Howard
Dean: Hawk in Dove’s Clothing?By Stephen Zunes
Published on Wednesday, February
26, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
As the first and most prominent
Democratic candidate for president to oppose a U.S. invasion of Iraq,
the campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean hopes to gain the
support of peace and human rights activists within the party.
Originally planning to focus on his call for universal health care
and fiscal responsibility, Dean’s anti-war message has received
such an enthusiastic response it has become a major focus of his
speeches on the campaign trail.
There is already talk of a repeat of
Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 campaign, where thousands of anti-war
college students campaigning door-to-door in New Hampshire and
elsewhere enabled the Minnesota senator to drive incumbent president
Lyndon Johnson out of the race.
However, a series of statements by
Dean regarding U.S. policy towards Israel and Palestine have raised
serious concerns within the peace and human rights community
regarding his liberal credentials.
In his major foreign policy address
to date, a February 17 speech at Drake University in Iowa, Dean
blasted the Bush administration’s foreign policy regarding Iraq
and several other areas, but – when it came to Israel and
Palestine – the former Vermont governor declared that, while the
United States should become more engaged, he did not have any
fundamental objections with President George W. Bush’s policies.
Dean called for an end to Palestinian violence against Israeli
civilians, but he did not call for a cessation of Israeli violence
against Palestinian civilians. Similarly, there was no call for an
end of the Israeli occupation, for Israeli compliance with UN
Security Council resolutions, or a withdrawal from Israel’s
illegal settlements in the occupied territories or even a freeze on
the construction of new settlements.
The liberal wing of America’s
Jewish community is represented in the views of Americans for Peace
Now (APN), which supports negotiations with the Palestinians based
upon the principle of land for peace, that is, Israeli withdrawal
from the occupied territories in exchange for security guarantees.
The conservative wing is represented by the America-Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which supports the policies of Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his government’s ongoing
occupation and colonization of Palestinian land seized in the 1967
war, repression of the Palestinian population, and refusal to
negotiate with the Palestinian leadership.
When asked by the Jewish newspaper
Forward late last year as to whether he supported APN’s
perspective, Governor Dean replied "No, my view is closer to AIPAC's
view."
In November, Dean paid his first-ever
visit to Israel on an excursion that was organized and paid for by
AIPAC. He was apparently unperturbed at his sponsors’ close ties
to a government that engages in a pattern of gross and systematic
human rights violations and blatantly violates a series of UN
Security Council resolutions and other international legal
principles. During his visit, Dean did not meet with any Palestinian
leaders or any Israeli moderates.
Dean also appears to reject the
widespread consensus among Israeli peace activists and Middle East
scholars that Palestinian terrorism is a direct outgrowth of the
35-year Israeli military occupation. Instead, Dean seems to argue
that terrorism itself is the core issue. He also rejects calls by APN
and other liberal Zionist groups that Israel’s requested $12
billion loan guarantee be linked to an Israeli freeze on constructing
additional illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian land,
arguing that such aid should instead be unconditional. Pushing for
such a dramatic and unconditional increase in financial support for
the incumbent government just before Israelis went to the polls in
January was widely seen as a not-too-subtle endorsement of
Sharon’s re-election.
By the time Dean would become
president, Israel could have a different prime minister. Despite his
recent election victory, Sharon’s government is not likely to
last very long and new Israeli elections could take place within a
couple of years. Israeli opposition leader Amram Mitzna, who could
become the next prime minister, takes a far more moderate position
toward the Palestinians than does Dean. For example, Dean opposes
Mitzna’s call for Israel to unconditionally return to peace
talks with the Palestinians. One could therefore envision a situation
where a President Dean, being even more anti-Palestinian than the
Israeli government, would – instead of pushing both sides to
compromise for peace – end up pressuring the Israelis to harden
their position. Israeli peace activists fear that electing someone
like Dean as president of the United States could end up sabotaging a
renewed Middle East peace process.
Apologists for Dean claim that taking
such a hard line position is necessary to win the "Jewish vote."
However, according to a recent poll on attitudes toward the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 52 % of American Jews surveyed advocate
viewpoints comparable to APN while only slightly more than 30% --
most of whom would probably vote Republican anyway – support the
AIPAC position. Overall U.S. public opinion is closer to the APN
position by a ratio of more than 3:1. In addition, it is doubtful
that the legion of peace and human rights activists that the Dean
campaign hopes will get out the vote for their candidate will emerge
as long as he takes such a right-wing stance on this key foreign
policy issue.
This has raised concerns within the
peace and human rights camp that Dean’s apparent embrace of such
a hawkish position comes not out of political expediency, but because
he essentially supports the Sharon’s perspective that security
comes from conquest and repression, not negotiation and compromise.
In supporting Israel’s rightist government, so it is argued,
Dean is taking the position that United Nations Security Council
resolutions, human rights, and international legal principles like
the Fourth Geneva Conventions can be ignored when they involved a
strategic ally. And while he may not be as reckless as the other
major Democratic contenders in supporting an invasion of Iraq, he
clearly is not the progressive alternative to President Bush for whom
so many are searching.
There are indications, however, that
Dean’s position on Israel and Palestine is not firm. Aides of
the candidate claim that the former governor – who has focused
on domestic issues up to this point in his political career – is
still in the process of developing his position on this and other
foreign policy concerns and could still be swayed to take a more
moderate stance. Whether or not he will hold on to his initial hard
line position will depend in large part on whether peace and human
rights activists will embrace him despite his apparent hawkish views
or reject him as being too similar to Bush and the
Republicans.
In the past, peace and human rights
activists have embraced Democratic presidential contenders who have
taken similarly hawkish positions toward Israel and Palestine, such
as California senator Alan Cranston in 1984, Illinois senator Paul
Simon in 1988 and Iowa senator Tom Harkin in 1992. Since it is
extremely doubtful that these erstwhile liberal senators could have
gotten that kind of support had they taken similar right-wing stances
on Central America, Southern Africa or any other conflict region,
this led to charges that the peace and human rights community was
guilty of anti-Arab racism.
However, increased popular awareness
in the United States in recent years – particularly among
politically-active youth on college campuses – regarding the
Israeli government’s policies of occupation, repression and
colonization may make Dean’s apparent embrace of such a
right-wing position untenable.
Liberal apologists for Dean point out
that the other major Democratic candidates for the 2004 presidential
nomination – Senators John Kerry, Joseph Lieberman and John
Edwards and Congressman Dick Gephardt – take similar positions
on Israel and Palestine as does the former Vermont governor. Given
that all four of them voted this past October to give President Bush
the authority to unilaterally invade Iraq and are therefore even
worse, so goes this argument, Dean should be supported despite his
backing of Sharon’s occupation policies.
Many in the peace and human rights
community may conclude, however, that any endorsement of Dean’s
candidacy must be withheld as a means of pressuring him to back away
from his support for the rightist Israeli government. Failing that,
we may see large numbers of peace and human rights activists give up
on the Democrats altogether and throw their support to the Green
Party.
Stephen Zunes is an associate
professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies
Program at the University of San Francisco and is the author of the
recently released book Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the
Roots of Terrorism.
