What should the Dems say about Iraq?

I read with interest the attempt the attempt that Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin made to draft a “speech” for Democratic congressional candidates trying to run against the Bush administration on the Iraq issue. (Hat-tip to Juan for that.)
Trudy made a number of excellent points in her draft– primarily, that it was the Republicans who got the US into the mess it is currently in, in Iraq, so why on earth should we trust them to get us out of it?
However, I was left vaguely dissatisfied with her column there, and I think that was primarily because she made not one mention of the UN. And I totally don’t see any chance of achieving a non-catastrophic end-game for the US in Iraq without securing the active engagement of the UN there. (Another reason for my dissatisfaction with what she wrote was that she came very close to suggesting– in the way John Kerry and other fairly hawkish Dems have until recently– that what is actually needed to stabilize Iraq is an increased US military presence there. As though that could “solve” anything?)
So then, I decided to go on over to the website of our strongly “anti-this-war” Democratic candidate for the US Senate in November, Jim Webb, to see what he is actually, in this very real electoral race, saying about the war.
Webb is a fascinating candidate– not least, because he jumped ship from the Republicans to run in the Democratic primary for this race… And while he was still a Republican, and a very young man, he was Secretary of the Navy in the second Reagan administration. Prior to that, he was in the Marine Corps, as his son now is. He makes great, and apparently effective, play of all this military experience when he debates with our sitting, and extremely pro-Bush, Republican (junior) Senator, George Allen, whose finest day of glory was long ago on some Virginia football field.
Webb has the advantage– like our local, anti-war, Democratic Congressional candidate, Al Weed, of having been against the invasion of Iraq from the very beginning. So neither of these guys has to “square the circle” in the same way John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, etc have to do, in terms of having to explain themselves on why they supported both the war-enabling congressional resolution and the actual war itself, back in the day.
Much of what Webb says is fairly (but not brilliantly) smart, in a foreign-policy “realist” kind of way:

The overriding challenge of today for our country is international terrorism. And I would say that terrorism and Iraq were separate issues until George W. Bush incorrectly and unwisely linked them. We need to end the occupation of Iraq so that we can repair our relationships around the world and turn our focus back to the larger issue of terrorism.
Terrorism is intimately linked with the troubles in the Middle East, but what we’ve done in Iraq has been to make these problems worse. In my view, the conditions in Lebanon today are a direct result of the complete failure of our Iraq policy and indeed our entire Middle East policy. This administration planned from the beginning to make war in Iraq and it used the public fear and anger after September 11th to pursue that objective. I predicted at the time that invading and occupying Iraq would only strengthen Iran, therefore, benefiting virtually all of America’s enemies in that region, as well as affecting our relationships with other countries throughout the world. This administration and its supporters refuse to connect the actions in Iraq to the larger problems in the Middle East generally and to terrorism specifically nor do they appear to appreciate that their foreign policy has affected a wide range of issues across the globe which demand our strategic focus…

Here’s a very good point that he makes:

The key question facing us, and I think a dividing line in this campaign this year, is how long we should be expected to occupy Iraq. Someday, we’re going to leave. Senator Allen seemed rather blasé about this during our recent debate, stating that we’ve been in Cuba for more than hundred years. But most Americans want us to finish this mission. The administration has never shared a specific approach of its own, instead filling us with vague propagandistic phrases.

And here is his plan:

For more than two years, I’ve been proposing a formula that might lead to the end of our occupation of Iraq. The first step would be for this administration to say unequivocally that our country has no desire to occupy Iraq in the long term. It has not done so. And I am mindful of the many comments by those who pushed so hard for this war to the effect that we should set up a long term “McCarthurian” Regency in Baghdad. We should say clearly to the people of Iraq and the region that we have no plans for a long term presence in the country. This will take the moral high-ground away from the insurgency in the eyes of the Muslim World, and it will diffuse the concerns of some Iraqis that we plan to stay for good. This will also put the Iraqi government on notice that it must cooperate and bring order to its people. We should not build permanent bases in Iraq. Right now from all reports there are four permanent bases being built there without much discussion among the American public. We don’t need them. If we’re leaving, it sends the wrong message if we’re building them. In the short term, we could move the bulk of our troops home while positioning some units out of the country but within the region; strong possibilities from discussions that I have had with military leaders could be Jordan and Kuwait, until a fuller measure of stability takes hold in the region. And I believe that the Congress should make sure of this by banning any expenditures for permanent bases in Iraq.
The second step would be for us to begin immediate discussions with those countries that are culturally and historically invested in Iraq, and arguably aligned with us, to become overtly involved in the diplomatic solution. [But notably not Iran. ~HC] They could take responsibility at some level for future stability among Iraq’s competing factions. The countries that immediately come to mind are Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and those sorts of countries. I believe this is doable, but quite frankly it’s going to be more difficult in the wake of our failure to take similar steps during the early stages of the recent incidents in Lebanon. You might recall that during those first days of that action, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain all condemned Hezbollah, as did the Beirut government, initially, for inciting the Israeli attacks. By not taking advantage of these gestures we lost a great opportunity to bring some long term stability in both countries. [H’mm, interesting, not quite sure what he meant by that. ~HC]
We should continue to pursue these sorts of solutions. We should also begin direct discussion with Syria, in order to break Syria apart from its unnatural alliance with Iran. And so we break the focus with Hezbollah. This administration, with the strong support of George Allen, has refused to engage Syria, and yet just today it was reported that the Israeli Defense Minister has expressed his support for doing so. Is this a realistic approach? If it isn’t, I would ask the administration or George Allen to offer a better one.
Our military has done a splendid job in Iraq, but it was neither designed nor intended as a force to referee sectarian violence indefinitely. Our presence in many cases has fueled a homegrown insurgency among Iraqis who do not want to be permanently occupied. There comes a time when we will have to leave the tasks of local security to the Iraqi people, and at the same time we now have to accept that our occupation has created conditions where international terrorism might flourish. Until the Iraqi people restore their own system of order, we will need the ability to take action against internationally directed terrorist activities there just as certainly as we need that ability in other places around the world. And I might point out that the American forces who took down al-Zarqawi came from outside Iraq to do it. This doesn’t require permanent bases or Americans manning police stations in Baghdad and Ramadi. It requires mobile forces, good intelligence, and the ability to leave an area once the job is done. The best place, for these forces, for many reasons is outside of Iraq.
In closing, I’m reminded of another era, in which a recently retired general took strong issue with a war that had gone on too long and then resolved to do something about it. Few Americans called Dwight David Eisenhower unpatriotic in the summer of 1952 when he criticized the Truman administration for its conduct in the Korean War. It’s worthwhile in this era when generals who speak out are accused of betrayal to quote from the five-star general who would later become our president. “Where do we go from here,” asked Eisenhower, “when comes the end? These questions demand truthful answers. Any answer that dishonestly pledges to end a war in Korea by any imminent exact date, would brand its speaker as a deceiver. The second and equally false answer declares that nothing can be done to speed a secure peace. Who dares to tell us that we, the strongest nation in the history of freedom, can only wait and wait and wait? Such a statement brands its speaker as a defeatist.” Eisenhower continued, “The old administration cannot be expected to repair what it failed to prevent. Where will the new administration begin? It will begin with a president taking a simple firm resolution. The resolution will be to forgo the diversions of politics and to concentrate on the job of ending the Korean War until that job is honorably done.” And just as General Eisenhower made that pledge 54 years ago, I will renew it today. We must forgo the slash-and-burn politics that have marked too much of our foreign policy in recent years, and reach for a true solution to the war in Iraq and the chaos in the Middle East.

Well, I think the Einsenhoiwer reference there is great. But I wish Webb would go considerably further than he has done. Like Trudy Rubin, he makes no mention of giving the UN any kind of a role in midwifing the end-game. But at least Trudy, in her piece calls explicitly– in the context of an effort to stabilize Iraq– for “revising our policy toward Iran.” But Webb still stigmatizes Iran very strongly, while calling for an attempt to “split” Syria away from its clutches.
So I welcome a lot of what Webb says. But I still think we need better, more forthright, and more visionary leaders in this country: people who are prepared to stand up openly and recognize that the US needs to have good relations with a strong and respected UN, and needs, too, to find a way to negotiate the differences it still has outstanding with Iran.
Whatever happened to the old idea in diplomacy that if you have a concern about the policies of another power, then you find a way to discuss them? Since when did this idea take root that, if you disagree strongly with any other party, then you should totally quarantine and seek to exclude them from the discourse?
So I guess for me, these are two key touchstones of the way the US political discourse on international issues needs to change: (1) we need to reinstate the UN as a vital political player, and a body with which the US seeks to work closely on the international scene, and (2) we need to reinstate the idea that if you have concerns with another government (or nongovernmental party) then it is nearly always better to try to discuss those concerns directly, rather than to stigmatize and quarantine that other.
Neither of these policies is radically new. Indeed, that’s why I said we need to “reinstate” them. I feel I’m the stodgy old diplo-conservative here. It’s this dangerous Bush administration and its neocon antecedents and adherents who have instigated a radical rupture with both the norms of international interactions and the past practice of the US.