John Edwards' article in Foreign Affairs magazine

Introduction

Today I take on presidential candidate John Edwards' 16-page essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine (Sept/Oct. 2007). John's essay is available on-line at:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070901faessay86502/john-edwards/reengaging-with-the-world.html

Point/Counterpoint

Below are quotations from Edward's essay (labeled Point), followed by my responses (labeled Counterpoint):

Point

...the United States today needs to reclaim the moral high ground that defined our foreign policy for much of the last century. We must move beyond the wreckage created by one of the greatest strategic failures in U.S. history: the war in Iraq.

Counterpoint

The first sentence speaks of "moral high ground," while the second sentence doesn't continue that theme but talks about "greatest strategic failures" (instead of "greatest moral failures"). Why do you suppose that is? Maybe John (along with the others) cares far more about our strategic blunders than about any loss of the (real) moral high ground.

The subtitle of John's essay is "A Return to Moral Leadership," which is (obviously) the theme of his essay. Since when did our Oligarchs ever deign to engage in "moral leadership," except when it suited their purposes to give the appearance of being ethical? People are more sophisticated these days and are becoming increasingly aware of the blood on our hands. There's a wonderful new book which makes for eye-opening reading for any simpletons out there who still believe we are (or ever were) so moral:

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

If John Edwards is so interested in returning to moral leadership, I have one major question for him:

What's he going to do to stop the multinational corporations from their continued acts of piracy?

Point

But we must also prepare for a world filled with new risks: the increasing reach of nonstate actors who reject our very way of life...

Counterpoint

Dear John: "It's okay for people to reject our very way of life, though I'm sure my very way of life is quite different from yours (though we're both Americans). As for the ‘increasing reach' you speak of, how ironic: There are people all over the world who have felt the wrath of our reach for decades, and yet now we are to be afraid because some of these people are in a position to return the favor?"

There's an old saying: What goes around, comes around (or as a Buddhist might say, "The karmic wheel turns against nations as well as against individuals for their misbehaviors").

Point

A recent Pew survey showed the United States' approval ratings plummeting throughout the world between 2000 and 2006. This ... approval dropped from 75 percent to 30 percent [in Indonesia], and Turkey, where it fell from 52 percent to 12 percent.

Counterpoint

So our approval ratings plummeted. Maybe that's just another way of saying, "The jig is up." What this means is, we'll have to do more than pile on the PR to sell the world on our sterling character. This means we'll have to work harder at acquiring a degree of goodness which too many of us only pretend we ever had.

The numbers from Indonesia and Turkey are revealing. The farther away from the US, the greater the approval rating. The more knowledgeable of western culture, the lesser that rating. The extreme loss in Turkey should be of grave concern to any future US president, since Turkey might decide to cease its efforts to join the European Union and opt for closer ties to the Islamic world. [The drop in Turkey is nothing less than profound.]

Point

Are we battling the fear our enemies sow by planting seeds of hope instead?

Counterpoint

How about trying to win "our enemies" over? How? With moral leadership that will be brave enough to stop trying to steal their oil and corrupt their governments with bribery and covert operations.

Point

We need to reach out to ordinary men and women from Egypt to Indonesia and convince them, once again, that the United States is a force to be admired.

Counterpoint

"force to be admired?" Why use the word "force?" Why not say, "...the United States is worthy of admiration?" Or is it that John really meant that it is our force that is to be admired?

If John really cares about what the "ordinary" citizens of Egypt think of the United States, he could get a lot of mileage by following one of my campaign pledges: Cease the decades' long flow of arms to Israel and Egypt promised by the Camp David Peace Accords. The man on the street in Egypt isn't stupid. He knows damn well that the US government provides arms to the Egyptian government to forcibly repress the common Egyptian citizen.

Come on, John Edwards, let's stop playing the pretend-the-common-man-is-a-dummy game.

Point

But I believe we must stay on the offensive against both terrorism and its causes.

Counterpoint

When I'd first read this sentence, I thought: "It looks like John is going to be different from Giuli, who doesn't speak at all of the (underlying) causes of terrorism (which are best addressed by means of compassion, justice, and fair play)." But...I think John means Al Qaeda, when he says "its causes." Otherwise, his sentence makes no sense: We can't stay on the offensive against "its causes" because we've never been on the offensive against "its causes." In fact, we have been the source of many of "its causes."

Point

Our enemies are taking advantage of the United States' declining popularity.

Counterpoint

Maybe, instead, our enemies are taking advantage of those factors which are causing the decline of our popularity. What needs to be fixed (by us) is what is causing that decline.

Point

Instead, we need to place "smart power" at the center of our national security policy.

Counterpoint

How about compassion, brotherly love?

Point

The century ahead will bring new efforts by nonstate actors, ranging from terrorist groups to ethnically based local and regional movements, to redefine the boundaries of states, the jurisdiction of multilateral organizations, and the authority of international law.

Counterpoint

Maybe "nonstate actors" feel betrayed by the system. Consider this:

"The plight of the Kurds, for example, was taken up by U.S. officials after World War I long enough to secure a treaty guaranteeing that they would get an independent state. Later, when Turkey changed its mind, U.S. statesmen did not raise a protest on behalf of one of the largest ethnic groups in the Middle East." [source: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/callahan-wars.html ]

In spite of a "treaty guaranteeing...an independent state," the Kurds got screwed. And we wonder why "nonstate actors" don't care much for "international law."

Points

• Few areas deserve the United States' moral leadership more urgently than Sudan.

• NATO must establish a no-fly zone over the region to cut off supplies to the brutal Janjaweed militias and end the Sudanese government's bombing of civilians in Darfur.

Counterpoints

I read John Edwards' words on Darfur carefully, and noticed what he's not saying: "The United States finds the genocide in Darfur to be unacceptable and will use whatever it takes to stop it." Instead, he skillfully invokes the concept of our "moral leadership" backed up by NATO. Some would appreciate that John is a sharing kind of guy, in that respect (instead of the US going it alone). Maybe he might think to charge Saudis for all of the protection we're giving their country (thus continuing the theme of "sharing is caring").

Point

...right now we must do everything we can to isolate Iran's leader from the moderate forces within the country.

Counterpoint

Why? How? Sounds to me like John is advocating meddling in the internal affairs of another nation. When others try that on us, we don't like it. And yet, John wants to insert our hammy hands into Iran. What if that doesn't work? Another exercise in military intervention and nation-building?

Points

• Iran cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.

• We should continue to work with other great powers to offer Tehran economic incentives for good behavior.

Counterpoints

If Iran came right out and said it's pulling out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and fully intends to build a nuclear arsenal, Iran would not be in violation of international law. But John, and other similarly enlightened white men, knows what's best. Sooner or later, he'll get around to demanding that Pakistan dismantle its arsenal.

As for encouraging "good behavior," doesn't John know how patronizing that sounds? Moreover, what he is suggesting is that the United States react to nuclear blackmail (the perceived threat that Iran might go nuclear) by providing "economic incentives." Way cool, John: You're saying, "blackmail works."

Points

• In the coming years, we will most likely see an increasing need to stabilize weak and failing states...

• But the military lacks many of the resources that are required to conduct these missions successfully. To resolve these problems, I will establish a Marshall Corps during my first year in office, named for our greatest secretary of state, General George Marshall. The Marshall Corps, patterned after the military reserves, will consist of at least 10,000 civilian experts who could be deployed abroad to serve in reconstruction, stabilization, and humanitarian missions.

Counterpoints

Sounds like John is getting us mentally prepared for more foreign adventures. When he says "Marshall Corps," I hear "Martial Corps." [Believe me, the rest of the world won't take long to catch on to the joke.] Compare John's Marshall Corps to Giuliani's proposed creation: "A hybrid military-civilian organization - a Stabilization and Reconstruction Corps staffed by specially trained military and civilian reservists - must be developed." Sounds like Giuli and John are on the same page here.

Point

China, Russia, and India, among others, will test U.S. leadership.

Counterpoint

India? Testing our leadership? Oh, I get it. Maybe India might decide it needs (more than we do) that natural gas we're fighting so hard to allow to be piped (unmolested) through Afghanistan.

Point

President Vladimir Putin has also initiated a worrisome pattern of bellicose rhetoric against the United States and has threatened to withdraw from arms control treaties.

Counterpoint

Don't forget that Russia was once a superpower (and, in some respects, it still is). Sometimes leaders indulge in "bellicose rhetoric" to fire up the base. Hell, we've been known to do that ourselves. It will be an error of the first magnitude for any American president to speak so condescendingly of the Russians. As far as withdrawing from arms control treaties is concerned, didn't Bush start that ball rolling by pulling out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty?

Point

...reforming the UN so that there is a place for India on the Security Council...

Counterpoint

The most profound reform that the UN needs is to find some mechanism to empower the vast majority of the nations that aren't wealthy.

Point

The U.S. armed forces have three important missions: ... ensuring that the problems of weak and failing states do not create dangers for the United States, and maintaining our strategic advantage over major competitor states, in part so that they choose to cooperate with us, rather than challenge our interests militarily.

Counterpoint:

There are a lot of weak and failing states out there, so I wonder: How will our military "ensure" that they will not endanger the United States? Why of course: We'll "insert" ourselves militarily into their domestic affairs, preemptively if necessary.

I think I know what John's driving at with that second part of his sentence, so I'll slightly reword his language: "We must maintain our strategic advantage over major competitor states, so that when we send in the troops to seize resources vital to our economy, our competitors won't be able to oppose us." I much prefer plain English to the way John's dancing around.

Point

I will double the budget for [military] recruitment and raise the standards for the recruitment pool so that we can reduce our reliance on felony waivers and other exceptions.

Counterpoint

This is very subtle way to bring back the military draft.

Notice that Edwards is not saying he'll double military pay - he'll only double the budget for recruitment. If Edward's does as he says [in the above sentence], he'll be able to go to the Congress with crocodile tears and plead a case for reintroducing the draft [in roughly these words]:

"We raised the standards for recruitment, given the ever-increasing complexity of the military's mission. However, even though we'd also doubled the budget for recruitment, we are unable to meet our enlistment quotas. And we surely don't want to issue waivers to felons to enable them to enlist. In addition, we must remember one particular lesson we learned in Iraq: We don't want to force our troops into extended tours of duty in combat zones nor provide only brief states' side rest before rotating them back overseas.

"Given these considerations, I am forced to appeal for your support in order to reenact the military draft. Believe me, I don't want to do this but we have no choice."

Way to go, John! [Gotta love a guy like that!]

Points

• We can begin by leading the fight to eradicate global poverty and provide universal primary education.

• Education is one of the most critical ways we can reverse the effects of poverty.

• I will increase our funding...to educate poor children in countries with a history of violent extremism.

• ...I will also pursue reform of the school systems in developing countries ... investing in ...teacher education... and teaching materials... [My emphasis]

Counterpoints

Edwards isn't talking about the best method for reversing poverty: Putting a stop to the exploitative practices of multinational corporations. Maybe we can even try waiving the foreign debt owed by the most impoverished countries. Given the fact that Western imperial behavior (including our own - especially the slave trade) helped to impoverish those countries in the first place, forgiving their debt would be a lovely way to atone for our sins.

Yes, you heard me: "Atone for our sins." Of course, we might choose to "move on" and not try to undo the past. However, if we do so, we risk karmic retribution. Sooner or later, one way or another, if we don't do the right thing, we'll pay many times more than if we'd stepped up to the plate early on.

Here's what Edwards is thinking, regarding the last two bullet points:

"We want to indoctrinate the children in hostile states by asserting control over how their teachers are educated and what their textbooks say. Education is a good thing; indoctrination is even better."

John Edwards might come across as a nicer guy than Rudy Giuliani. And a lot of people might cut Edwards some slack because they don't want another Repub in the White House. However, make no mistake about this: Edwards is pretty much on the same page (or at least is reading from pretty much the same play book) as the other Dem/Pub candidates. John Edwards will not lead you to the Promised Land. I will.

Steven Searle for U.S. President in 2008

I am the only candidate with a contract: "You wouldn't sell your house without a contract; why give your vote away?"

http://www.BestPartyAvailable.org/

bpa_cinc@yahoo.com