Boston University’s Andrew Bacevich has an important op-ed today that strikes some painfully obvious notes, which seem to go entirely overlooked in our political discourse.
Bacevich notes the “considerable legacy” on foreign and national security policy that Bush will soon leave the nation, including an open-ended “global war,” the perception of an “age of terror,” a doctrine of preventive war, a limitless Pentagon budget, and an abandonment of checks and balances when it comes to presidential power and national security. Bacevich explains:
Bush’s harshest critics, left liberals as well as traditional conservatives, have repeatedly called attention to this record. That criticism has yet to garner mainstream political traction. Throughout the long primary season, even as various contenders in both parties argued endlessly about Iraq, they seemed oblivious to the more fundamental questions raised by the Bush years: whether global war makes sense as an antidote to terror, whether preventive war works, whether the costs of “global leadership” are sustainable, and whether events in Asia rather than the Middle East just might determine the course of the 21st century.
Now only two candidates remain standing…. The burden of identifying and confronting the Bush legacy necessarily falls on Obama. Although for tactical reasons McCain will distance himself from the president’s record, he largely subscribes to the principles informing Bush’s post-9/11 policies…. The challenge facing Obama is clear: he must go beyond merely pointing out the folly of the Iraq war; he must demonstrate that Iraq represents the truest manifestation of an approach to national security that is fundamentally flawed, thereby helping Americans discern the correct lessons of that misbegotten conflict.
(For those of you who’ve read Matt Yglesias’ terrific new book, “Heads in the Sand,” this thesis will no doubt sound familiar.)
Now, I genuinely believe Obama gets this. In late January, Obama said, “I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place,” which was precisely the right message.
But we need to hear more of this to change the discourse and begin a more productive, less ridiculous campaign conversation.
Bacevich recommends:
By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the election into a referendum on the current administration’s entire national security legacy. By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country’s vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.
Kevin sounds annoyed that we’re not yet where we obviously should be.
[E]ven now, nearly seven years after 9/11, instead of framing the question the way Bacevich does — the obvious way — we still allow people like George Bush and John McCain to frame it their way. They’ve created a looking glass world in which they pretend that the rest of us are naive because we allegedly think terrorism is merely a law enforcement problem, and everyone sleepily nods along as if that’s a sensible way of looking at the question.
But it’s not. Bacevich’s common sense formulation is both obvious and correct. Maybe that makes it brilliant too. But if it is, Barack Obama’s job is to get us all to rub the sleep out of our eyes and turn it back into a banality. He’s got four months.
That’s certainly true. I’d add, though, that when Obama has given high-profile speeches on foreign policy and national security, I’ve been largely impressed. He doesn’t seem to accept the Bush/McCain worldview; in fact, Obama seems to fundamentally reject it.
But the conversation has not yet been reframed. Obama, as strong as he is and as right as his foreign policy instincts are, still has work to do.