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THE STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP.
One of the interesting paradoxes of the McCain campaign is that you either have to assume he's a dedicated warmonger who prioritizes imperialist conquest over sensible analysis of the situation, or, as his campaign would have it, an inattentive reactionary who says warmongerish things because he's not really thought through the consequences. Conservatives, for instance, make a big deal about how unfairly liberals are treating McCain when they say he wants to be in Iraq for 100 years. What he actually said was that he wanted to be in Iraq for 100 years in a peaceful, friendly, strategic-partnership context, much like what we have in South Korea. It was 100 years of benign military occupation, not 100 years of war. This is apparently supposed to be exculpatory.
But it doesn't make sense on a couple levels. In South Korea, you have a relatively homogenous population, with one government that's broadly recognized as legitimate, and facing an external threat from the north. Hence, Americans on the border are welcomed. In Iraq, the divisions are internal, and massing American divisions on the border isn't of much use. Worse, our presence is not seen as the protective presence of a friend, but the continuing humiliation of an occupier.
Thus, it's entirely predictable that Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the most powerful cleric in Iraq, is saying that Iraq will not sign a "strategic partnership" with "U.S occupiers" as long as he has breath in his body. It wouldn't have been hard to predict that the nationalist clerics who largely control Iraq's societal stability would not support the permanent presence of a largely Christian army immune from Iraqi legal prosecution and loyal to another government. The best world interpretation of McCain's remarks is that he didn't think this would prove an impediment. Frankly, I felt safer when he was just being touted as a warmonger.
COMMENTS (7)
Also keep in mind that the US was welcomed in South Korea by a military dictatorship and as Korea has moved to a democracy the constant presence of US troops has become an issue especially as the US is seen as impediment to reconciliation with the North.
Posted by: Rob | May 26, 2008 12:11 PM
Why either, or?
McCain's outlook encompasses dedicated warmongering that prioritizes imperialist conquest AND favors inattentive reactionary actions without a thought for the consequences over sensible analysis of the situation
Posted by: lone wolf | May 26, 2008 1:51 PM
I find it fascinating that all these "it'll be just like Korea, it'll be just like Germany, it'll be like Japan" wishful thinking scenarios really fail to appreciate the fact that all these countries had just gone to war with incredibly powerful neighboring countries who still sat on their borders with enormous armies.
Korea had North Korea/China, Germany had the USSR, and Japan had both the USSR and China, very hungry and very angry on their borders!
So, if the choice were to, after a war when my country was weak and fraught with political division, to either have Americans endlessly stationed in my country, protecting us from invasion while meddling in my internal politics vs. being invaded by freaking STALIN--well, I, too, would welcome my American overlords.
But the Iraqis aren't in a "Holy Crap, STALIN is on the Borders" situation. They didn't start a stupid war or get invaded by their neighbors. In fact, we are the foreign army that invaded them and threw their country into chaos and made them vulnerable to their external enemies and to internal factions. And the whole "Saddam was worse" argument likewise cuts against us because we supported and armed that tyrant in his bloody war with Iran (and then played both sides against each other in the succeeding conflict).
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Posted by: Brittanypatroit | May 26, 2008 2:37 PM
I agree with you. However, It should be noted that the legitimacy of South Korea's government was not broadly accepted until recently. Anybody even slight left considered as illegitimate the American backed dictatorships that controlled Korea after the Americans pushed out Yo Unhyong's provisional government in 1945.
To respond to Rob, it should be noted that a great many people opposed the US forces in Korea as not only an impediment to reconciliation with the North, but also as the ultimate underpinning of Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, Chun Duhwan, and the massacre of the civilians in Kwangju and so on and so forth. In so far as North KOrea can be used as a reason for US forces, it is a reason that is almost entirely created by the initial entrance of US and Soviet forces into the region to "prepare the peninsula for independence." Good going, US, Britian and USSR! If this is what we should be expecting from Iraq, then we really are in trouble.
In sum, hostility to the US presence is not a recent development, but has been part of US dissident culture since the Americans arrived in 1945.
Adam
Posted by: Adam | May 26, 2008 3:06 PM
"US dissident culture" above should be "Korean dissident culture."
Cummings discusses many of the issues above in his Origins of the Korean War. His position on the post-liberation period and Korean Waris is by no means universally accepted now in either South Korean or the Anglo-American scholarly worlds. For one thing, he didn't work with Russian sources.
Nevertheless, the broad outlines of what I say above would, I think, be accepted by even much of the South Korean New Right.
But perhaps other commentators will disagree.
Adam
Posted by: Anonymous | May 26, 2008 3:11 PM
Please grow up and understand the price of freedom. We are in a war against very evil people who would like to see many citizens of the USA killed and our way of life destroyed.
Posted by: miriam | May 27, 2008 2:24 AM