Fred Thompson’s exploratory committee and likely Presidential run has spurred a great deal of discussion, indeed excitement, among media pundits and the Republican grassroots. Conservative Republicans have been up in arms since the campaign began. They question the conservative credentials of Mitt Romney and lament the colorlessness of much of the conservative crowd, Kansas Sen. Brownback and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore did not really separate themselves from the pack. While Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is generally conservative, he does not espouse the muscular, confident conservatism of a Ronald Reagan or a first-term George W. Bush. Thompson gives many conservative voters a shot in the arm because of his immediate name and face recognition, his supposed “actor’s ability” to appeal to people and his folksy, populist touch. In the first of what I hope will be many analyses of frontrunners’ Mideast positions, I scoured the internet for Thompson’s public statements about Iraq and the wider Middle East.
The first thing that jumped out at me – and something that no doubt is on the minds of conservative Republican strategists – is that Thompson would rather talk about other things. Many Republican insiders have been saying that the party’s best strategy is going to be to change the discussion from the Administration’s Iraq problems to areas where they are more likely to have an edge on Democrats: taxes, spending and values. To that end, Thompson’s main thrusts have been a kind of folksy populist traditional values position, that sounds less like Jerry Fallwell and more like a conservative version of The News from Lake Woebegon and a call for small government and low taxes. However, Thompson has made enough public statements and penned enough articles to allow something to take shape.
Sen. Thompson tends to steer clear of the more difficult issues, preferring to linger on ’safe’ topics. He assailed the Iranian government’s bizarre assertion that the action film The 300 was psychological warfare against the Iranian people, lamented the treatment of women in the Middle East and attacked a trend – much reported in conservative media – of British schools abandoning teaching of The Holocaust and Crusades because some Muslims children’s parents objected. Few people would argue against the Senator’s contention that the Holocaust is an historical fact, The 300 was probably not written by the CIA and radical Islam is not nice for women.
Thompson’s biggest concern, that which he spends the most time writing about, is Iran. He tends to talk more about Iran than Iraq. Again from a political standpoint this might not be the worst idea, a muscular approach to Iran appears to go down well with voters. Thompson has referred to Hizballah as Iran’s puppets, denounced the West’s response to the kidnapping of British sailors by the Iranian navy this winter and has called for more muscular action against the Iranian nuclear program. He seems to think of Iran as the largest threat to Middle East security over the long-term, an argument that is not without its supporters and believes that as many as four Middle East states are in a position to ‘go nuclear’ should the Iranians complete their nuclear project. He has fallen short, however, of calling for military action, preferring at this point the “Iran will fall by its own weight” approach and backing a Radio Free Europe-type broadcast program into Iran combined with support for Iranian civil society.
On Iraq, Thompson has been a less-than-vocal supporter of the Administration’s “Surge” strategy and sometimes sounds like New York Times and NewsHour analyst David Brooks in his rather disappointed and sad feeling on the war. In mid-March he told Wall Street Journal writer John Fund that the U.S. is “left with nothing but bad choices” but that the “worst choice” would be to withdraw from Iraq, which would “prove Osama Bin Laden right” that Americans were unable to stomach difficult struggles. He also sees Iraqi through the prism of Iran, arguing that withdrawal from Iraq would reduce American leverage on the Islamic Republic according to New York Times blogger Sarah Wheaton. This is not without its supporters either. He also argues, without a citation, that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has improved the condition of Iraqi women and decreased infant mortality rates. There is evidence to this effect about Afghanistan, which he also cites. I have not seen similar evidence for Iraq, though that does not mean it does not exist.
It is a bit early to flesh out the Senator’s positions on the Middle East. Much of what I culled from a Google search or two is pablem for the talk radio/editorial crowd: simplistic and sentimental, not without a grain of truth but made for public consumption, the Left produces the same kind of stuff. Still, there are some things to be concerned about and some things to be less concerned about.
For all of Thompson’s bluster, it seems he would not support some kind of massive military assault on Iran, unlike some conservative pundits like Normal Podhoretz or the Weekly Standard, who have come out for a warlike response. Thompson seems more inspired by the Ronald Reagan-USSR example.
That said, Thompson’s call to support Civil Society in Iran monetarily and to perform RFE-style broadcasts into the country is not without its critics. The Iranian democracy movement is divided over the effectiveness of U.S. aid, with most Iranians arguing that it hurts more than it helps by identifying pro-democracy organizations with the United States and, by extension, “regime change.”
Second, Thompson is pro-Israel and supports Israeli military action in the West Bank and Gaza. He saw fit to chalk up most Middle Eastern hostility toward Israel and the West to the fact that the Holocaust is not taught in schools. While this is problematic, any effort to promote peace in the wider Middle East needs to recognize the complex causes of Israel-Palestine. He is supportive of Israeli military responses to Hamas and Hizballah, not exactly a controversial position. He argues, too, that Iranian nuclear developments will alter the balance of power and prevent Israel from protecting itself while simultaneoulsy challenging Israel’s existence.
Thompson does use the term “Islamo-fascism,” which is something of a Right shibboleth. Some argue that the term adequate captures the ‘enemy we are fighting’ – not Muslims but totalitarians who use Islam to legitimize their aspirations. Others argue that, like “homicide-bombing” it is a term that is designed to inflame and, sociologically, to separate those who are “in” from those who are “out” (e.g., “First of all I don’t want to talk to somebody who doesn’t recognize that it’s not a ’suicide-bombing’ it’s a ‘homicide-bombing.’”)
Unlike President Bush, Thompson remains strongly critical of the Saudi government. Most administrations – Democrat and Republican – have relied on the Saudis as a pillar of Middle Eastern policy. Thompson, however, criticizes their Islamist government and their attitude toward women.
Most of this is fairly standard stuff for the talk-radio crowd. What I found interesting, however, was the Senator’s grouping of Iraq in with, for example, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as areas where awful practices like ‘honor killing’ (I believe that is actually a pre-Islamic custom but I could be wrong on that) and the Taliban. In a recent posting on the conservative blog Townhall.com, he writes of “horrors of life for millions of women in pre-liberation Iraq” such as “endemic beatings, honor killings and forced marriages of women.” Yet while tribal practices like honor killing and the repression of women through rigorous adherence to Sharia certainly took place in Iraq, its explosion has been a post-Saddam phenomenon. The leftist Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s PeaceWomen posted a 2005 report from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting to this effect. This is a common argument from people with little knowledge about the Middle East who believe that all Middle Eastern or Islamic countries share common interpretations of religion and religious law and oppress women through ‘orthodox’ Islamist practice.
It is fair to say, I think, that Senator Thompson needs to take a crash-course in Middle Eastern politics and history and flesh out the details on issues like Iran, Israel-Palestine and Iraq. His positions today appear to be a collection of emotional impulses, not a coherent strategy for the region.
