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By Ronald Radosh
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 25, 2008
What is Barack Obama's foreign policy? As it becomes clear that Obama
is likely to win the Democratic nomination, both Hillary Clinton and
John McCain are attacking him for a lack of foreign policy experience
and for proposals he has made that appear to make him appear rather
naïve. Is he going to retreat from confronting our nation's enemies,
or is he going to be tough when he has to be? What advice will he
heed? Now, he has been offered advice for his campaign by none other
than Tom Hayden, once the young lion of the New Left and the
anti-Vietnam War movement.
Tom Hayden is, of course, no longer a major public figure with great
influence. His words, however, resonate with scores of activists as
well as liberal intellectuals, who will take them to heart and seek
to up the ante on the Obama campaign. Hayden, who clearly views Iraq
as another Vietnam, is seeking to move Obama to adopt the
prescriptions of the most left-wing sectors of the Democratic Party
constituency.
Pointing to Obama's victory speech in Houston last week, Hayden has
noted that Obama has shifted his position, to one of calling for
withdrawal of all American troops in the first year of his
administration, not over a lengthier time span. Does Obama mean it?
Hayden has one suggestion: the Left and antiwar forces must hold
Obama to his word. More importantly, he argues that sentiment among
Obama's base "is running strongly enough to push the candidate
forward to a stronger commitment," strong enough to move him away
from the words in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope, in which Obama
wrote that a complete withdrawal was a matter of "imperfect judgment"
and "best guesses."
It is clear from Mr. Hayden that his supposition - and that of the
Left he represents - (his comments appear in The Nation magazine
website) believe that the United States should not be involved on a
"so-called war on terrorism," a phony concept developed by evil and
strong neoconservatives who falsely believe there is something called
"Islamofascism." Obviously believing that there is not such force in
the world, he argues that its advocates, including Senator John
McCain, favor a "permanent war against Muslim radicals" that is
really about one thing: "American access to oil."
What worries Mr. Hayden is that in a contest between McCain and
Obama, John McCain's war record, combined with his Senate experience,
makes him a "formidable" advocate of tough steps to protect American
national security, something Mr. Hayden sees as a danger to the
antiwar movement. His own prescription for withdrawal of troops are
thus threatened by General Petraeus' forthcoming April testimony
before Congress, in which it is expected he will report on the
favorable outcome of the surge, and urge the nation to stay the course.
Mr. Hayden thus sees Petraeus not as a honest soldier reporting the
truth of what he has accomplished, but as a "de facto surrogate for
McCain" that will force Barack Obama to have to respond without
retreating from his promise of early withdrawal. He says, rightfully,
that those he dubs the neoconservative opposition will oppose Obama
by challenging him for wanting "to pull the plug on Iraq just when
the tide is turning." And why shouldn't McCain do just that? Does Mr.
Hayden think that the United States, should in fact, pull the plug
precisely when the situation in Iraq is improving?
Ironically, Mr. Hayden condemns William Kristol for arguing in the
pages of the New York Times and The Weekly Standard that the
Democratic Party has become "the puppet of the antiwar groups."
Clearly, Mr. Kristol may have been premature. Mr. Hayden seems to
want now to prove Kristol both prescient and right. Mr. Hayden fears
that all of this will lead to McCain successfully forging a new
center-Right coalition, leaving the Democrats only with the moderate
and antiwar left-wing. The Republicans will have, he notes, the aid
of Senator Joe Lieberman working as an ally who would also make
inroads among the Jewish community.
Nevertheless, Tom Hayden is optimistic. He believes Americans will
also see Afghanistan as a quagmire not susceptible to a military
solution; Pakistanis showing they do not want to be pawns in an
American war, and that a fight with the Taliban or al-Qaeda is
nothing but a "bottomless battle." His fear: that Obama will ignore
all this, and seek to "prove his credentials as a militarist or face
being painted as another Democrat too weak to be Commander-in-Chief."
His solution: the forces of the Left and the peace movement wage
"open political and intellectual battle" against "the neoconservative agenda."
Should Barack Obama listen to the Left's advice, he will only push
the Democratic Party back to the age of McGovernite isolationism, and
contrary to the assertion of Tom Hayden, make the campaign much
easier for John McCain. If the Democrats hope to actually win the
presidency, the worst thing they could do is to take advice from Tom Hayden.
---
Ronald Radosh, Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of
New York, is an Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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