Assessing the "Field"

Click to find caption

Illustration: It's been awhile, but the above illustration is apt right now. Once Poll listed Kucinich as fourth in Hew Hampshire.

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I had been wondering whatever happened to Tom Hayden, below, as he evaluates the presidential candidates. He was one of the earliest in the SDS back in 1964-65 and played a supporting role in the Trail of the Chicago 8, er 7 after Bobby Seals, evn while handcuffed, and gagged, kept trying to represent himself in the absence of his attorney, Garry.

He later married Barberella who then married Ted Turner. She is better now.

*ZNet | U.S.*

*Rating The Presidential Candidates On Iraq

Another Agonizing Year Ahead*

*by Tom Hayden; November 06, 2007*

/TOM HAYDEN is the author of

Writings for a Democratic

Society, The Tom Hayden Reader, forthcoming from City L

ights Books. He has not

endorsed any candidate for president. /*

*

While most peace activists are evaluating the Democrats, I would

rank Rudolph *Giuliani as the most dangerous of all the

presidential candidates in a long while*, because his Iraq and

Iran policies are the work of the most hawkish

neo-conservatives who promoted the Iraq quagmire and now want to

bomb Iran as soon as possible. Though far better than Giuliani,

Sen. Joseph *Biden is the worst Democratic candidate because of

his demand that partition be imposed* on Iraq. The

front-running Democrat, Sen. Hillary *Clinton, is so ambiguous

on Iraq that she risks losing the general election by driving

enough of the progressive vote to inevitable third party

candidates. **

*Giuliani is advised by a network of neo-con hawks led by Norman

Podhoretz who call for a Cold War-type struggle against

"Islamofascism", the immediate bombing of Iran [_Commentary_,

June 2007], the right to assassinate the leaders of Iran and

North Korea, and the assumption that all American Muslims are

suspect. [NY Times]. They are a well-organized machine with

millions of dollars available to attack MoveOn and bankroll

campus campaigns against the new foreign enemy of Islamofascism,

which they believe can and must be militarily defeated.

Principled Democrats with single-digit support at present should

be considered as strong voices against the war, and possible

contributors to a long-term progressive movement, but not as

likely nominees. Among them, *Biden, who could become secretary

of state under a Democratic president, takes the most dangerous

position, favoring a de-facto breakup or partitioning of

Iraq, *with each religious group policing its own areas. That

would mean forced migration for millions of Iraqis from their

homes in Shi'a-dominated Basra, for example, to Sunni-dominated

Anbar province. *Sen. Chris Dodd*, while taking a strong

position against the confirmation of Bush's nominee for attorney

general, has been murky in his anti-war views during the

campaign. While supporting a 12-18 month pullout, he also wants

American troops redeployed away from major Iraqi cities to the

border regions and to Kurdistan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Afghanistan.

[speech Oct. 12, 2006]

*Bill Richardson, another candidate for a future cabinet

position, takes the cleanest position of all *on Iraq, promising

to remove all American troops within one year while launching

diplomatic efforts towards regional stability. And of

course, *Dennis Kucinich* is an anchor for the anti-war community.

*Among the current front-runners, John Edwards takes the

strongest anti-war position,* calling for an immediate troop

withdrawal of 40-50,000 US troops, a withdrawal of remaining

troops in 12-18 months, and diplomatic peace initiatives.

Edwards' position includes a significant loophole, however, for

"sufficient" US troops to remain in the region to prevent a

terrorist haven or ethnic genocide. Edwards also is on record

favoring the intensifying of training for Iraqi security forces.

[NYT, Feb. 26, 2007]

Sen. Barack *Obama's position has somewhat improved with its

latest nuances*. He favors a steady withdrawal taking 16 months.

[NYT, Nov. 2]. Backing away from open-ended support of American

trainers in the midst of a dirty sectarian war, Obama says he

would support trainers only if the Baghdad regime commits to

political reconciliation and reforms its sectarian police, an

almost impossible scenario to imagine. Further, Obama would not

allow American trainers to be placed "in harm's way." But he

also favors an unspecified number of American troops in the

region able to conduct "counter-terrorism" or return in the

"short term" to Iraq in the event of genocide against civilians.

Obama seems trapped between his tendency to build a "new center"

and the need to sharpen his differences over Iraq with Hillary

Clinton.

Obama correctly links a withdrawal plan with motivating other

countries to engage in regional stabilization: "Once it's clear

that we're not intending to stay there for 10 years or 20 years,

all these parties have an interest in figuring out how do we

adjust in a way that stabilizes the situation." And *Obama has

toughened his stand against escalating the conflict to

Iran.* Instead he would engage in "aggressive personal

diplomacy" including a promise to end bush's policy of regime

change in exchange for Iranian cooperation in regional stability.

Sen. Hillary *Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee at this

point, remains the most indecipherable of the candidates on

Iraq.* On the one hand, she pledges "to end the war" and has

voted against the Bush surge and in favor of a March 2008

withdrawal deadline for combat troops. She has suggested, but

not insisted on, cutting off funding for Iraqi security forces

and private contractors unless reforms by the Iraqi government

are guaranteed. [NYT, Feb. 26, 2007] On the other hand, she most

clearly favors leaving a large number of Americans, a "scaled

down force", in Iraq indefinitely to fight al-Qaeda, train the

Iraqi army, and resist Iranian encroachment. [NYT, Nov. 2,

2007]. She cast an unsettling hawkish vote to define the Iranian

Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group, which may have

reflected her positioning for the November election, and has

telegraphed a message that Iraq is "right in the heart of the

oil region...[and] directly in opposition to our interests, to

the interests of the region, to Israel's interests." [NYT, Mar.

15, 2007]

*Clearly, anti-war opinion in the early primary states will be a

major factor determining the candidates' positioning*. Edwards

has put pressure on Obama and Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire,

and Obama puts pressure on Clinton across the board. But Clinton

already is trending towards her general election platform

against another "vast right-wing conspiracy." In the short-term,

she wants to be positioned as sufficiently anti-war and leave

Edwards and Obama appearing more "extreme", which may be a

misreading of public opinion. The other Democratic candidates

will seek to appear more anti-war than Clinton because the issue

is their only way to gain traction with the multitudes of

anti-war voters in the primaries. Clinton depends on rallying

Democrats and independents to her side by contrasting herself

with Giuliani, Mitt Romney or John McCain. Whether that approach

can prevail, or seem too frustratingly evasive, remains to be

seen in the long campaign ahead.

If Clinton gains the nomination on an Iraq platform that

disappoints enough independents and Obama or Edwards

supporters, *a two-percent space will open for Ralph Nader

and/or Cynthia McKinney *to possibly make the difference in the

November election. Recent polls show Clinton in a virtual dead

heat with Giuliani among independent voters who otherwise lean

Democratic. If she refuses to take a more forthright stand on

Iraq, she may try returning to her domestic strength by arguing

that unlimited and wasteful Republican spending on Iraq will

prevent her from achieving national health care, a priority

issue for a majority of Americans where Giuliani is clearly on

the wrong side. As president, she could describe her slow troop

withdrawals as a peace dividend, a transfer of resources from

war to health care for veterans and all Americans.

Or worst case, her appearance of wobbling on Iraq/Iran could

reinforce a voter perception of such principled and

unpredictable opportunism that the Democrats could lose a close

election once again. #

/

TOM HAYDEN is the author of _Ending the War in Iraq_ [Akashic,

2007]. He has not endorsed any candidate for president. He is a

national board member of Progressive Democrats of America, and

the editorial board of the _Nation_ magazine. /