Hank Kalet

The candidates for president used yesterday’s appearance by Army Gen. David Petreaus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to reopen the debate over Iraq and the fate of America’s soldiers.

The testimony offered by the two highest ranking Americans in Iraq was, to put it mildly, a bit optimistic — overly optimistic would still be fair — and oddly contradictory. Violence is rising again, the political situation in Iraq is a mess and the Iraqi government — the government we are allied with — is tilting toward Iran.

And yet, the administration’s front men still offer comments like this:

“Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year,” Petraeus testified. In the face of skeptical questioning, he added later: “We have the forces that we need right now, I believe. We’ve got to continue. We have our teeth into the jugular, and we need to keep it there.”

And also this, in response to Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), who told Crocker that “the American people have had it up to here”:

“I appreciate the sense of frustration that you articulate,” Crocker said. “I share it. I kind of live it every day. I mean, the reality is, it is hard in Iraq. And there are no light switches to throw that are going to go dark to light.”

OK. So which is it? Are we making progress? Should we view what is happening in Iraq as positive? But then, what of the violence and borderline anarchy?

The interesting thing about the hearings — there were two — is that they gave the three major party candidates for president a chance to make points on an issue that will only grow importance as we get closer to November.

My sense, given my own position on this disaster, is that Hillary Clinton’s comments were the strongest, and should have been made much earlier in her campaign. Clinton voted for the war, after all, and has not done much to alleviate concern among antiwar Democrats about the vote.

Here is what she said:

“I think it could be fair to say that it might well be irresponsible to continue the policy that has not produced the results that have been promised time and time again at such tremendous cost.”

Barack Obama also was critical, but he hedged some, buying into the notion of a goal-oriented policy when what is needed is a full withdrawal with the mess being turned over the United Nations (on our dime, unfortunately). Obama

asked what constitutes victory. “I’m trying to get to an endpoint,” Obama said. If the goal for Iraq is set too high, U.S. forces could be there for decades, he said. “If on the other hand,” he said, “our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo but there’s not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence — there’s still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it’s not a threat to its neighbors and it’s not an al-Qaeda base — that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable time frame.”

John McCain continues to drink the Kool-Aid, however:

“Should the United States instead choose to withdraw from Iraq before adequate security is established, we will exchange for this victory a defeat that is terrible and long-lasting.”

The New York Times used this quote, which taken with the above comment, sums up what I can only call a lack of judgment by McCain:

“We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success,” Mr. McCain said.

There definitely is a hierarchy here — Clinton’s comment being the most forceful, McCain’s being the most divorced from reality — but none of the candidates addressed the real issue and none are likely to address what should be the primary issue leading into the election.

Essentially, all three candidates accept the notion of American exceptionalism. While all three candidates make some noise about re-establishing our relationships around the world, they also reserve the right to use U.S. military might to impose our belief system on the rest of the world.

Obama has been talking about what he is calling “traditional bipartisan realistic policy” that — as I wrote last week — is really nothing more than code for what Glenn Greenwald has consistently criticized as the conventional wisdom on foreign policy. And Clinton is no better — as her votes on the original Iraq war resolution in 2002 and Iran last year show.

The entire thing is depressing because it demonstrates that, despite the rhetorical sleight-of-hand being used by all the candidates, they remain wed to the status quo. We may not get four more years of George W. Bush, but we are not likely to get the kind of substantive change we need, regardless of who wins.

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