To skip this introduction and go directly to read Jeff Weintraub’s In-Depth Analysis “Some Partial, Preliminary & Unfashionable Thoughts Toward Reassessing the 2003 Iraq War – Did Anything Go Right and What Were The Alternatives?” click here.

I was sure in the lead up to the Iraq War that it wouldn’t happen. It seemed obvious to me that it made no sense, and I couldn’t believe that the U.S. would embark on such foolishness. One of my big mistakes, obviously. While Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and American capacity to wage two wars, one clearly by choice, seemed to be a huge strategic mistake, the war proceeded and escalated, and we have paid.

Nonetheless, I did understand why deposing Saddam was desirable. His regime was reprehensible. I respected those who called for opposition to its totalitarianism, from the informed Kanan Makiya to my Central European friends, Adam Michnik, Vaclav Havel, et al. I even said so at an anti-war rally.

Yet, connecting the means at our disposal with the desirable end of a free and democratic Iraq seemed to me to be an extraordinarily difficult project, and I had absolutely no confidence that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Company could pull it off. How could my intelligent friends who supported the war not see that? I actually had a number of heated public discussions with Michnik about that.

Once begun, I hoped that the intervention would be short and sweet, and hoped that a democratic transition could be managed, but as we now know these hopes were frustrated. From every point of view, the war was a disaster: for the Iraq, the region, the U.S., and the project of democracy, and the way the war was fought, as it was part of a purported global war against terror, compromised American democratic principles. As time has passed many of the early supporters see all this and have changed their judgments, and those who haven’t, such as John McCain, choose not to focus in their speech and action on the question of entrance into the war, but rather on the exit, the so called surge, which they purport explains limited American successes.

But I am curious: what have become of those who as a matter of principle supported the war? And what have become of their arguments? A few brave souls have stuck to their positions. To have a richer understanding of our recent past and to reflect on the challenges of the day, I think it is worth paying attention. Thus, today’s In-Depth post: Jeff Weintraub’s “Some Partial, Preliminary & Unfashionable Thoughts Toward Reassessing the 2003 Iraq War – Did Anything Go Right and What Were The Alternatives?”

To read Jeff Weintraub’s In-Depth Analysis, “Some Partial, Preliminary & Unfashionable Thoughts Toward Reassessing the 2003 Iraq War – Did Anything Go Right and What Were The Alternatives?”click here.

I have long been intrigued by the distance between principle and practice, how people respond to the distance, and what the consequences are, of the distance and the response. This was my major concern in The Cynical Society. It is central to “the civil society as if” strategy of the democratic opposition that developed around the old Soviet bloc, which I explored in Beyond Glasnost and After the Fall. And it is also central to how I think about the politics of small things and reinventing political culture, including many of my own public engagements: from my support of Barack Obama, to my understanding of my place of work, The New School for Social Research and my understanding of this experiment in publication, Deliberately Considered. I will explain in a series of posts. Today a bit more about Obama and his Nobel Lecture, and the alternative to cynicism.

I think principle is every bit as real as practice. Therefore, in my last post, I interpreted Obama’s lecture as I did. But I fear my position may not be fully understood. A friend on Facebook objected to the fact that I took the lecture seriously. “The Nobel Address marked the Great Turn Downward, back to Cold War policies a la Arthur Schlesinger Jr. et al. A big depressing moment for many of us.”

He sees many of the problems I see in Obama’s foreign policy, I assume, though he wasn’t specific. He is probably quite critical of the way the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued, critical of the drone policy, disappointed by the fact that Guantanamo prison is still open, and by Obama’s record on transparency and the way he has allowed concern for national security take priority over human and civil rights, at home and abroad. The clear line between Bush’s foreign policy and Obama’s, which both my friend and I sought, has not been forthcoming. And he draws a logical conclusion: “a great turn downward.”

My friend sees a familiar failure: militarism wrapped in an elegant intellectual package (the reference to Schlesinger). In the distance between perceived principled promise and practice, “the best and the brightest” seem to be at it again: sophisticated rationalization for militarism reminiscent of the Cold War and its ideology, He sees the distance between the ideal and the practice as proof that the professed ideal was a sham. Perhaps he even makes the cynical move that the fancy words are but a mask for narrow self-interest (election and re-election) serving the interest of the powerful (the neo-liberal corporate elite). Is Obama’s advancement just about serving the interests of the hegemonic corporate order? Is their advancement linked directly to his serving their interests. Are the two primary cynical observations I studied in The Cynical Society all there is? It’s not what you know but who you know, and they’re all in it for themselves.

I, when I wrote my book and now, judge the ideal more independently, connected to practice to be sure, but connected not only in a cynical way, but also connected to the possibility of critique, a way to empower critical practice. Cynicism is the opposite of criticism, a major theme of my book. And now I read the Nobel lecture with this starting point. The lecture provides a guide to critically appraise Obama and his policies, and it provides the grounds upon which to critically respond to the shortcomings of the policies. As I put it in the post: “The Nobel Laureate Obama as critic of President Obama.”

I see no reason to take the flawed actions of the Obama administration as being somehow more real than the professed complex ideals expressed in the Nobel lecture. Action and ideal interact in an important and consequential ways that suggest future possibility.

Yesterday I read a piece, “Obama’s Drone Debacle.” It reports that the drone policy has been more determined by career bureaucrats in the national security establishment than by the President and his White House. “It’s clear that the president and the attorney general both want more transparency,” says Matthew Miller, a former senior Justice Department official. “But the bureaucracy has once again thrown sand in the gears and slowed that down.” This does not relieve Obama of the responsibility for his policies, but it suggests an ongoing battle within the administration that may yield a change in direction. The article cynically highlights that Rand Paul outmaneuvered Obama in his filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to lead the CIA. This is “Obama’s debacle.” The Nobel lecture reveals the thought behind possible change.

Am I again just apologizing for the politician I admire? Perhaps, but I think there is more to it than that. For even as I am critical with my friend of directions Obama has taken, I see a leader trying to move the public and not just making empty gestures of change. I see a complicated ideal being kept alive and shaping foreign policy to a degree, if not enough for my friend and others with similar criticisms. The U.S. surely is disengaging from the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq more quickly with Obama, than we would have with either McCain or Romney. American foreign policy is moving away from extreme militarism that Obama’s Republican opponents proposed as a matter of principle. Principles matter.

And lastly the general point, without the ideal publicly visible, there is next to no chance that it will be acted upon. I saw and reported how this animated practice in the Polish underground. It explains why I think America is not only “the cynical society” but also a democratic society, simultaneously, with democratic ideals moving action, even as manipulation and cynicism are rampant. And more close to my intellectual home, it is why The New School for Social Research is a very special institution of higher education and scholarship, even when it has faced profound challenges and has been undermined by less than enlightened leadership for long periods of time. That will be the subject of my next “Principle and Practice” post.

There will be more prose, less poetry, though President Obama will certainly highlight the themes of his Inaugural Address and his earlier poetic speeches. He will be specific about policy: on immigration, gun violence, climate change, military expenditures and reforms, and the need for a balanced approach to immediate and long-term economic challenges. He will hang tough on the sequestration, calling the Republicans’ bluff, and he will warn of the dangers the U.S. faces abroad, while he defends his foreign policy, including his major accomplishment of ending two disastrous wars (though he won’t call them that). The speech is going to be about jobs and the middle class. This is all expected by the chattering class, and I think Obama will meet expectations. But I also think that there will be more interesting things going on. The President will move forcefully ahead on his major project, moving the center left on issues foreign and domestic. And there are significant signs he is succeeding, see this report from a deep red state.

Look for an opening to Republican moderates. I suspect Obama will not only stake out his positions, but also point to the way that those holding other positions may work with him on contentious issues. This will be most apparent in immigration reform. He will also likely address Republicans concerns about long-term cuts in government spending.

He will highlight the need for a leaner, but as mean, military budget, as he denounces the dangers of the thoughtless cuts in military spending via the sequester. Real cuts in military spending will please his base, including me, but also some more libertarian Republicans, Rand Paul, though not John McCain.

Less pleasing for progressives would be what Obama very well may say about so-called “entitlements.” I am not sure he will do this now, but if not now, when?

He could make clear his priority – control medical and Medicare expenses, reminding us that this is a task of Obamacare, but he also may make gestures suggesting more Republican friendly solutions concerning intelligent cutting of expenditures: on indexing and eligibility issues for Medicare and perhaps also Social Security. He is unlikely to be specific. He will emphasize that these programs are essential. Yet, he could strategically reveal an openness to Republican ideas, as he emphasizes the need for bi-partisan support of infrastructure, education, research and development, meeting the economic and environmental challenges of the day. This would be an invitation to moderate Republicans to break away from the “party of no.”

Obama’s recent legislative victories included Republican votes on the fiscal cliff and the debt ceiling. I believe he will talk about the economy in such a way that he strengthens his capacity to draw upon this new governing coalition. He will do it in the name of the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class. This is the formulation of Obama for ordinary folk, the popular classes, the great bulk of the demos, the people. In this speech and in others, they are the subjects of change, echoing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: government of the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class, by the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class, for the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class. (More on this on another day.)

Obama will declare the state of the Union as fundamentally sound and improving. He will underscore the contingencies of the improvement. He will speak to the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class, but also to the members of Congress.  Speaking to the Congress, he will draw upon the themes of his re-election campaign and his recent speeches on gun violence and immigration. With public support, he will call on Congress to act, and he will suggest the path. He will speak in the name of those who voted for him, but will reach out to the representatives of those who didn’t to find common cause on key crucial issues. He will voice his fundamental commitments and suggest compromise. It will be interesting to see how he will balance these.

I think Obama’s constancy is the most remarkable aspect of his presidency. Tactics have changed, as he has worked with a Democratic majority in Congress, with a Republican dominated Congress, and against a Republican dominated Congress. But his goals have not changed, most clearly summarized, in my judgment, in two key speeches. The one that made him a national figure: his keynote address to the Democratic Convention in 2004 (and the many speeches that followed repeated its inclusive themes) and his recent Inaugural Address, which most clearly and compactly articulates his progressive aspirations. He is a centrist who wants to include into public debate the experiences and aspirations of the American people in its diversity, including the diversity of opinion: progressive, conservative and moderate. But he has his specific commitments, and he wants those commitments, most sharply revealed in the Inaugural Address, to be at the center of the debate. Expect a State of the Union that links these two speeches, pointing to specific actions, and, therefore, pushing forward the Obama transformation.

One of our rhetorical tics, so common and so universal as to be unremarkable, is the shared assertion by liberals and conservatives alike that our soldiers are our heroes. We may disagree about foreign policy, but soldiers are the bravest and the greatest. That mainstream politicians should make this claim – Obama and Bush, McCain and Kerry – should provoke little surprise, but it flourishes as a trope among the anti-war left as well. Political strategies reverberate through time as we refight our last discursive war.

In the heated years of the War in Vietnam there was a palpable anger by opponents of that war that was directed against members of the military who bombed the killing fields of Cambodia, Hanoi, and Hue. While accounts of soldiers being spat upon were more apocryphal than real, used by pro-war forces to attack their opponents. According to sociologist Jerry Lembcke in his book The Spitting Image the story was an urban legend, but it is true that many who opposed the war considered soldiers to be oppressors, or in the extreme, murderers. This was a symbolic battle in which the anti-war forces were routed, and such language was used to delegitimize principled opposition to the war and to separate the young college marchers from the working class soldiers who were doing the bidding of presidents and generals. In the time of a national draft, college students were excused from service, making the class divide evident. (For the record, I admit to cowardice, fearing snipers, fragging, and reveille. I was a chicken dove).

After the war, war critics learned a lesson. No longer would the men with guns be held responsible for the bullets. All blame was to be placed upon government and none on the soldiers, even though the draft had been abolished, and the military became all-volunteer (and the working class and minority population continued to increase in the ranks).

By the time that American adventures in the Gulf and in Afghanistan became part of our political taken-for-granted, so did the rhetoric of soldier-as-hero. Perhaps these rhetorical choices were strategic, but they also served to give our military a moral pass.

When Barack Obama was a candidate he assured voters that he would conclude this national nightmare. Yes, politics involves bluster and blarney, but bringing the troops home in an orderly process seemed a firm commitment, a project for his first term. I trusted that this hope and change was not merely a discursive sop to those who found long-term and bloody American intervention intolerable. Here was a war that seemed hopeless in year one and now in year eleven it seems no more hopeful. To be sure it is a low-grade debacle, but a debacle none-the-less. If, as some have suggested, we invaded Afghanistan to put the fear of God into the hearts of Pakistanis, the strategy has been charmingly ineffective. It seems abundantly clear that our choice is to determine when we will declare the war lost, and when Americans and Afghans will no longer die at each others hands.

Wars cannot be conducted without the connivance of soldiers. Soldiers are the pawns that permit State policy. I recognize that in parlous economic times there are many strategic reasons for desiring the benefits of a military life. And spittle is not political philosophy. But choice is always tethered to responsibility. Members of the military are accepting and even benefiting from a misguided and destructive policy. The nation of Afghanistan deserves self-determination free from our boots on the ground. And the absence of complaint among the all-volunteer military underlines the complicity of our soldiers.

So I do reject the choices of the members of the military whose presence and obedience makes possible the fantasias of foreign policy strategists. They have moral responsibility for their decisions. But the responsibility is not theirs alone, but ours. That we have been unable, unwilling, or unconcerned to stop an unending war against a nation that did not attack us is a mark of shame. It reveals the American public as timid and craven.

Are soldiers responsible for their actions? Surely. Should soldiers be hated? Not until the rest of us are willing to hold a mirror to our own acquiescence in a system that reveals in our political priorities that War and Peace matters far less than Standard and Poors.