# Posted 10:14 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

LIBERAL HAWKS DROPPING LIKE FLIES: I go away for the weekend and all hell breaks loose. Once willing to confront Saddam, Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias and Sean-Paul Kelly are now sitting on the fence and about to fall leftward.

While Dan Drezner and Dima Guberman have already posted interesting replies, I think that their position slightly to the right of Kevin, Matt and Sean-Paul (on foreign policy), prevents them from saying what liberal hawks need to hear.

While I am probably somewhat to the right of Kevin, Matt and Sean-Paul as well, I think that my foreign policy stands are so fiercely liberal that I might be able to persuade them that their confidence in the need to confront Saddam is faltering prematurely.

So let's begin at the beginning: What is troubling the liberal hawks? As I pointed out a few days ago, we are deeply concerned about the depth of the President's commitment to promoting democracy in the Middle East.

This concern is clearly significant for Kevin, who writes that "George Bush has given us precious little reason to think that he really cares about" democracy in the Middle East. Matt comments that "there seems to be little reason to believe that the administration actually will accomplish the humanitarian objective."

Now I agree that one ought to have serious concerns about Bush's commitment to democracy promotion. But why have Kevin and Matt become so worried in the immediate aftermath of the speech in which Bush went further than ever before in spelling out his commitment to promoting democracy throughout the Middle East? (Not just in Iraq, a point Kieran Healy seems to miss.)

While talking the talk is not the same as walking the walk, one has to realize two things about Bush's speech. The first is a general point which relates to all political speeches: When polticians make explicit promises, they can either be punished for breaking them or forced to live up to them. As for punishment, I ask you to recall the immortal words of America's 41st president: "Read my lips. No new taxes."

As for being forced to live up to one's promises, that is the subject of my doctoral dissertation. Interestingly enough, the promises I discuss are Ronald Reagan's promises to promote democracy abroad. He didn't exactly mean it, but first the Democrats and then even most Republicans began to demand that Reagan live up to his word.

The second point about Bush's speech is that it didn't serve a political purpose. American support for the war has almost nothing to do with promoting democracy in Iraq. Opposition to the war has even less to do with Bush's less than 100% credible stance on promoting democracy in Iraq. The fact that this speech happened at all indicates that forces within the administration were pushing for it. Obviously, Paul Wolfowitz. But if you take a look at Stephen Hadley's op-ed in the WaPo, you'll see that NSC seems to be behind the idea as well.

Now we come to the second concern of the liberal hawks. According to Kevin, there

is a good reason for war, but only barely. Saddam does pose a threat, but it's a fairly distant threat and there's reason to think that a policy of containment could be made to work for at least several more years. When you put this together with the larger damage the war will do to our international relations, the whole thing only barely passes the smell test.

On the question of whether Saddam is a threat, I refer the wavering hawks to fellow lib-hawk, Josh Marshall, who points out that the issue isn't whether we have to confront Saddam, but when.

While Kevin thinks containment "could be made to work for several more years", I doubt it. The UN can't keep its inspectors on the ground forever, perhaps a year at best. Eventually, they will either have to declare that Saddam is lying or give Saddam a clean bill of health and just go home. If they go home, then there would be no justification for further sanctions or, for that matter, futher inspections. Without sanctions, containment will fall apart. Without sanctions, Saddam will have the funds necessary to build nucelar weapons. And fast.

Now you might ask, what if the Bush administration decided not to provoke a crisis in Iraq and just leave sanctions in place? That idea might have been defensible a year and a half ago. But now the die is cast. And I don't mean that we have too many troops in the Gulf to pull back now. We could.

But there will never be another Resolution 1441. We have have pissed off the French, the Germans and the European street, but the leaders of 19 nations are behind us. That will not happen again if we back off now. Like it or not, it's now or never.

A third point of liberal concern is that Bush has already done too much damage to America's international standing. As Matt says, the administration has

created a situation where the overwhelming majority of the global population opposes an American invasion. These bad feelings about the United States are having an extremely detrimental effect on our interests elsewhere.

Pardonnez moi? Which interests is Matt referring to? Europe hasn't done any damage to our the American effort to reign in North Korea. (Josh Marshall might note that we screwed that one up ourselves. Same with Turkey.)

Germany is still in charge of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. European intelligence services are still working with us to destroy Al Qaeda, a project that has met with considerable success lately. The only interests we can't achieve because of European anti-war sentiment are the disarmament and democratization of Iraq.

As for the effects that aroused anti-American sentiment might have in the future, I think there is every reason to believe that once we overthrow Saddam, set up a transitional government and put Saddam's WMD arsenal on display, the anti-war majority will initiative an impressive effort to pretend that it was behind America all along. ("No, really. We knew it had to be done. We just wanted it to be done with UN approval." Nice try, Jacques.)

So that's my two cents on the issue. Bottom line: Bush is more committed to democracy than ever before. We have to confront Saddam either now or later. If we win, Europe will forget we weren't supposed to. So pull out your principles and stand tall, my friends. This is a war for a liberal cause.

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