“Some Other Way”: The Grace Period for Foreign Policy Vagueness in the Republican Party

In my previous post discussing the nation’s latest conversation vis-à-vis the Iraq War, I mentioned that Dr. Ben Carson’s answer to the “knowing what you know now” question merits an entire analysis in and of itself.  Thus, challenge accepted.

The new Iraq narrative that pins the failure of governance and the rise of ISIS on the GOP’s favorite feckless punching bag (whilst conveniently absolving President Bush of any wrongdoing) is for the candidates who are relatively smart and savvy with respect to foreign policy. And in this big of a field, you can bet that not all contenders fit that description.

Dr. Ben Carson is an excellent reminder that being brilliant and accomplished in one field doesn’t necessarily make your commentary in another worth a damn. He has already low key fumbled on foreign policy thus far, most notably by appearing confused on topics ranging from this history of sectarianism in Middle East to NATO membership on the Hugh Hewitt show in mid-March. Without the intervention of a few top-notch foreign affairs advisors, it seems he’s headed for a disastrous public misstep in one of the GOP debates or a facepalm-worthy sound bite in response to a ‘gotcha’ question from the media.

Dr. Carson’s answer to the Iraq question, however, was more illuminating than one might expect at first glance. He told The Hill "I've said definitively that I was never in favor of going into Iraq," and then explained that he “would have gotten rid of the problem of Saddam Hussein some other way.” The interviewers published no follow-up explanation for that “some other way.”

Extrapolating Dr. Carson’s answer to the entire GOP realm of foreign policy is a useful exercise, because it’s the bottom line of their kicking and screaming about President Obama’s foreign policy: it is very hard to come up with alternatives that are both palatable and specific. The only options left, then, are to dodge the question a la Carson or speak in impressive yet ultimately vague and repetitive platitudes about American Strength (a phrase that Sen. Marco Rubio has actually repeatedly capitalized).

Iraq is a case in point. Obama’s strategy of troop training and advising, American airstrikes where most impactful, and coalition-building among critical partners on the ground is the best conceivable set of policy options for the situation. These tactics are not without their frustrations, best exemplified by the recent fall of Ramadi. But what are the alternatives? Former Governor Jeb Bush’s response to ISIS in February (pre-Iraq answer kerfuffle) was to “take them out.” Senator Lindsey Graham’s at the same time, by contrast, was to recommend deploying 10,000 U.S. ground troops.

Bush was palatable, but no more specific than his brother’s cowboy braggadocio; Sen. Graham was specific, but not palatable to a) a large swath of Americans who still oppose that level of reengagement in the region and b) politicians that would presumably vote on an AUMF for the conflict but continue to be plagued by their original Iraq War votes.

The neoconservatives (best exemplified in the 2016 field thus far by Sen. Graham and, increasingly, Sen. Rubio) have no problem making the unpalatable call. The Kagan-Kristol thesis was and remains that American military prowess, applied with significant will and in overwhelming quantity, can answer any challenge in international affairs. This is, publically, a very uncomfortable thing for politicians to disagree with, because even the most nuanced of answers leaves one open to an attack of not believing in the strength of our armed forces.

Dr. Carson, however, is not a neoconservative by any measure. He is a creature of far right populism, trying to cobble together a coalition of Republican primary voters consisting of evangelical conservatives, those equally distrustful of big business and bigger government, and folks who embrace a candidate who preaches (if not practices) their conceptualization of “common sense.” To put it succinctly, no conservative (or for that matter, general election voter) who prioritizes issues of foreign affairs is naturally going to gravitate towards him.

Thus, for Dr. Carson and many candidates who occupy a similar space in the GOP market share, pivoting away from constructive foreign policy solutions and back to Obama criticism is both easy and essential. What remains to be seen, however, is how the neoconservatives will influence the foreign policy conversation in 2016. With the exception of Sen. Rand Paul, most candidates in a crowded field are likely to be dragged rightward on questions of military engagement just as they would be with any issue in a primary election. This will only become more likely if more Americans—most of them Republicans—continue to swing public opinion in favor of “boots on the ground” in Iraq.

For now, though, Dr. Carson can get away with such a non-answer to the question of Saddam Hussein. Asking voters to believe that he could have used some yet unknown means to whisk one of the Middle East’s most survivable dictators away without crushing military defeat may be a laughable idea to students of Iraqi history, but it is actually preferable to the average American who dislikes both totalitarianism and American casualties abroad. The clock may be running short for such simpleton views, though; as things heat up, we’re likely to see just how tightly the tentacles of neoconservatism are wrapped around foreign policy thinking in the Republican Party.

Misremembering the Surge

The Iraq War has been trouble for the GOP presidential field as of late. Former Governor Jeb Bush gave “yes,” “I don’t know,” and “no” answers to the same question over the course of a week, and Senator Marco Rubio—previously a stalwart defender of the invasion—was challenged by Chris Wallace for his abrupt apparent reversal. Now, every candidate is getting a chance to fumble; Ben Carson’s claim he would have removed Saddam “some other way” alone warrants an entire analysis.

Senator Lindsey Graham, however, has attempted to reframe the conversation with a new vision of the war. To the Republican Party, the surge has become the critical piece of the Iraq narrative because it allows them to shift the blame for the region’s current turmoil (and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL) to be shifted from President Bush to President Obama.

Senator Graham articulated this new view in New Hampshire last weekend while pregaming for his coming presidential announcement. To Graham, “Bush made mistakes, [but] he corrected his mistakes” via the surge. Obama, by contrast, bent to political pressure by withdrawing troops prematurely. This narrative of course ignores that Bush’s original “mistakes” constitute the very decision to start the war, but it successfully ropes Obama into the conversation.

This foreign policy jujitsu leaves those on the left to make the more circuitous—though true—argument that the invasion itself, based on poor leadership and faulty intelligence, is the root cause of the region’s current woes. Suddenly, what should be a one-sided conversation, buttressed by the consistently growing majority of Americans who believe the Iraq War was a poor choice to begin with, devolves into just another finger pointing match wherein ‘both sides are probably to blame.’

Graham is doing the entire GOP field a favor in connecting these dots; as an unrepentant fear-monger who once warned that “the world is literally about to blow up,” he has not shied away from cheerleading military action in recent memory. There is a bigger problem, however, with this depiction of the surge. The facts of the policy changes vis-à-vis Iraq in 2007 have been lost to the ages, or more accurately, twisted to vindicate Bush’s past and the GOP field’s collective future.

The surge was, at its core, about more than just increasing the number of American boots on the ground.  Political, economic, and regional objectives all accompanied the shift in military policy, as did the critical outreach to Sunni groups that had previously stayed neutral in the fight or actively supported ISIL’s precursor, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Any counterinsurgency theorist can tell you that winning the population’s support—and denying the enemy a sympathetic cover—is key to the military effort.

Political engagement of different socioreligious groups has never been Baghdad’s strong suit, but to make meaningful progress in the fight against ISIL, the central government will have to improve. This is what the White House drives at—albeit perhaps with too much nuance—when discussing a “political solution” to these problems:  defeating ISIL is an effort that fundamentally has to come from inside Iraq. The fact that the surge followed and capitalized on the Anbar Awakening was no mere coincidence; the advent of the latter was a prerequisite, and a key point of leverage, for the former.

It is troubling enough that Republicans are obfuscating questions about the morality and wisdom of the Iraq War. But remembering the surge as an exclusively kinetic panacea is even more dangerous because it feeds the neoconservative worldview that brute force, applied with sufficient strength, can answer any foreign policy challenge. Look for this new narrative to go mainstream as GOPers realize it is a shortcut to avoiding the harder questions about Iraq and placing the blame on their favorite and presumably ever-feckless punching bag.

How we as a nation discuss the Iraq War and remember major policies like the surge will have a significant bearing on how we consider future military interventions. Now more than ever, we must guard against revisionism in the public discourse—especially when an abrupt shift in narrative gets one party out of hot water at the expense of the other.