[BRIGADE] PJB: Can This Marriage Last?
Published: Fri, 12/05/08
By Patrick J. Buchanan
December 5, 2008
Having savaged each other for a year, Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton have now formed a rare partnership in power. Not since
James Garfield chose James G. Blaine has a new president chosen his
principal rival to be secretary of state.
What does this tell us?
First, don't take campaign oratory all that seriously.
Second, unlike Dennis Kucinich, Ted Kennedy, Ron Paul or Jesse
Helms, Hillary and Barack are pragmatists. They do not let ideology
or past insults get in the way of a mutually beneficial deal.
But this is not some Hitler-Stalin pact of American politics.
Dick Morris has it right. As in a parliamentary system, where
Cabinet members come straight off the majority party front bench,
Barack, as prime minister, is knitting together a coalition
government that allocates its highest honors to its greatest stars.
As Tony Blair named rival Gordon Brown as chancellor of the
exchequer, Barack made Joe Biden his vice president, Hillary his
secretary of state and Bill Richardson his secretary of commerce.
Had John Edwards not fouled his nest, he, too, would be in the
Cabinet. Perhaps attorney general.
And while Barack has taken a risk naming Hillary, with her national
following and ruthless courtiers, Hillary's investment is even
greater. Should a clash erupt, as it did between Ronald Reagan and
Al Haig, Barack, though at great cost, can terminate her and her
career. The idea that a cashiered secretary of state could
challenge President Obama in 2012, capture the nomination and win,
after humiliating and dumping our first African-American president,
is absurd.
And the Clintons know it. Absent divine intervention, Obama is the
nominee in 2012. Hillary has to know this is likely her last chance
to make history. Thus she seized the offer of State, and Bill
agreed to go the Full Monty on his financial relationships.
What does this marriage of convenience, with Biden, Bob Gates and
Gen. Jim Jones as ushers, mean for U.S. foreign policy?
Methinks the antiwar left has the crying towel out too early.
Our new decider's heart is still on the left. Moreover, his
political interests argue for relegating to the trash bin of
history a Bush-neocon policy of endless war until the Middle East
resembles the Middle West. America cannot sustain the wars that
Bush's policy produced, nor those it promises.
Look, then, for Obama to make a large, early down payment on his
pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16
months. Though the Status of Forces Agreement accepted by Iraq
doubles the time Obama has to pull out, to December 2011, the
nation, not just the left, wants out, with but a single caveat:
America does not want a Saigon ending.
What happens after -- whether Shia attack Shia, or join to crush
Sunnis, or Arabs engage Kurds -- is not a war Americans are willing
to intervene in with any new surge of U.S. troops.
About Afghanistan there is a gathering consensus that victory over
a resurgent Taliban with a sanctuary in Pakistan's border region
cannot be achieved without an infusion of U.S. troops this country
is unwilling to support.
Escalating the war means more air strikes that have alienated the
Afghan people as well as President Kharzi. More Predator strikes in
a Pakistan where anti-Americanism is rife and the government is
besieged hardly seems a promising policy.
What is the U.S. bottom line in Kabul? Not the impossible dream of
a democracy modeled on our own but a government committed to
keeping al-Qaida out. Given the bloody beating the Taliban have
taken for seven years, they may be amenable to such an arrangement.
But the first test of the Obama-Clinton team may be Iran.
Tehran claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, and the
International Atomic Energy Agency has never declared it in
violation of the non-proliferation treaty. Yet, the suspicion is
broad and deep in Washington and Tel Aviv that Iran is hell-bent on
building an atom bomb. Obama and Hillary have both said that will
not happen, no matter what it takes.
If war with Iran is to be averted, the new team must move swiftly
to talk to Tehran and put its cards on the table. It is here that
the potential for a split between Barack and Hillary is greatest.
If Likud's "Bibi" Netanyahu wins the Israeli election, he will push
hard for U.S. air strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, and push back
against any Obama deal with Tehran. With the Israeli lobby and a
Jewish community that gave Barack 80 percent of its votes, plus the
neocons and Evangelical right calling for strikes against Iran's
nuclear sites, would the Obama-Clinton team stand united -- against
war?
Would Hillary, a former senator from New York who relied even more
heavily than Barack on Jewish contributions and votes, stand by
Barack if the two disagree on whether the survival of Israel is at
stake?
On second thought, the antiwar left is right to be nervous.
SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/12/pjb-can-this-marriage-last/