Imperial Imperatives

Mark Belling on the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday was making a big deal over the fact that President Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is defending the administration’s decision to send thousands of more troops to Afghanistan on the basis of the success of a similar surge in Iraq some time ago. The conservatives have a right to crow. Back during the 2008 campaign, (back then) Senator Barack Obama gave little to no credit to “the surge” that John McCain and Republicans were touting at every opportunity. Back then, Mr. Obama had a very good reason to not expend too much energy contradicting his opponent on this point: nobody cared. The economy was in such a shambles, McCain’s attempts to praise the surge largely fell on deaf ears.

Yet the Democrat candidate didn’t really go along with his rival either. Mr. Obama left the vague impression that he either was suspending his judgment on “the surge” or he was keeping his true opinion about it under wraps for some reason. While I am working off the top of my head here, I seem to remember Mr. Obama urging caution about the effectiveness of the surge erstwhile Mr. McCain was quite gung-ho about declaring it a spectacular success. I don’t believe Mr. Obama attacked the surge, he just didn’t want to engage too much on it.   

But Belling’s point is significant for other reasons he did not mention. It should be telling to thinking people that President Obama’s Secretary of Defense is the same as former President George W. Bush’s. The Left truly believed that President Obama would lead us in a totally different direction on these wars in the Mideast. Yet for some reason, the president was content to leave Mr. Bush’s man in place and we now learn is sending more troops to fight in wars half the American public do not agree is necessary any longer. President Obama has irked Republicans (not to mention Great Britain) by waiting so long to commit these new troops. Now he risks irking Democrats by committing more troops when he promised to bring them home. What is going on? 

Belling’s unconvincing answer is that liberals have great rhetoric, but always have to recast conservative priniciples as their own when they need results. This is consonant with an oft-repeated Limbaugh maxim that is a take-off on something more popularly said about abstinence: “conservatism works everytime it’s tried.” The thinking here is that having tried the liberal route, the president is now forced to go with something that works. While this is a familiar theme for Limbaugh’s audience, some independent analysis is needed here.

The facts do not suggest that President Obama has ever made such a radical break with the Bush policy. Secretary Gates was allowed to continue uninterrupted as the rest of the Bush Administration was packing its bags. Could the answer possibly be that the differences between the GOP and the Democratic parties foreign policy objectives have more to do with style than substance? Could it be that President Obama is jilting his liberal base much in the same way President Bush jilted his conservative base in areas of social policy?

Belling makes a historical parallel at this point that is better than he seems to realize. He noted the similarity between this situation and the one Mr. Nixon was in back in 1969. President Nixon, Belling accurately observes, did not stop the Vietnam War, but continued it half-heartedly until pulling the military out in disgrace a few years later. President Obama, Belling argued, should just pull out altogether now instead of wasting the lives of soliders that are attempting to carry out an ineffective policy.

That much is true. But the dirty secret here may be that no serious contender for president last year really intended to end these wars. While there was a great deal of talk to excite the Left into supporting Barack Obama, I seriously doubt that this was on his mind as much as his goals to eliminate the current health care system and push the economy further towards a socialistic ideal.

That means the real loser in all of this is the American electorate. No matter how unsatisfied people become about the foreign policy of the United States, there is nothing they can really do about it at the ballot box. As long as the differences between the two major parties consist of whether to use the word “terrorism” or not, American voters are really only choosing a lite version of imperialism than the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld one with all the gut-expanding carbs, calories, and fat. This is akin to an alcoholic worrying more about what the beer is doing to waistline than the fact that his hankering for the bottle is destroying every aspect of his life.

What the United States needs is to break its government’s addiction to imperial endeavors altogether. The Wilsonian logic of waging war in the name of crusading for democracy has to end. I suspect the president knows that he would not have suffered any serious political fallout had he refused to send those troops. He would likely have been able to more easily explain any such decision like that better than he has regarding his unpopular notions on government health care “reform.” But he hasn’t, and he won’t.

This brings me back to Belling’s historical point. The Republicans and Democrats back in 1969 were not as different as they are today. That was back when the Rockefeller GOP was still in the ascendancy, and the third party candidacy of George Wallace revealed that the ruling political class was failing to reflect the will of the people on a variety of issues. Ronald Reagan and the defection of Southern Democrats to the Republican Party supposedly changed all that. But we have more or less returned to the pre-Reagan situation. Hence the tea parties and the public’s discontentment with its political elite.

That is why the Republicans should not be so sure that the public’s legitimate outrage with the Obama-Pelosi-Reid outfit means it wants to go running back into the arms of the present GOP. I suspect that the citizens of the country would choose “none of the above” if it were possible to do so on a ballot. Back in the late 1960’s, it was the South that jerked the GOP back to reality, forcing President Nixon to adopt his much stigmatized “Southern Strategy.” I wish the South could again put forward a socially conservative candidate that would make a radical break with the ultra-nationalist, arrogant, “Hannitized” war-mongerers that bellow about forcing democracy on the world at the point of a gun.

But the real story here is that Mr. Gates is probably reacting more against his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, more than he is to anything else. Mr. Rumsfeld’s attempt to “modernize” the U.S. military by making it smaller, more efficient, and more lightweight was partially to blame for the abandonment of the U.S. military’s long-trusted doctrine of employing “overwhelming force” against an enemy. But while it was probably a nice thought, Mr.Rumsfeld lacked historical perspective about the particular entity he was trying to remake.The U.S. military has always turned to brute force when cursed with hapless, unimaginative leadership. What President Obama and Secretary Gates are now doing is simply returning the U.S. military to its default position which was inaugarated by no less than U.S. Grant and W.T. Sherman to break the Southern people in 1864-65.

Christ Ruling His People

“Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.” — Psalm 149:2

Our Creator is also our Redeemer, and this is a cause of rejoicing. Christ is the Ruler and King of His people, including all those who are truly in spiritual union to His Church. His reign should result in our joy.

If we always were inclined to do this, there would be no need for the Psalmist to command us to do it. It is because we so often forget that the Spirit comes to us in this passage and whispers, “I still rule and reign among you. Now rejoice in Me.”