I think that Charles Krauthammer’s column in today’s Washington Post is meant to buck up Israel’s supporters — to give them the stomach to keep supporting Israel’s fight against Hezbollah in the face of mounting calls for a cease fire. Krauthammer argues that disunity in the Israeli cabinet — that is, policy differences on the best way to implement Israel’s goal of protecting itself from Hezbollah’s attacks — is what undermines Israeli military effectiveness. On the other hand, he asserts that Hezbollah is “a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary” — that is, that Israel’s (and America’s) enemies are blessed with perfect unity of effort, Krauthammer’s implicit explanation for their relative military effectiveness. The key point is that dissent foments weakness and suppression of debate is the road to a strong foreign / military policy. This strikes me as wrong, both in the specifics of the situation in Lebanon and in principle.

With respect to Lebanon, my understanding, albeit less-than-perfectly informed, is that Hezbollah makes some decisions on its own, “checks in” with its sponsors on other issues, and perhaps sometimes launches initiatives at the urging of its international patrons. (I have learned about Hezbollah from a number of sources, but Dan Byman’s work is one place that I would start for more information on the complexity of the Iran-Hezbollah relationship; see, for example, his recent article in Slate and discussions with him on NPR.) Iran certainly has supported Hezbollah and would like to capitalize on whatever success Hezbollah has in the current campaign. But expecting perfectly unified, hierarchical decision-making from an Iran-Hezbollah axis (presumably with Syria somehow involved, too) seems unrealistic. Moreover, Krauthammer’s military analysis seems wanting: a much more reasonable explanation of Hezbollah’s ability to keep firing missiles into Israel and to hold up its end of firefights with the IDF in southern Lebanon is that it is hard to root out a decentralized opponent whose forces work in small groups that seize the initiative and react to the local tactical situation.

The more important argument, though, is the political one, the case that internal debate about the best course of action in fact helps the enemy. This view pervades much more than just these comments about why Israel hasn’t defeated Hezbollah decisively. It also explains why supporters of the administration’s policy in Iraq call well-intentioned people looking for alternative ways to seek America’s goals unpatriotic (this New York Times editorial inveighs against this practice). And it at the same time provides their own explanation for why their grand plans for positive transformation in the Middle East have not come to fruition: doubters in the U.S. undermined our success; we cannot conclude from the situation in the Middle East today that their vision was wrong, only that it was not properly carried out. Convenient. A useful dodge from the more likely explanation that the vision itself over-reached and that we were always unlikely to be able to “cause stability” in Iraq, no matter how unified the American effort and no matter how free a hand was given to the American military.

This argument about when debate is appropriate and when it is not turns up in unexpected places, too. On this blog, Seth Green and David Isenberg both criticized Senators Boxer and Schumer for walking out on the Iraqi Prime Minister’s speech to Congress because of al-Maliki’s pro-Hezbollah remarks. Neither of my fellow bloggers agrees with al-Maliki’s support for Hezbollah, but they also felt that Americans should not criticize him for his position, since he is just expressing the will of the people of Iraq — an expression of democracy. And American Senators, they argue, should not debate the democratically ratified decisions of foreign governments’ policy-makers. That position strikes me as wrong for two reasons.

First, one of the hallmarks of democratic leadership is accountability. Leaders must face the costs of their decisions. Democrats call for accountability in the Bush administration all the time, and they rightly condemn administration resistance to investigations. So, too, al-Maliki should be accountable for his actions. Accountable to his own constituents, of course, which David Isenberg rightly points out is exactly why he makes pro-Hezbollah statements. But also accountable to his foreign backers, meaning the United States Congress. We bankroll the Iraqi government, and if our goal is to treat it like a serious democracy, then we have to be able to express our displeasure with its leader’s speeches.

Second, we should not have much illusion that American policy respects Iraqi democracy in general. The Iraqi people voted repeatedly, as the Bush administration touts over and over again. In the first round, the Sunnis mostly boycotted, so representatives to the constitutional assembly would have been overwhelmingly Shiite and Kurd. Instead of respecting the outcome of the vote, though, the U.S. forced the Iraqis to reach out to Sunni leaders in the constitution-writing process, which sent the clear message that the vote didn’t matter at all (only the Sunni’s ability to threaten to destabilize the government through force of arms mattered). Then the Iraqis voted again, and Sunnis participated but were overwhelmingy outvoted. But the U.S. did not allow the winners of the vote to establish their own government; instead, we told them to pick a new Prime Minister and to allocate key positions in the government to parties that did not do well in the elections but that we wanted to bring into the political process. Again, the election results didn’t matter.

So why should we only respect Iraqi democracy when its leaders make statements contrary to American policy interests? Given what democracy means to me (letting voters understand the consequences of their leaders’ actions and then respecting the outcomes of their votes), it seems to me that the Democratic Senators were well within the bounds of reasonable political expression.

Krauthammer is wrong to fear policy debate. And the critics of Senators Boxer and Schumer are wrong to fear policy debate.

Of course, we all might find more civilized ways of expressing our policy differences. Boxer and Schumer probably should be willing to listen to people like al-Maliki with whom they disagree. They are then free to make their own speeches, presumably supporting Israel to the hilt. Isn’t that just what Krauthammer would want them to do?

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