The Image of the Chessmaster

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf

Picking up on Ezra here, the "Democrats are clever, wily foreign policy strategists" meme is a great place to start.  The important thing is that this idea be imbued with the flavor of dramatic and exciting victory.  One of the big differences between the Bush and Kerry foreign policy images of 2004 is that the image of how Bush would lead us to victory in foreign affairs was, for most Americans, easily accessible.  We'd fire our guns, drop our bombs, and blow away the bad guys wherever they were in the world.  The image of Kerry-style victory was harder to grasp. 

Democratic rhetoric on foreign policy has to make this image vivid.  I was wishing for Kerry to boast about how a Kerry Administration could've inspected every closet in Iraq for WMD without putting a single soldier into the field.  (Give President Kerry a war resolution in November 2002, and that's what happens -- he makes Saddam respect Hans Blix, lets the inspectors keep searching after they made Saddam destroy his Al-Samoud missiles, and we learn that Iraq has no WMD without a single American causalty.) 

There are winning images that don't involve the blowing-up of stuff and people, and it's the job of anyone who thinks they might oppose a war in the future to discover them.  I'm sad to say that anything in the vein of "sophisticated, effective security; humane, peaceful protection" (suggested by a commenter on the earlier post) will lose to the image of ass-kicking that Republicans sell.  But chills can be sent down spines by the image of accomplishing massive foreign policy goals through brilliant diplomacy, without risking a single American life.  Americans like winning, but we don't like our soldiers getting killed.  The image of the chessmaster delivers on both. 

Of course, it's hard for a party out of power to do anything to establish a foreign policy reputation -- we have to handle some crises first.  We have a more illustrious foreign policy history than the GOP, if you go back to WWII, but our more distant successes are harder to draw on.  (One of the appealing things about Wes Clark is that he has the closest ties to our badassness in the Balkans.)  What we can do is tear down Republicans on their strategic incompetence, as Battlepanda does:

The Iranians are the big winners in this Iraq war you started. You diverted U.S. firepower on a State that had no W.M.D. and was not causing us problems and turned it into a fiery hellhole that is a continual drain on our blood and treasure. Meanwhile, the real threat, Iran, was allowed to continue its nuclear programs apace. As a cherry on top, we delivered them the gift of eliminating Saddam, a thorn in their side, and a shia-dominated government in Iraq.

Let me add that the Iraq War gave all our enemies big incentives to go ahead with WMD programs.  We remove Saddam, who had no WMD, and do nothing about Kim Il Jong and his nuclear missiles.  If you're an anti-American dictator, which one do you want to be?  Republicans have not only given the mullahs everything they wanted, they've given them reason to go all-out for nuclear weapons. 

Even if we aren't going to be running foreign policy until 2008, defining ourselves by attacking Bush for strategic and tactical failures is a way to start.  Part of the way you define yourself is by how you oppose your enemies, and calling Republicans out on this kind of incompetence is the way to go.