If Only…
By This seems optimistic:
As you may have heard, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is in the news again, and not in a good way, with reports of a speech he made in Connecticut referring to the war in Afghanistan as “a war of Obama’s choosing,” and warning of the futility of a “land war in Afghanistan.”
Whatever else they represent, Steele’s remarks have created a sudden and surprising fault line in the GOP over foreign policy at a time when that party has (following public opinion) focused its attention heavily on domestic issues, largely confining itself with attacks on the administration’s alleged weakness and fecklessness in dealing with other countries, while tolerating anti-Iraq-War heretics like Rand Paul…
We’ll soon see if Steele can survive, and if this event turns out to be a momentary embarrassment, or the beginning of a real debate among Republicans about the party’s foreign policy message going into 2010 and 2012.
I’ll be taking “momentary embarrassment.” Meanwhile, the DNC uses this opportunity to cover itself with glory. A couple of thoughts:
1. I can understand why the DNC folks felt that they could hit Steele with the “He hates the troops” bit after being on the receiving end of the same nonsense for eight years. Nevertheless, GOP displays of doubt on the issue of bottomless war support are unquestionably a good thing, and Michael Steele is much more important than either of the Pauls. Any anti-war sentiment in the GOP ought to be nurtured, even if it’s made in the context of an attack on a Democratic President.
2. While Steele will probably get crucified for this by the powers that be, I’m guessing that there’s a substantial portion of the GOP that agrees with him about Afghanistan. Part of the reason for the shift of attention from Afghanistan to Iraq was skepticism that US forces could do much long term good there. Just as the expectations for the war in Iraq did not include prolonged violent occupation, the idea that 100000+ troops would eventually be required in Afghanistan would have driven Donald Rumsfeld crazy. While Bill “Any War, Any Time” Kristol continues to hold the GOP conch on national security issues, there’ll be no debate about the sensibility of the maximalist hawk position. I suspect, however, that even within the elements of the GOP that care about national security there’s mounting skepticism about the neocon approach.
See also Clemons.