Senator McCain has mocked his opponent’s willingness to sit with Iranian leaders; “appeasement” he calls it (despite President Bush’s own “appeasement” of Iran at the Geneva nuclear talks of July 19, and his policy will be one of continuing the Bush administration’s efforts to isolate, choke and generally punish Iran into submission on the nuclear issue, and if that fails, to use military force to bring Iran to its knees.
Senator Obama, on the other hand, has retreated somewhat from his earlier eagerness to “jaw-jaw” (to use Churchill’s phrase) with President Ahmadinejad of Iran, but is still open to direct negotiations with the Iranian “leadership,” something that has worried some in the pro-Israeli camp but is, because of Obama’s refusal to take military action “off the table,” actually not a weaker position than his opponent’s.
Obama has also sounded a somewhat arrogant note in that respect recently, saying his willingness to meet Iranians would be “at the time and place of my choosing,” oddly precisely the sort of colonial language that the Second and Third World so resents, language that presumes not just an American superiority but also a desperate and supplicant negotiating partner who will ask “how high?” when asked to jump. The Iranians, one can be assured, can only react to that by actively working to deny him his choice of “time and place.”
The Iranians once offered to negotiate comprehensively with the Bush administration, way back in 2003, but presumably President Bush felt it wasn’t at the time and place of his choosing. What was his choosing were the 2007 talks in Baghdad, but we know how far that has gotten us. (Also, given that neither sanctions nor preconditions for negotiations, nor a perceived arrogant tone by the U.S., has worked in getting Iranians to slow their nuclear program, Senator Obama might do well to follow his own advice and view the Iranian issue as one of starting afresh with a new attitude.)
But beyond that, the people of the Muslim world, accustomed as they are now to American bombs falling on their heads should their leaders run afoul of American foreign policy, might generally applaud the concept of meaningful dialogue before the bombs are deployed. Senator Obama, brown himself, again has the benefit of perception, but as Condoleezza Rice may have come to realize, perception goes only so far.
No discussion of American foreign policy, though, is even partially complete without a discussion of Iraq. We know (or should know) that the Iraq war, that self-imposed suppurating wound, is not only the primary cause of the loss of American prestige throughout the world, but also by definition a primary foreign policy concern of whoever becomes president. Iraq cannot simply be ignored, as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was for six years by the Bush administration, in favor of some other adventure or distraction, even as the American public’s patience is wearing thin on hearing any news from the front. And the two candidates for president have divergent views on how America needs to stanch the flow, the river, it sometimes seems, of blood on the Mesopotamian plains: Senator McCain would like to “win” the war, a view befitting a military man, and Senator Obama would like our involvement to end, whether a win in the American column can be chalked up or not.
General George S. Patton once said, in 1944, that "Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win — all the time. . . . The very thought of losing is hateful to an American." Indeed, Americans don’t love war; but they do love to win, and if Patton was right in his psychological analysis of his fellow citizens, then Senator McCain might be on the right track. But Patton spoke before America had ever lost a war, and many Americans today see Iraq as an unwinnable war, at least in the sense that Patton meant.
It’s not that Americans, or indeed almost everyone on the planet (including Muslims) wouldn’t like America to win, for winning in Iraq means a stable, somewhat democratic and functioning Muslim state. But it’s unclear if we can win and at what cost (bombing more brown people?). Senator McCain is in the unenviable position of having to convince Americans that we can indeed win, although he may, depending on circumstances in Iraq in October and November, have a difficult time doing so, particularly with Americans who watch the news or read the papers carefully. (“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”)
The question of significance to American voters is whether a graceful and orderly disentanglement, which Obama prefers, or an all-out effort to secure victory, which McCain does, is most likely to succeed and at what cost. If McCain is right and a withdrawal from Iraq means new beheading videos on the Internet, then one might argue we need to stay there until every last extremist with a butcher’s knife, a video camera, and a flawed reading of the Koran is vanquished. If he’s wrong, and staying in Iraq whether we “win” or not means we see more young Muslims blowing themselves up on the London tube or double-decker buses, or even trying to blow up American airliners, then perhaps Obama has it right, at least in terms of the damage Iraq continues to do to American interests both on the ground and far afield. One has to wonder if there isn’t there a third alternative, though, a way to “win” without an open-ended commitment to keeping troops based in Iraq? Probably not, but perhaps the Iranians, who seem to have more influence in Iraq than either the U.S. or even individual Iraqi leaders, can help us out here, maybe even find it in themselves to ally with us to win the war. Perhaps, if we talk to them nicely, but surely not if we bomb, bomb, bomb them?
American foreign policy, and foreign policy as it applies to the Middle East, will be a crucial factor in the fall campaign. Not because Qaddafi is still obsessed with a 20th-century Palestinian cause, nor necessarily because Senator McCain believes Iran’s 21st-century nuclear progress must be halted at any cost, even if it means another war. It will be crucial because both candidates recognize that many things that affect us, from terrorism to war to America’s standing in the world, and closer to home, the now stratospheric (to Americans) cost of oil, are tied up in the Middle East. The question is which candidate recognizes that what is good for the Middle East is probably good for Americans too?
Hooman Majd is the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, and has interpreted for two presidents of Iran during their visits to the United States. He can be reached at hmajd@observer.com.
