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I've been frustrated for a while now that the Democratic citizen community tends to confuse issues when talking about foreign policy. Iraq doesn't help, because there are so many reasons to be opposed to the Iraq war. The reason I think it's important to speak more clearly about this is because it will be important to value multiple points of view about foreign policy, come 2008. In order to do that, we need to have more conversations about foreign policy philosophies before that point.

The main confusion I want to focus on right now is that of Isolationism versus Interventionism, and how that differs from the conversation of Diplomacy versus Force.

Examine this graph:

Ask yourself which quadrant you are in.

I brought up that question over at daily kos, and the discussion has been interesting. About 2/3 of the respondents (all loyal Democrats) put themselves in Quadrant D, with most of the rest in Quadrant C.

The reason Iraq is a difficult subject to talk about sometimes is because it is a foreign policy that is way up in the tips of Quadrant B. You've got paleoconservatives that are silently grousing about us being over there, and are starting to support efforts to withdraw. You've got many centrist Democrats that supported the Iraq war at first back when they trusted that Bush was telling the truth, and have since realized that force wasn't necessary, even though that doesn't dull their interventionist instincts. You've got most Dems, who knew all along we were choosing force too quickly, and then there are the folks who wouldn't want us to engage in military action overseas under any circumstances at all. We all agree that it's bad to be in Iraq, but it is much more difficult to come up with consensus as to why, and in turn, what to do next and what future to embrace. This gives the Bush administration an advantage if they just wait it out.

Hearing people's reasons for their chosen quadrant has been pretty interesting. A few people made the case for quadrant A - they see it as minding our own business until something so horrible happens that American Might is justified. A surprising (to me) number of people made the case that while they used to be in quadrant D, they are now in quadrant C. They've decided that any act of interventionism is so clearly corrupted by corporate influence that it just simply never helps in the long run, and so given that, things are probably better off if we just let the rest of the world work out their own problems over time.

It's also interesting to place public figures in their correct quadrant. I believe Bush is way up on the vertical axis, but pretty central on the left/right axis. He's way over to the right with Iraq, but he's completely ignored other foreign policy matters where we could intervene more (Iran, North Korea, Darfur). JFK might actually be in B instead of D. Clinton was over to the right, probably slightly on the D side of B/D. Reagan was lower on the vertical axis than most Republicans wanted to admit. Bush I was in the same general area as Clinton, maybe a bit higher on the vertical axis.

Overall though, it brings up the possibility that someone could convincingly run to the right of Bush on foreign policy: arguing for a more interventionist approach. They'd have to insulate themselves to the left by somehow making it clear they would value diplomacy over force. Paramount in this is the matter of exposing how the "intelligence failures" in the Iraq war were Bush's fault, not the State Department's fault. By demonizing the intelligence circles and the state department, they wall off D from having the credibility it deserves.

Running to the right on foreign policy wouldn't mean someone would have to be centrist or conservative on domestic issues. Having a progressive in the D quadrant could be an amazing combination. We haven't had someone for a long time that is strongly interventionist, values diplomacy over force, and yet is progressive on domestic issues. I think the last guy we had with that pedigree might have been RFK. Someone along those lines could meet a lot of appetites.