Pelosi: How Predictable! A Green Response 

Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats in the House and Senate don’t want to be or seem soft on defense.  So they fail to be forthright about what’s needed.

On the one hand they say “no” to Bush’s surge. At the same time they say “no” to bringing the troops home now. So they wind up saying “yes” to the status quo. But the status quo is a horrible death trap for our soldiers and for the Iraq people. “Ah but listen,” says Pelosi, “along with no surge, we want Bush to try harder at diplomacy.” How can either the U.S. or the Iraqui puppets that are in power by the grace of U.S. military power, conduct meaningful diplomacy while the military and political situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate to a point where continued occupancy is pointless?

Does Kucinich have the answer?  He wants to cut funding for the war which he figures Congress can, should and must do. This—he hopes-- will (eventually) apply the pressure to bring the troops home. He combines that with insistence on bringing in the United Nations. Bringing in the UN is a good idea and should have been pushed by Democrats from the beginning.

But to make reduction in funding for the war the cutting edge of your Iraq policy exposes you to the stinging criticism of not supporting our troops. It’s not quite as weak as Pelosi’s stance, but it is not much better.

The ONLY way to support our troops and to start solving the Iraq disaster is to get them out of there! “Bring the troops home now!” means in practical terms that they start coming home in a phased process that only takes as long as is absolutely necessary to expedite the withdrawal until all have come home. By doing so, the UN will have the necessary incentive to bring in military and political forces, which they will not do, nor have the incentive to do, as long as the U.S. government keeps its troops there.

Rabbi Michael Lerner faults Pelosi and the Democrats generally with buying into the Bush gang’s settled belief in what he (Lerner) accurately describes as “security through domination.” He is absolutely right about that. Bush does it with hawkish brutality.  Pelosi and her Democrats would do it with a mix of diplomacy and politico-military intimidation.  Lerner advocates for an approach that foregrounds “security through generosity” – much like what George McGovern has been promoting.  I think their “security through generosity” is laudable and works sometimes and in some ways, but only in a serious political context of “security through collaboration”.  The United States Government and the political class that dominates it does not believe in collaborative political endeavor – they want to be the big cheese and the power that ultimately disposes matters in the world.

The clear alternative must be a collaborative one in which the U.S. plays an interactive role with other powers and does that through the United Nations and other international judiciary and economic bodies. That means withdrawing in a phased way from most of the U.S. military bases throughout the world in concert with a compelling UN capability for maintaining the peace.

This would be a Green way to peace in the world and it would provide the United States with a creative role in synch with other peoples and other nations on the planet.

Returning for a moment to Rabbi Michael Lerner’s “security through generosity.” True enough, he does not mean a return to U.S. noblesse oblige and a new variant of the “white man’s burden”.  But by itself it seems to me to hint in that direction.  Only if “generosity” is linked closely with a politics of collaboration (genuine dialogue leading to mutual and planet-wide security) can we achieve the security that we and the peoples of the world crave.  The U. S. political class will have to move over to make a lot of room for new political and social forces in the United States that are in the wings but have hitherto been stymied by their own fumblings and by the huge roadblocks put in their way by the dominant political class.

John Rensenbrink Topsham, Maine USA

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