Barack Obama - - Riding the Horns of a Dilemma

Earlier this week, Barack Obama delivered a speech at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He spoke about several issues, but it is to his comments regarding foreign policy that I speak here.

Of the war in Iraq, Obama says that it “is unwise. It is not safe. It has piled up a mountain of debt and cost us, tragically, so many lives.” In order to draw out the contrast between himself and his opponents, he remarks: “I was opposed to this war in 2002 and I will bring an end to it in 2009.” As I will now show, in light of his subsequent remarks to the audience, Obama’s stated position on the war raises far more questions than it answers.

Consider his reply to the following question raised by a woman in the audience.

“I have a son who’s a lieutenant in the US military. I respect your position, but am not sure how to feel when you say we should not have fought this war. What do you say to the mothers of military men and women who are still serving? What do you tell them their sons and daughters are serving for?”

Upon discovering that the woman’s son is still enlisted, Obama prefaces his answer with an expression of gratitude! “First, I want to thank him for his service.”

He explains that when he encounters the parents of fallen soldiers, “what I tell them is that their [children’s] service is never in vain. Their deaths are never a waste. That’s their job.” Obama acknowledges that “even in Iraq … some wonderful things have been done.” The toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the reconstruction of Iraq’s infrastructure and its economy are examples of the “important accomplishments” for which our troops deserve thanks. The problem is not with the military, but with “civilian leadership.”

“We did not think through how we went in. We did not think through how we were going to get out.”

A President Obama wants our “civilian leadership” to be “as good as our military’s performance,” and he will bring this goal to fruition by insuring that “we’ve got [the] best strategy possible.”

This is doublespeak of the worst sort.

A careful read of this exchange reveals that Obama’s position on the war is, substantively, no different than McCain’s!

The latter has always been in favor of the war; it was “the Rumsfeld” strategy (as he endlessly reminds us) to which McCain took unequivocal exception. Now that a new strategy -- the Surge” —- has been implemented to replace the old, McCain is happy. In his exchanges with the loved ones of military personnel, Obama appears to fall back on the same distinction that McCain had always made between the war and the strategy in terms of which it has been prosecuted. The only difference between Obama and McCain is that the former doesn’t believe that we have yet struck upon an effective strategy: of the two strategies that have thus far been implemented, McCain likes one and Obama likes neither.

Obama, therefore, presumably supports the war.

Given his comments, I can think of no other conclusion to draw.

When philosophers speak of a state of affairs or an idea as being logically impossible, what they mean is that it is wildly incoherent. It is literally nonsensical. A “square-circle” and “a married bachelor” are logical impossibilities. If Obama opposes the war, and not just the strategies by which it has been waged, then it is no more logically possible for him to have the unqualified appreciation for our soldiers’ service that he expresses than it is logically possible for a man to be married and yet remain a bachelor.

Obama depicts himself as being the only genuinely “anti-war” presidential candidate in this race. In no small measure, this explains his appeal to his ideological brethren who are convinced that the project in Iraq is nothing other than the latest episode in a long historical narrative of naked American imperial aggression.

Now if Obama believes as well that the Iraq war is inherently immoral because it is imperialistic, or something along these lines, then in thanking American soldiers for their service and praising their work, he thanks them for furthering an immoral project! Logically speaking, this is no different from, on the one hand, condemning the Holocaust and “the civilian leadership” that orchestrated it while, on the other, thanking and even praising the Nazi soldiers for their service in bringing it to fruition. After all, the soldiers were just “doing their jobs."

Obama could deny that this is the reason for his opposition to the war. He could insist upon an appeal to “strategy.” If, however, he grabs the horn of this dilemma, he will find it just as fatal as the previous one. If it is the lack of an effective strategy that he deplores, then he is not truly “anti-war” at all. Since he no less believes in the justice of the war than McCain, his self-description as the only “anti-war” candidate is proven to be a sham, and his appeal to “anti-war” voters promises to diminish. Indeed, that Obama claims that, as President, he would supply the “best strategy possible,” is sufficient proof that he is as committed to “victory” in Iraq as McCain.

There is, though, one other possibility of which, theoretically, anyhow, Obama can avail himself. But given his decidedly leftist disposition, I fail to see how he could, practically, pull this off.

I too oppose the war in Iraq. Yet I oppose it not because I believe that it is a manifestation of something called “imperialism,” or “racism,” or because I think it is inherently immoral at all, necessarily. I sympathize strongly with a tradition of thought spanning centuries and continents, a tradition the representatives of which, in spite of whatever other differences may exist between them, share in common the conviction that “order” and “design” are not synonymous, and that the most successful and vibrant societies are those whose order has not been designed.