This interview with Hilary Clinton published in the New York Times of March 14 is worth studying carefully.

Commentary I have seen focuses on the fact that a Clinton administration will not in fact be withdrawing from Iraq which merely confirms what her opponents in the Democrat party already understood.

I haven't come across any discussion of the following passage:

I think it’s very helpful that we’ve had a Democratic Congress elected, where the Democrats are saying, “We’re going to begin a phased redeployment, we’re not staying there forever.” It actually gives more leverage to Bush and the Iraqi government to be able to say, “You know what, this is serious, these folks are trying to pass legislation. They’re talking about limiting what can happen over here. Don’t you think we ought to start dealing with some of these festering issues?”

It also helps to concentrate the attention of some of the neighbors. How long are they going to fund the Sunni insurgents or the Shiites if they really believe that they might be left naked, literally holding the bag, with nobody in between and no American forces to point the finger at?

To me, if you look at this in more of a geopolitical way, a lot of what I’m suggesting and a lot of the moves that I think would be helpful, are ones that maybe or maybe not would ever come to pass — you know, you have to do something to see what the reaction is.

To me that makes it quite clear the Democrat leadership understands and is conscious of the role they are playing. The "redeployment" policy outlined in the rest of the interview isn't intended to "ever come to pass" but to "give more leverage to Bush". What looks like extreme partisanship (and is for many of its enthusiasts) turns out to also be a "good cop/bad cop" form of (incoherent) bipartisanship as far as the mainstream Democrat leadership is concerned.

Another example of this play acting can be seen in recent backing away from Democrat legislation to require Bush to obtain Congressional authorization before any attack on Iran. There is overwhelming opposition to any such actual attack but equally widespread opposition to "taking the threat off the table". Since Democrats are perfectly well aware that the US government is in no position to start a war with Iran there is no need for them to actually restrain it from doing so, while nevertheless continuing to whip up as much alarm as they can among both the American people and the Iranian government  that Bush might be crazy enough to do it.

Empty threats are seen by the political class of a declining last superpower as "strengthening  our diplomatic hand". This bizarre atmosphere results in unintelligible "analysis" and op-eds served up by "opinion leaders" to themselves and effectively precludes public comprehension of what the policy issues actually are so that the masses as well as the "opinion leaders" are completely demobilized.

While still finding it hard to keep up with what's going on, I'm reasonably comfortable with what I wrote just before the release of the Baker report at the end of last year:

There will be no timetable for withdrawal, no coherent exit strategy and no coherent strategy for victory. Instead the aim will be to assist the majority of Democrats to shift from a defeatist orientation while maintaining maximum obscurity in US declaratory policy.

Declaratory policy needs to threaten the Sunnis with "unleashing the Shia", threaten the Shia with prospects of the US pulling out if they don't accommodate the Sunnis, and sustain the illusion that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is a blow against Iran and not a victory for the Palestinians.

Most of all it has to marginalize the emerging consensus that the Middle East should be left to stagnate under tyranny, and smooth the way for "realists" to accept the new reality that not only Iraq, but also Palestine, Lebanon and soon Egypt and the rest of the region will be governed by regimes acceptable to the people of those countries and consequently highly unacceptable to what "realists" previously tried to maintain by propping up the tyrannies.

Consequently it has to be completely incoherent and just leave the "opinion leaders" with the feeling that they had better start writing op-eds about something else instead of imagining that either they or Iraq's neighbours have a say in how Iraq will be governed.

Following the report, my expectation is that popular nostrums such as splitting Iraq into 3, installing a dictator or abandoning Iraq to be torn apart in civil war and regional war will fade from the mainstream discourse as people realize that there is now an accepted bipartisan consensus that none of these proposals are remotely plausible as US policies, even though there is no clarity as to just what the new bipartisan policy actually implies.

I also expect that there will soon be quite rapid movement on establishing a Palestinian State based on the 1967 boundaries with opposition to this thoroughly marginalized and support for it bipartisan.

Although the process will still drag on, the almost complete marginalization of opposition to a Palestinian State based on the 1967 borders is highlighted by the absence of controversy about the latest Israeli government shift towards accepting the 1967 borders by suddenly seeing "positive elements" in the Arab League plan they rejected 5 years ago. Likewise the collapse of the Quartet boycott of the Hamas led Palestine Authority, including the US working with its finance minister seems to be happening without much Congressional or Israeli hysteria.

Although the hostility of "opinion leaders" to the Iraq war has continued to escalate, their popular nostrums have already started to fade. They seem to be resigning themselves to just blaming Bush with greater and greater vehemence rather than continuing to advocate alternative "policies" like installing a dictator or splitting Iraq into 3 as though it was up to Americans to decide such things. There is still a lot of support for "abandoning Iraq" but Clinton's positioning herself this way more than a year ahead of the Presidential primaries is advance notice that isn't going to fly either.

The "surge" is clearly neither a coherent strategy for victory nor an exit plan. But it has taken the pressure off demands to withdraw and Clinton's interview shows how far the process of the Democrat majority shifting from a defeatist orientation has gone, as well as illustrating the "maximum obscurity" in the way it panders to those who do want to just abandon Iraq. The Iraqi government is now getting some breathing room in which to enable a political realignment within Iraq and among the neighbours.

A lot of stuff from Democrats has been denouncing the Bush administration for failing to put enough pressure on the Iraqi government to compromise with those in the Sunni minority still determined to restore minority rule. The tone has been oriented towards defeatism and blaming the Iraqis for defeat so that Americans can feel better about cutting and running. That tone also comes through in a lot of the Clinton interview with a completely incoherent "exit strategy" of letting Baghdad be drowned in a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing while withdrawing US troops to safety behind a line north of Baghdad.

The passage quoted above however is significantly different. It is the first time I have noticed anybody spelling out the fact that the Democrat leadership is pursuing that line as part of a coordinated strategy intended to make the threat of US withdrawal more credible and that this is aimed at encouraging the neighbours to stop stirring up sectarian conflict and accept the new reality of a democratically elected Iraqi government.

The threat of withdrawal unless the Iraqi government meets "benchmarks" looks completely empty coming from the Bush administration, but the collapse of public support for the war and Democrat defeatism makes the threat of the next US administration pulling out look very credible indeed.

Much of the "realist" opposition fairly explicitly feeds Sunni intransigence by treating Iraq's constitution and elected government as just one of the factions fighting and holding out the prospect of a "regional solution" in which "moderate Arab" neighbours (ie Sunni autocracies) "stabilize" Iraq (ie cancel the constitution and impose an autocratic government).

However Clinton's threats are quite explicitly, and very harshly, directed at undermining Sunni intransigence. She spells out that US withdrawal from Baghdad means ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad.

So, yes, there will still be Al Qaeda and other extremist elements operating in Baghdad, but we’re not going to be putting pressure on the Iraqi government to limit their response, or to prevent self-defense on the part of people in the neighborhoods who are being subjected to this reign of violence.

...

Q. Wouldn’t another limitation of this approach be, that it would put American troops pretty much in the position of being bystanders if there was to be an escalation of the civil conflict of sectarian attacks and would be sitting in their bases while civilians —

A. That’s right.

Q. — were being killed just outside the gates?

A. That’s exactly right, and that may be inevitable. And it certainly may be the only way to concentrate the attention of the parties. If we were to say, we’re out of there, we’re moving, the Sunnis act with impunity in part because they feel like we’re not going to be able to find them and prevent them at the rate that they are producing suicide bombers. The Shiites feel still somewhat constrained.

Reading the tea leaves of American declaratory policy is extremely frustrating and confusing. The more "realist" and "liberal" opponents of the Iraq war realize they are stuck with it and have to vote to keep funding it, the more extravagent their "non-binding resolutions" and rhetoric against it become.

But to really get a feel for contradictory rhetoric check out this speech by an Iraqi Arab Sunni politician associated with the Baathist "honorable resistance". He's the sort of person any Iraqi democrat would be more inclined to string up from a lamp post  than to accommodate. He's still  demanding that neighbouring Arab countries intervene militarily against the  elected government of Iraq (which he describes as the US having handed Iraq to Iran).  But at the same time the actual content of his speech is to advise the insurgents to  start fighting Al Qaeda and look to the US for protection.

So far the consensus that the Middle East should be left to stagnate in tyranny has been consolidated rather than marginalized. There is still lots of triumphalism from "realists" about the US back-pedalling on democratic transformation throughout the region and regimes like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are clearly taking full advantage of the opportunity to make hay while the sun shines.

However measures like the crackdown in Egypt and the anti-Shia backlash from Sunni regimes only highlight their isolation from the people. While America is certainly becoming more and more unpopular (except in Iran) that does not make the regimes any stronger. In fact the mutual toadying between the regimes and the US during the current back-pedalling by the US only discredits them further and assists in their internal opponents shaking off the image of being American stooges.

Anti-US rhetoric can be expected to continue escalating throughout the region, as well as in Europe, Australia etc  to the despair of American "opinion leaders" who themselves echo parallel sentiments. That however does not translate into increased support for jihadi terrorism any more than liberal rhetoric does.

PS Sorry for unintelligibility. I figure its better to get some hard-to-follow notes out than either to take time off from reading to write clearly or just postpone writing.

Yes. This article by a pissed off anti war voice confirms the above and has an interesting analysis in the second half

If Elected, Hilary Clinton Vows to Keep US Troops in Iraq

In stating her commitment to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq if she is elected president in 2008, Hillary Clinton is merely making explicit the real policy of the Democratic leadership as a whole, all of the talk about ending the war and bringing “the troops home” notwithstanding.

This is made clear by the Democratic Leadership Council, the most powerful caucus within the Democratic Party, which recently posted on its web site a statement entitled “Plan B on Iraq,” which ridiculed the demand for a “rapid and complete withdrawal from Iraq” as “Plan Zero.”

In a fairly straightforward passage, the article noted that “many of the ‘deadline for withdrawal’ plans circulating in Congress actually assume we will leave significant non-conventional-combat forces in Iraq for an extended period of time; most have loopholes for changing the withdrawal schedule as necessary.” It continues: “All the focus on deadlines obscures discussion of the need for a smaller, redeployed force with a crucially different but still urgent mission. Those offering plans for withdrawal of ‘combat troops’ need to be much more explicit about the kind of US troops that should remain.”

US Secretary of Defence  Robert  Gates seems to be saying something similar about how the Democrat calls for withdrawal have a positive impact:

Gates went on to say that he believes open debate in the U.S. Congress about the future of U.S. involvement in Iraq is instructive, in that it shows the Iraqis that American patience has limits and that it’s time for the Iraqis to make concrete progress on their own. “As General (David) Petraeus (commander of Multinational Force Iraq) has said, there’s a Baghdad clock and there’s the Washington clock,” Gates quipped.

Still, he added that he opposes specific deadlines for withdrawal from Iraq.

“I’ve been pretty clear that I think the enactment of specific deadlines would be a bad mistake,” he said. “But I think that the debate itself, and I think that the strong feelings expressed in the Congress about the timetable, it probably has had a positive impact -- at least I hope it has, in terms of communication to the Iraqis that this is not an open-ended commitment.”

In the next few weeks we can expect the bipartisan incoherence to deepen. Looks like its coming to a head quicker than I thought as it appears the Democrats do intend to send a bill insisting on withdrawal for Bush to veto this round rather than next.

Then we get the Democrats simultaneously providing more funding than Bush has asked for to continue the war, while also proclaiming their opposition. Meanwhile we get the SECDEF confirming that the Democrat opposition is "positive".

No doubt the Iraqis will get the message about "inscrutable occidentals".

arthur said:

 No doubt the Iraqis will get the message about "inscrutable occidentals".

 Well with those big round eyes, who can tell what they're thinking?