October 7, 2006
In the US, as in Europe, the peace movement is usually associated with the Left. From Korea through Vietnam to the invasion of Iraq, conservatism has been almost synonymous with support for nationalism, militarism, imperialism, and war. But a trickle of a counter-tradition has denied that association. With the catastrophic failure of the Iraq war, that trickle is becoming a flood. The implications for the conservative hegemony of American politics could be substantial.
The Cold War era saw a broad American consensus for arms buildup and confrontation with Communism. Conservatives like Senator Barry Goldwater were their most vociferous advocates – though liberals like John F. Kennedy rivaled them for warmongering leadership.
As the Vietnam grew to be an unpopular fiasco, the massive anti-war movement swelled on the left and eventually took leadership of the Democratic Party, while conservative Republicans remained its diehard base of support. After the war, conservatives blamed defeat on the anti-war movement’s “stab in the back.”
A the Bush administration moved to attack Iraq, Republicans wildly supported him. More than half of Democratic members of Congress, in contrast, voted against the resolution authorizing the war.
A tiny minority of conservatives joined in opposing the war. Former Nixon speechwriter and Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan declared that “The conservative movement has been hijacked and turned into a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology, which is not the conservative movement I grew up with.” He warned, “We will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the ‘On-to-Berlin!’ bravado with which French poilus and British Tommies marched in August 1914.” Once Saddam is defeated, “the neoconservatives who pine for a ‘World War IV’” will pursue “short sharp wars on Syria and Iran.” Congressman Ron Paul voted against the Iraq War Resolution. (He also endorses U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations.)
Perhaps the most interesting of these anti-war conservatives is a group that runs the website www.antiwar.com. Their website is “devoted to the cause of non-intervention” and opposition to imperialism.” Their politics are libertarian: They draw explicitly on World War I critic Randolph Bourne’s view that “War is the health of the state” and the anti-Cold War conservative writer Garet Garrett’s idea that “Between government in the republican meaning, that is, constitutional, representative government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity.”
They provide some of the widest access to updated news about U.S. military intervention around the world and are widely read by anti-war activists on the left. They are unremitting in their hostility to what they refer to as the Republican and Democratic wings of the “War Party” and call for cooperation between opponents of militarism and imperialism on left and right.
No one was more fervent in their support for the Iraq was than the devoutly Christian conservative North Carolina Republican Representative Walter Jones. Indeed, when France maneuvered at the United Nations to try to head off the U.S. attack, Jones led a successful campaign to force Congressional cafeterias to remove “French fries” from their menus and replace them with “freedom fries.”
Two months later, Jones watched as a young Marine killed in Nasiriyah was lowered into his grave at Camp Lejeune in his district. As his wife read from the last letter, he recalls, “I had tears running from my eyes.” Then his daughter gave him a copy of James Bamford’s A Pretext for War. He met with Bamford, anti-war retired generals, and even peace activist Cindy Sheehan. Finally, amidst considerable controversy, he introduced a resolution requiring the Bush administration to establish a schedule for withdrawing from Iraq. Asked if he was a afraid of political reprisals for his opposition to the war, Jones replied, “I want to do what I think my Lord wants me to do.”
American military officers are proverbially conservative, vote overwhelmingly Republican, support their superiors in the chain of command, and not surprisingly believe in the exercise of military power. Yet they have provided a powerful strand of conservative opposition to Bush’s unilateral interventionism.
This opposition has been expressed most outspokenly by retired military officials. Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni was George W. Bush’s Middle East envoy and for four years commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East. He opposed the Iraq war from the start and in retrospect says “It was a blunder.” In Iraq, “We’re viewed as colonial power, especially when we don’t come in under a U.N. mandate that shows international cooperation.” Those who had experience in the region “knew this was a disaster.”
Military opposition has been particularly outspoken around the Bush administration’s undermining of the longstanding U.S. commitment to the Geneva Conventions. When it became known that Bush’s White House Council, Alberto Gonzales, had been the architect of that policy, twelve high ranking retired military officials testified against his elevation to attorney general.
More recently, top military brass have been strongly opposing the Administration’s moves toward military strikes against Iran. The Washington Post quotes a former CIA Middle East specialist that “the Pentagon is arguing forcefully against it.” According to Seymour Hersh’s reporting in the New Yorker, the Joint Chiefs of Staff “had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran.”
Conservative intellectual support for the Iraq war and the Bush administration have also been eroding. Perhaps most spectacular was the defection of Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and an icon of the neoconservative right. Fukuyama signed a famous 1997 letter calling for the American overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In the New York Times magazine, however, he opined earlier this year that “As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly.” He added that “The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration’s first term is now in shambles.”
The decay of support has now reached the core of the conservative establishment. William Buckley, Jr., viewed as the founder of modern American conservatism, has said “One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.” After the Lebanon fiasco, leading conservative columnist George F. Will noted sarcastically regarding neoconservative wishes to remake the Middle East: “Foreign policy ‘realists’ consider Middle East stability the goal. The realists’ critics, who regard realism as reprehensibly unambitious, considered stability the problem. That problem has been solved.”
Both Buckley and Will have declared that George W. Bush is, in their view, no conservative.
Much conservative discontent is driven by the Bush administration’s radical extension of the “imperial Presidency” and its evident contempt for Constitutional restrains on executive branch power. The most prominent libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, recently came out with a report called Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush, which articulates this concern in language closely parallel to progressive civil libertarians like Rep. John Conyers. It identifies a whole slew of violations, including the denial of habeas corpus, the violation of international torture conventions, efforts to deny the right to a jury trial and the erosion of war powers restrictions. According to Cato, the Administration believes, “When we’re at war, anything goes, and the president gets to decide when we’re at war.” This view of executive power, says the report, should “disturb people from across the political spectrum.” Cato concludes that we now have “a president who can launch wars at will, and who cannot be restrained from ordering the commission of war crimes, should he choose to do so.”
This summer the conservative malaise reached the political arena in a big way. Republican Rep. Chris Shays, for example, has been an unyielding supporter of the Iraq war. But, after watching pro-war Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman go down to defeat in a Democratic primary election, Shays has just come out for a time frame for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
Republican Senator and presidential hopeful Chuck Hagel says, “My record is about as conservative as any conservative Republican in the United States.” Now he says, “Conditions in Iraq are an absolute replay of Vietnam.” The future of Iraq “will be determined by the Iraqi people just like it was in Vietnam.” Hagel says the U.S. should begin pulling troops out within six months.
U.S. newspapers are filled with headlines like “The conservative crack-up,” “Pundits Renounce the President: Among Conservative Voices, Discord,” and “The End of the Right?” But the longer-term implications of rightwing opposition to the war are not yet certain.
For one thing, while part of the right is starting to call for withdrawal, another part is attacking the Administration for being too weak. These neo-conservatives see Iran biding time while building nuclear capacity, North Korea firing missiles with impunity, and Hezbollah gaining support throughout the Middle East. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich—who is also contemplating a presidential bid—sees only appeasement from the Administrations: “We have accepted the lawyer-diplomatic fantasy that talking while North Korea builds bombs and missiles and talking while the Iranians build bombs and missiles is progress. Is the next stage for Condi to go dancing with Kim Jong Il?” he asked, referring to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the North Korean leader.
Even if they don’t succeed in keeping the U.S. in Iraq, such advocates are laying the basis for blaming the failure of the policies they advocated on its opponents and turncoat supporters. Such a “stab in the back” myth was promulgated to revive conservative militarism after the Vietnam war, as well.
It is also unclear how far the critique will go. While the activists at www.anti-war.com promote a profound rejection of American militarism and imperialism that would be shared by many on the left, other the conservative critics have only turned against the war because it isn’t going well. They are likely to support future wars if they appear more credible.
Nonetheless, the erosion of conservative support could have a significant impact in the political arena. Conservative political power ultimately requires people to vote against their own interests – against economic and social programs that would directly benefit them and for a domestic agenda that has only increased most people’s their poverty and misery. This magic trick has depended on the right’s persuading people that only its policies of aggressive military interventionism can provide safety in a dangerous world. If even the right itself, ceases to buy that argument, big changes may lie ahead.
Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who now hosts a major TV talk show on MSNBC, recently resented a panel debating whether “George Bush’s mental weakness is damaging America’s credibility at home and abroad.” Across the television screen ran the caption, “IS BUSH AN ‘IDIOT’?”
Scarborough, asked about the segment, told a reporter that he aired it because he kept hearing even fellow Republicans questioning Bush’s capacity and leadership, particularly in Iraq. He had supported the war, but now believed it was time to find a way out. “A lot of conservatives are saying, ‘Enough’s enough.’”