So, candidates, the question is: Have we walked away from the Constitution? If so, shouldn't we publish some sort of notice or bulletin?
3. What do we want from the Middle East?
Is it all about oil? Israel? Old-fashioned hegemony and containment? What is our goal in fighting an intensifying proxy war with Iran, newly expanded into cyberspace? Are we worried about a nuclear Iran, or just worried about a new nuclear club member in general? Will we continue the nineteenth-century game of supporting thug dictators who support our policies in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Libya (until overwhelmed by events on the ground), and opposing the same actions by other thugs who disagree with us like Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Syria's Bashar Al Assad? That kind of policy thinking did not work out too well in the long run in Central and South America, and history suggests that we should make up our mind on what America's goals in the Middle East might actually be. No cheating now -having no policy is a policy of its own.
Candidates, can you define America's predominant interest in the Middle East and sketch out a series of at least semi-sensical actions in support of it?
4. What is your plan to right-size our military and what about downsizing the global mission?
The decade-and counting-of grinding war in Iraq and Afghanistan has worn the American military down to its lowest point since Vietnam. Though drugs and poor discipline are not tearing out its heart as they did in the 1970s, suicide among soldiers now takes that first-chair position. The toll on families of endless deployments is hard to measure but easy to see. The expanding role of the military abroad (reconstruction, peacekeeping, disaster relief, garrisoning a long necklace of bases from Rota, Spain, to Kadena, Okinawa) seems to require a vast standing army. At the same time, the dramatic increase in the development and use of a new praetorian guard, Joint Special Operations Command, coupled with a militarized CIA and its drones, have given the president previously unheard of personal killing power. Indeed, Obama has underscored his unchecked solo role as the "decider" on exactly who gets obliterated by drone assassins.
So, candidates, here's a two-parter: Given that a huge Occupy Everywhere army is killing more of its own via suicide than any enemy, what will you do to right-size the military and downsize its global mission? Secondly, did this country's founders really intend for the president to have unchecked personal war-making powers?
5. Since no one outside our borders buys American exceptionalism anymore, what's next? What is America's point these days?
The big one. We keep the old myth alive that America is a special, good place, the most "exceptional" of places in fact, but in our foreign policy we're more like some mean old man, reduced to feeling good about himself by yelling at the kids to get off the lawn (or simply taking potshots at them).
During the cold war, the American ideal represented freedom to so many people, even if the reality was far more ambiguous. Now, who we are and what we are abroad seems so much grimmer, so much less appealing (as global opinion polls regularly indicate). In light of the Iraq invasion and occupation, and the failure to embrace the Arab Spring, America the Exceptional, has, it seems, run its course.
America the Hegemonic, a tough if unattractive moniker, also seems a goner, given the slow-motion defeat in Afghanistan and the never-ending stalemate that is the "Global War on Terror." Resource imperialist? America's failure to either back away from the Greater Middle East and simply pay the price for oil, or successfully grab the oil, adds up to a "policy" that only encourages ever more instability in the region. The saber rattling that goes with such a strategy (if it can be called that) feels angry, unproductive and without any doubt unbelievably expensive.
So candidates, here are a few questions: Who exactly are we in the world and who do you want us to be? Are you ready to promote a policy of fighting to be planetary top dog-and we all know where that leads-or can we find a place in the global community? Without resorting to the usual "shining city on a hill" metaphors, can you tell us your vision for America in the world? (Follow up: No really, cut the BS and answer this one, gentlemen. It's important!)
6. Bonus Question: To each of the questions above add this: How do you realistically plan to pay for it? For every school and road built in Iraq and Afghanistan on the taxpayer dollar, why didn't you build two here in the United States? When you insist that we can't pay for crucial needs at home, explain to us why these can be funded abroad. If your response is we had to spend that money to "defend America," tell us why building jobs in this country doesn't do more to defend it than anything done abroad.
Now, that might spark a real debate, one that's long, long overdue.
