republican candidate subsequently sought to back away from this  
too-frank admission. His campaign issued a “clarification” that in  
McCain’s view, the US war with Iraq in 1991 was about oil, but the war  
launched by the Bush-Cheney administration in 2003 was not.

The Democratic candidates launched a whole series of largely demagogic  
sallies against McCain in the course of their hour-long interviews.  
But they declined to bring up his inadvertent admission of a central  
reason for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, because they are  
equally committed to maintaining US control of the oil resources of  
the Middle East.