The Wonk
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ON THE HILL
by Michael Crowley
The New Republic
Issue date 10.07.02
tnr.com
When Donald Rumsfeld arrived at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to testify about a possible war with Iraq last week, he faced a less-than-fearsome group of interrogators. Seven of the 13 Democratic senators seated above him were freshmen. Even the more senior Democrats, accustomed to debating domestic policy, seemed out of their element. And it didn't take long for that gravitas deficit to become painfully evident. Rumsfeld talked down to the junior Democrats. When Mark Dayton of Minnesota haltingly asked what has happened to make the United States hurry to war, for instance, Rumsfeld snapped at him: "What's different? What's different is three thousand people were killed!" Senior Democrats struggled as well. After the defense secretary explained that Saddam Hussein's underlings would likely be afraid to use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons for fear of U.S. retribution, Kennedy seemed to hear the opposite. "So if he says go, they'll go. That's what I'm hearing back from you," a puzzled-looking Kennedy said. "No, you're misunderstanding," Rumsfeld testily replied. And the ultra-long-winded West Virginian Robert Byrd bogged down Rumsfeld in tangential arguments about the Biological Weapons Convention and a Newsweek article on American support for Saddam in the 1980s. As Byrd waved the article in the air, repeating the phrase, "Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?" the audience laughed at his theatrics. The Democrats had picked this fight with Rumsfeld--and he was routing them.
Finally, the committee chairman, Democrat Carl Levin, cut Byrd off. At that moment he seemed like the only grown-up in the room. And that's symbolic of the bookish Michigan liberal's role in his party right now. Thanks to a safe seat, a lack of national ambition, and the credibility that comes from his detailed mastery of defense arcana, Levin can say what most of his Democratic colleagues feel but are afraid to assert: that there's no good reason to go after Iraq now. Although Democrats like Tom Daschle and Al Gore fired back at the White House this week, there's little doubt that most will back a strong resolution next month. Unfortunately for Levin's fellow skeptics, there aren't many others like him in the party. Which helps explain why George W. Bush's first victory of this war has come against the Democrats.
In many ways Carl Levin--a former Detroit city councilor and civil rights lawyer--is an unlikely spokesman for his party on military issues. The last Democrat to head the Armed Services Committee, former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, showed, via his conservatism on domestic issues, pro-Pentagon views, and Southern drawl, that he was no holdover from the party's anti-Vietnam past. Levin is different, following more in the tradition of former House Armed Services Chairman Les Aspin, another brainy dove with a shambling appearance and a voracious appetite for policy.
So while Levin doesn't command the media attention of a Joe Biden or a John Kerry, Democrats say he wields considerable private influence. One party leadership aide says that in private meetings Levin is accorded a rare deference by his colleagues on military issues. Just as Al Gore and Nunn proved themselves by boning up on throw-weights and reentry vehicles in the '80s, Levin "impressed everyone by mastering the arcana of defense policy," says Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute. John McCain publicly underscored Levin's stature when he said during his 2000 presidential bid that, if elected, he'd ask Levin to help advise him on America's national security priorities.
Although Levin opposed the 1991 Gulf war resolution--saying he feared "a broader conflagration in the Middle East with unknown results" (oops)--he is generally considered a foreign policy moderate. He is a devout internationalist, enthusiastically supported Bill Clinton's interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and focuses on arms control and nonproliferation. He's also stern enough to propose, as he did in January, that the United States withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia in favor "of a place that is more hospitable." He has supported the military spending increases of the past few years but often opposes flashy new weapons systems like the B-2 bomber and national missile defense. Just four days before the September 11 attacks, in fact, Levin's committee stripped $1.3 billion from Bush's missile-defense request and redirected nearly half of the money to anti-terrorism programs.
Unlike other Democrats, who tried to dodge the debate over war with Iraq when it began this summer, Levin quickly presented a position that was unusually coherent. And unlike many other Democrats--including presidential contenders John Kerry, John Edwards, and, more recently, Gore--Levin focused not on the procedural questions of arms inspectors and international support but on Bush's fundamental premise that an Iraq attack would be a good thing.
His basic argument is this: Until it's clear Iraq poses an imminent threat, the United States should continue to contain and deter it. The threshold for military action, Levin told NPR earlier this month, would only be "if there's evidence that [Iraq] participated in nine-eleven, or if they are on the verge of using a weapon of mass destruction, or we are persuaded that they have a nuclear weapon, for instance, and are about to use it." Saddam is concerned foremost with his own survival, Levin says, and, fearing retaliation, is thus not likely to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States. That is, unless we go into Iraq with the stated intent of capturing or killing him. "We know if we attack him, he's going to use every weapon he's got, including biological and chemical weapons," Levin said on ABC's "Nightline" on September 4. "The result of our attack would be his using the very weapons we are trying to deter." What other Democrat has made this case so unapologetically?
But coherence hasn't been enough for Levin to win over his colleagues, whom he has been urging to put up more resistance. Levin has continued to hold hearings airing doubts about the war. But he now seems resigned to the likelihood of a war and is hoping it can be conditioned to the U.N.'s blessing. "[I]f force is going to be used, having the weight of the world behind the use of force is very, very important," he told the Fox News Channel last Sunday. Now Levin says he may introduce an alternative resolution to this effect when the Senate votes next month. But Levin seems unlikely to win that fight either. And in any case it's probably too late to slow the stampede by his most prominent colleagues to back the White House. Most Democrats expect an Iraq resolution to pass with overwhelming support within their party. As an aide to one Democrat, with political pressures to consider, puts it: "Levin's got nothing to lose. He can let it rip." One suspects a lot of other Democrats privately wish they could, too.
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Michael Crowley is an associate editor at The New Republic. |
