A subtext in the Iraq debate.

“But the implications of gearing basic strategy to the two-MRC [Major Regional Conflict] requirement went even further. It made the use or threatened use of armed forces, as never before, central to the American conception of international politics. In war, it seemed, lay America's true comparative advantage. Thus, at a time when elsewhere in the West—whether correctly or not—skepticism about the utility of force was rising and defense budgets were in free fall, the United States embarked upon a radically different course. Afflicted with fears and resentments brought back from Vietnam and determined to press on with the agenda that Abrams had begun, Powell and fellow soldiers sold their countrymen on a proposition fraught with unforeseen consequences. Without giving the matter all that much thought, Americans decided that it was the nation's destiny to remain a military leviathan. Permanently possessing dominant power, irrespective of the conditions existing beyond the nation's borders, had become an unconditional prerequisite. In the military's rush to codify the ‘lessons of Desert Storm,’ larger questions about just what it was the Defense Department ought to be defending simply never came up for serious discussion.”

-Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. (55)

This controversy is pretty clearly coded into what Senators Obama and McCain are saying about Iraq, and it is part of why Obama's early opposition to the war has so much resonance with so many people. But because the subtext has not become explicit, no non-outsider politician seriously questions the premises of global power projection. But I for one would not be sad if we had a serious national conversation about said premises. (Not that I would have very much to contribute.)