Would a Democrat change U.S. Middle East policy? (Page 2 of 3)

>The Boston Globe.

The proposals permit the president to waive their restrictions in the interests of "national security," which leaves the door wide open, Ryan writes. They permit troops to remain in Iraq "as long as they are performing one of three specific missions: protecting U.S. facilities, citizens or forces; combating al-Qaida or international terrorists; and training Iraqi security forces."

The facilities include the huge U.S. military bases being built around the country and the U.S. Embassy -- actually a self-contained city within a city, unlike any embassy in the world. None of these major construction projects are under way with the expectation that they will be abandoned.

The other conditions are also open-ended. "The proposals are more correctly understood as a re-missioning of our troops," Ryan sums up: "Perhaps a good strategy -- but not a withdrawal."

It is difficult to see much difference between the March 7 Democratic proposals and those of Obama and Clinton.

IRAN

With regard to Iran, Obama is considered more moderate than Clinton, and his leading slogan is "change." So let us keep to him.

Obama calls for more willingness to negotiate with Iran, but within the standard constraints. His reported position is that he "would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek `regime change' if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues," and stopped "acting irresponsibly" by supporting Shiite militant groups in Iraq.

Some obvious questions come to mind. For example, how would we react Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he would offer a possible promise not to seek "regime change" in Israel if it stopped its illegal activities in the occupied territories and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues?

Obama's moderate approach is well to the militant side of public opinion -- a fact that passes unnoticed, as is often the case. Like all other viable candidates, Obama has insisted throughout the electoral campaign that the United States must threaten Iran with attack (the standard phrase is: "keep all options open"), a violation of the U.N. Charter, if anyone cares. But a large majority of Americans have disagreed: 75 percent favor building better relations with Iran, as compared with 22 percent who favor "implied threats," according to PIPA.

All the surviving candidates, then, are opposed by three-fourths of the public on this issue.

American and Iranian opinion on the core issue of nuclear policy has been carefully studied. In both countries, a large majority holds that Iran should have the rights of any signer of the Nonproliferation Treaty: to develop nuclear power but not nuclear weapons.

The same large majorities favor establishing a "nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East that would include both Islamic countries and Israel." More than 80 percent of Americans favor eliminating nuclear weapons altogether -- a legal obligation of the states with nuclear weapons, officially rejected by the Bush administration.

And surely Iranians agree with Americans that Washington should end its military threats and turn toward normal relations.

At a forum in Washington when the PIPA polls were released in January 2007, Joseph Cirincione, senior vice president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress (and Obama adviser), said the polls showed "the common sense of both the American people and the Iranian people, (who) seem to be able to rise above the rhetoric of their own leaders to find common sense solutions to some of the most crucial questions" facing the two nations, favoring pragmatic diplomatic solutions to their differences.

Though we do not have internal records, there is good reason to believe that the Pentagon is opposed to an attack on Iran. The March 11 resignation of Admiral William Fallon as head of the Central Command, responsible for the Middle East, was widely interpreted to trace to his opposition to an attack, probably shared with the military command generally.

The December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate reporting that Iran had not pursued a nuclear weapons program since 2003, when it sought and failed to reach a comprehensive settlement with the United States, perhaps reflects opposition of the intelligence community to military action.

There are many uncertainties. But it is hard to see concrete signs that a Democratic presidency would improve the situation very much, let alone bring policy into line with American or world opinion.