Facing a skeptical, change-hungry electorate,
Republicans figure their best hope for staving
off disaster in this fall's election is to wave the
bloody shirt of 9/11. The Democrats' response?
Bring it on.
Democrats have two solid reasons for believing they are
poised to win the argument over national security. First, the
hellish, unceasing carnage in Iraq has demolished public
confidence in President Bush's claims that his policies are
making us safer. Second, party leaders
and policy analysts have begun to
articulate a coherent alternative to his
war on terror.
That's crucial, because the political
gains from lambasting Bush on Iraq are
limited by the public's deep ambivalence
about what course to follow next.
According to a recent Democracy Corps
survey, the party's familiar indictment of
Bush's mistakes in Iraq gains traction
with voters only when Democrats couple
them with their own positive ideas
for protecting the country.
To craft a winning message on
national security, both for the
midterm election and for the 2008
presidential campaign, Democrats
should stress six themes:
America needs a bigger and better
military. The Bush administration
has relied excessively on military
power to advance U.S. security goals.
Hence, its failure to provide our
Armed Forces with the resources they
need to fulfill their missions is as
incomprehensible as it is indefensible.
As a result, the escalating conflicts
in Iraq and Afghanistan have
stretched the all-volunteer force to
the breaking point. Democrats
should step forward with a plan to
repair the damage, by adding more
troops, replenishing depleted stocks
of equipment, and reorganizing the
force around the new missions of
unconventional warfare, counterinsurgency,
and civil reconstruction.
America needs a political strategy
for strengthening Muslim moderates.
A stronger military is essential, but
it should serve -- not substitute for -- a
practical strategy for defeating jihadism.
The president says his political goal is to
trigger a democratic revolution in the
Middle East, but military force is rarely
the right tool for that job. Of course, the
United States must use force vigorously to
stop terrorists who are plotting to kill its
citizens. But America can't kill an ideology
with guns alone; indeed, the overuse of
force risks driving fence sitters in the
Muslim world into the jihadist camp.
Victory in this struggle means discrediting
the jihadist creed and thereby reducing
the number of people willing to
become suicide bombers and terrorists.
America needs the contemporary equivalent
of Cold War containment: a political
strategy that uses all of our might -- economic,
cultural, diplomatic, as well as
military -- to strengthen the forces of
moderation and modernization in the
Muslim world. In fact, we should stop
talking about a "war on terror" altogether
and instead describe our goal as helping
moderate Muslims prevail in their historic
struggle against violent extremists.
A new "grand strategy" for change in
the greater Middle East should also
include more creative U.S. diplomatic
engagement. That means hard bargaining
with such noxious regimes as Iran
and Syria, as well as with friendlier ones
like Saudi Arabia that have been exporting
Islamist radicalism for decades. It will
also require a new U.S. push to mediate
regional conflicts -- between Israel and
the Palestinians, certainly, but also the
Kashmir crisis -- that fuel extremism.
For this we will need to tap strengths
the White House has ignored: the support
of prosperous allies who share our
values, an international system in which
the United States plays a leading role,
and the attractive power of our country's
animating ideals.
America needs more allies in the
fight. You don't have to read
Machiavelli to know that safety lies in
uniting your friends and dividing your
enemies. Yet, thanks to its moralizing
and bullying unilateralism, the Bush
administration has done just the
opposite.
For Democrats, mending the breach
in trans-Atlantic relations should be the
top priority. Many conservatives dismiss
the European Union as a utopian project
or, worse, a potential superpower
rival. Democrats should embrace a
strong and politically united Europe as a
strategic partner in combating terrorism,
halting the spread of nuclear
weapons, expanding world trade, and
slowing climate change.
Rejecting both Republican United
Nations-bashing and the toothless multilateralism
favored on the left,
Democrats also should think boldly
about a new collective security architecture
for the 21st century. Princeton's
Anne Marie Slaughter, for example, has
proposed a new division of labor that
puts the United Nations in charge of
economic and social development,
while shifting the burden of enforcement
and peacemaking to an expanded
NATO that includes democracies
beyond Europe, such as India.
Whatever form it takes, the U.N. system
must accommodate rising powers
and develop the means to enforce its
"responsibility to protect" people, not
just states, from violence.
America's moral authority matters. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika has somehow lost sight of a simple, historical
fact: The world's willingness to
accept U.S. leadership has always
depended as much on America's moral
prestige as on its power. The troika's
stubborn refusal to bring the war on terror
under the rule of law has badly tarnished
America's reputation as a beacon
of human rights and dignity and a
democratically accountable government.
Democrats can credibly pledge to
put America's fight against jihadism on
a firm moral and legal footing. That
means rejecting prisoner abuse and torture
and establishing more open and fair
procedures for trying terrorist suspects.
But it also means leading an international
effort to write new rules governing
how civilized countries deal with the
scourge of terrorism. Because they
deliberately target the innocent, terrorists
are guilty of crimes against humanity
and should not be entitled to the same
legal status as soldiers who become prisoners
of war.
Although the Bush administration's
revolutionary rhetoric has discredited
democracy in the eyes of many,
Democrats should not retreat from their
party's historic conviction that the
steady advance of freedom makes for a
safer, saner, and more just world.
Instead of trying to impose America's
model of democracy by force, they
should embrace the gradual, bottom-up
liberalization of the greater Middle East.
As Larry Diamond and Michael A.
McFaul have proposed, this approach
means more dollars and moral support
for indigenous reformers -- human
rights activists, democratic political parties,
independent labor unions, and
media. Over time, they can build the
civil institutions that underpin liberal
democracy. Muslim moderates and
reformers must find their own ways to
reconcile Islam and modernity, but we
should back them, just as we helped
reformers in the Soviet bloc before the
fall of communism.
America needs a stronger economy
and society. In the Clinton administration,
it was axiomatic that America's
military strength derives from its economic
dynamism and social cohesion.
The Bush administration's economic
and domestic policies, however, are
utterly divorced from its war on terror.
They have weakened the economic
underpinnings of America's strength
and deepened the country's divisions.
Democrats should spell out credible
plans for reversing GOP economic and
energy policies that have wrecked the
nation's finances, mortgaged its future
to foreign lenders, and made America
more abjectly addicted to foreign oil
than ever. They should demand that
Congress reimpose strict discipline on
the federal budget and overhaul our
regressive tax system to make it simpler
and fairer. They should rally behind
proposals for slapping a mandatory cap
on carbon emissions. That's a public
policy twofer that would cut oil consumption
dramatically and reduce global
warming. And it's time for Democrats
to bring new ideas and energy to the
fights against poverty, broken families,
failing schools, and economic inequality
at home.
America needs a new spirit of shared
sacrifice. Bush's constant evocation of
the evil arrayed against America suggests
he sees himself as a Lone Star version of
Winston Churchill trying to awaken
the civilized world to mortal peril. Yet
his failure to ask Americans to give up
anything important belies the urgency
of his threat. He won't expand the military,
won't restrain the free-spending
GOP Congress, won't cut corporate
welfare, and won't cut oil and gas subsidies
that deepen America's dependence
on petro-despots around the world.
Democrats should show the courage
to challenge all Americans -- not just
those in the Armed Forces -- to share
the sacrifices necessary to defend liberal
democracy. It's time for a tougher
brand of "ask not" liberalism that
requires the privileged to put more, not
less, into the common pot; that makes
it more expensive for all of us to waste
energy or consume oil; and, that challenges
all young Americans -- especially
those on elite campuses -- to give something
back by doing military or civilian
national service.
Republicans won the last two
national elections largely on the
strength of their perceived strength on
terrorism and security. Now, however,
Americans are looking for something
more than endless war and expressions
of resolve. They are looking for a political
strategy that can contain the jihadist
virus rather than make it worse. Instead
of waiting until 2008, Democrats
should seize this chance to show the
nation they are ready to take on
America's most important fight.
