Rand Paul’s antiwar populism should be celebrated, not scorned

Rand Paul has officially been running for president for three days now, and all we’ve seen is flak that he’s an isolationist or antiwar. As if these are demerits, rather than being shining attributes for a presidential candidate in an age of drones and international torment and human rights violations.

Where is the support for Paul’s dovish foreign policy inside mainstream political life? I’ve seen almost none. Just Chris Matthews, who wants to embrace Paul’s populism but has had to back off because he said on announcement day that “piggish” money was behind the Paul attacks. The neoconservatives have gone crazy over the remark, trying to paint Matthews as anti-semitic.

A generation ago there was a broad liberal populist antiwar position. It was built around resistance to the draft; the Vietnam War combined the fates of the elites and middle class and working class people, and there was some solidarity between the classes. Where’s the solidarity now? When commentators note that Rand Paul is supported by young people, is there any awareness in our media that maybe that’s because they are more vulnerable to the militaristic policies of the American establishment? Just this morning there was another story about an Iraq veteran with Traumatic Brain Injury whose family has experienced a wrenching ordeal and will do for years to come. The media should be connecting the dots and it’s not. When Paul tells his Kentucky audience that he’s a better leader because he worked as a roofer and a house-painter, is there anyone in the elites who can even relate?

Last month in Madison, Wisconsin, Norman Finkelstein said that when he was young and the Vietnam atrocity was unfolding, he lived the antiwar movement 24-7-365. Then he brought that spirit forward to the Middle East: 

Does anybody think that what the world needs now, after Iraq, after the massive killing, the massive generation of refugees and all the death and destruction that ensued– is there anybody, anybody, on God’s earth who thinks what we need now at this present moment, what’s most urgent on our world agenda, is a war with Iran?

Well yes it turns out that anybody does want war. There is plenty of support for war now, from Senator Tom Cotton who says a war would just take a few days to Benjamin Netanyahu to AIPAC to Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal:

Is targeted military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities—with all the unforeseen consequences that might entail—a better option than a grimly foreseeable future of a nuclear Iran..?

To which Bill Kristol, the ceaseless propagandist for war for others, the neoconservative godfather who refused to serve in Vietnam, answers:

Yes.

Ali Gharib:

of course… some people do want war. These include some congressional critics, some Israeli officials, some in the pro-Israel movement and some of Iran’s Sunni Arab neighbors. None acts as a monolith, but their beautiful diversity definitely includes some warmongers.

And my question is, Where is the official resistance? Where are the mainstream media voices denouncing these calls to arms? Where are the reporters and commentators standing up against what Finkelstein rightly calls the insanity? I don’t hear them.

No, the reporters think that Republican voters want another war. Like NPR’s political editor Domenico Montanaro:

[T]he big obstacle for [Rand Paul] really is foreign policy. When you think about what’s been in the news lately – the Iran framework deal, the Islamic State militant group kind of having this rise to power in Iraq – now the hawks are back. And it’s hard for Rand Paul to have his politics of peace and negotiation and somewhat of a nonintervention to really take center stage whereas it had had a little bit of a moment a year or two ago. That’s very much changed this time around.

Like John Heilemann, who said the same thing when Charlie Rose asked him about Paul’s alleged “isolationism.”

[Paul is] getting a lot of brushback pitches just today. That is his biggest problem right now that in in a time of war the traditional Republican strength and military assertiveness which have not been his calling card before, they are predominant in the party, and he is trying to get to a more conventional place.

So supporting war is now conventional!

Rand Paul explained on CNN that it is neoconservatives who are fomenting this climate.

This is sort of this neocon community; and the neoconservatives have really never met a war they didn’t like.

And Wolf Blitzer promptly covered for them, calling them the “so-called neocons.” When he should be grilling the neoconservatives, or putting Finkelstein on, to make his argument that all the world is against a war except two countries (Israel and Saudi Arabia).

This is an issue of political corruption. The rich backers of the neocons want a war, but who else? Not the voters. Writing in the Washington Post, Daniel Drezner, a scholar at Tufts and Brookings, says that the policy is being driven by donors: Bill Kristol is conducting a financial sweepstakes for the Republican candidates; and the result is that the entire party is now assembled in the neocon camp.

even though Republican voters are genuinely split about the Iran negotiations, the 2016 GOP field and the folks who are funding them are not split at all. There continues to be hawkish outbidding on Iran in particular and foreign policy in general in order to appease key financial backers — all of whom share Kristol’s basic worldview. The lone exception, Rand Paul, has been on the defensive since his announcement earlier this week.

Chris Matthews came under attack from the right for talking about the “piggish” money behind the ads. He had to walk that back, saying that it was a term from his youth:

The people we called pigs back in the 1960s, are out there bankrolling the war hawks

But that’s exactly what’s happening. The hawks are getting bankrolled by fatcat neocons. Eli Clifton documents this process every day. He should be appearing on MSNBC.
The neocons are flexing their mu$cles. On Wednesday, Kristol trumpeted the second ad against Paul in two days from the shadowy group Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America. The ad says

Rand Paul… supports Obama’s appeasement of Iran.

[Rand Paul audio:] “Our national security is not threatened by Iran having one nuclear weapon.”

Even one Iranian bomb would be a disaster.

This is why Jeb Bush’s political team put the kibosh on Elbridge Colby as foreign policy director– because Colby had given support to the Iran deal, and that would alienate Kristol.

But it’s not limited to Republicans. Another neocon front called the American Security Initiative has begun targeting Democrats with ads that demonstrate its financial power. Politico:

[T]he American Security Initiative is rolling out $650,000 worth of ads aimed at influencing senators to support a bill from Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) that would allow Congress to accept or reject lifting congressional sanctions in any Iran deal.

And Politico says that the group is praising Va. Senator Tim Kaine, who is widely spoken of as a Democratic vice presidential nod, for his support of the Corker bill:

A smaller broadcast ad buy of about $141,000 will begin running on Friday in the Richmond, Va., area praising Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) for his support of the Corker bill.

That group is bipartisan. The Democrats are a profile in discouragement on the antiwar question and the liberal press is toothless on the issue for the same reason the Republicans are hawkish, political contributions. The National Jewish Democratic Council has nothing to say in support of the deal, but it is busy bashing Rand Paul on foreign aid to Israel, as is the Democratic National Committee, which has done nothing to support Obama on Iran, even as it’s criticizing Paul endlessly on gay rights. And yes, Paul has a lamentable record on civil rights questions and on the civil rights act (though it should mean something to liberals that he spoke out against the incarceration rates of black Americans in his announcement speech).

But I’m not endorsing a candidate here, I’m talking about the discourse. Rand Paul has raised a central constitutional/spiritual/economic question about our future. Why aren’t the neocons on the defensive?

Being antiwar is a noble populist position. When leaders go to war, it’s the people who pay the ultimate price. It’s nothing less than a tragedy that our society has successfully divorced the elites from the people who are at risk.