Mitch McConnell’s candid admission that partisan politics is playing some role in Republican opposition to the war in Libya is refreshing. The fact that partisan politics no longer stops at the water’s edge, however, is a bad sign for the Republic. […]
While some are condemning this as naked partisanship, it’s simply the truth. The United States has been involved in more overseas military operations over the last 20 years than I can recount off the top of my head. During the administration of Democrat Bill Clinton, most of the opposition came from Republicans. When Republican George W. Bush took office, suddenly it was Democrats who wondered about the wisdom of intervention in other people’s civil wars. With Barack Obama, the shoe is back on the other foot.
A fair amount of the post, as well as the comments that respond to it, focus on those that oppose wars for partisan reasons. Joyner goes on to talk about Bolton’s refusal to accept a mythical position within the Obama administration, and Joyner saying that he would if it were foreign policy related. The entire saying “politics end at the water’s edge” is built around the notion of rallying around the flag.
And truth be told, there is something to this. Once a president has committed us to war, backbiting can become problematic. The louder the backbiting, the more the opposition has hope that they can simply wait out whatever is coming. For my part, I don’t believe that our actions in Libya are a bad idea, but my criticisms are muted by a couple of factors, one of which is that whether I like it or not, we’re committed. And so I hope we do well. I hope we win, however we define victory. It’s different if I believe we are acting on the side or wrong, but in the case of acting on the side or right, or taking a side in a morally ambiguous fight, I am inclined to mute my opposition. Once we’re committed, that is, and Obama did not seek out collective input prior to committing.
But while it’s easy to decry partisanship on both sides and the inconsistency based on which party is in power, I think what’s more important here is the ultimate effect this has on our foreign policy. It’s simply not the case that it’s a wash. Whatever the disingenuous opposition to war that may exist for partisan reasons, the ultimate result of the partisanship is to tilt our foreign policy apparatus towards war. There are a number of politicians, in both parties (though not in equal parts), that will pretty much support any war anywhere. There is a smaller of politicians in each party that will oppose any war (only six Republicans in the House voted against the war in Iraq). And there are a whole lot of others that will bend to the political circumstances, have ambiguous views, and trust in the leaders who execute the war. It’s for these that the partisanship occurs.
And the trust in political leaders will be the political leaders that they support. There are the baldly political considerations, but also the degree of trust that comes with someone on “your side” of wholly unrelated issues. And so these people will vote with the party, more often than not. This leads to near-unanimous support within the president’s party. Then there’s the other party, of whom a significant minority will typically be in the all-wars-all-the-time camp, either out of conviction or fear of being seen weak. So you have united support and fractured opposition. And so, time after time, congress will rally around the president and tilt in favor of war with only the partisan subsection of the opposition and the very few principled anti-war folks on both sides voting against.
And so when we talk about the partisanship of voting, the thing we should look the closest at is not what seems most disgusting (failure to rally around Old Glory due to partisan bickering!), but rather where it tends to lead us. Of course, for hawks, it leads us in the right direction. But for better or worse, it leads us into the direction that the president can send us to war whenever he wants. I say above that Obama didn’t ask our input, but the truth is that he really didn’t need to. And Bolton, as disgusting as his words might seem, is ultimately irrelevant to the discussion. Obama did not change the rules with his actions. He merely acknowledged what the rules really are.
Don’t you think that even if the rule is really that the President holds effective warmaking powers, he would be better served if he nevertheless went through the motiosn of getting Congress’ blessing? It seems that Congress cannot realistically withhold it.