The ruling conservative coalition in the US government has been under intense pressure over the past three months because of the successful insurgency across Iraq and the revelations of torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Gharib as well as the Guantánamo and Bagram detention centers. We have witnessed a press frenzy fed by of explosive leaks of documents from the Pentagon and Justice Department and photos and videos from Iraq that could have only been supplied to the press by senior civil servants and serving military officers. These revelations legitimated the criticism of Bush Administration by retired officials such as Richard Clarke, the former Anti Terrorism Czar ; Paul O’Neil, the former Secretary of the Treasury and most recently, a senior serving CIA officer known only as "Anonymous."

President Bush’s credibility has also been hurt by the Staff report of the 09/11 Commission that found no evidence for the Bush Administration’s repeated claims of links between Al-Queda and the Saddam Hussein regime. Absent the discovery of Saddam’s missing WMD’s, this removes the last official rationale for the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 - the supposed Al Queda-Saddam terrorist alliance. The legality of the invasion and occupation is now open to legal question and investigation in the UK as well as the US.

The impact of this bureaucratic attack on the credibility of the Bush Administration has been devastating. See for instance the latest NYT/CBS Poll, "Bush’s Rating Falls to Its Lowest Point, from June 29th, 2004, where we learn for instance that 20% of the public believes that Bush Administration is lying and another 59% believe that they have "something to hide." The overall result of these setbacks in Iraq and Washington has been to tip the scales in the on-going turf battle over the control of setting the policy agenda for US foreign policy away from the Neo-Conservative policy center that dominated policy making for the first three years of the Bush Administration.

The winners in this struggle appear to be the "neo-Realist" policy faction supported by the close advisors of President Bush Senior, such as James Baker, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and different elements of the top military leadership. The "neo-realist" dissenters have been supported by an extraordinary declaration, some 26 senior diplomats and retired Generals have recently called not only for a change in policy but a change in national leadership in November. The fact that major elements of the national security elite are jumping ship may be confirmed by the success that the John Kerry campaign has had in fund raising from big donors in the money competition with the Bush team.

Under the pressure of events on the ground in Iraq we have moved closer to an implosion of the ruling conservative coalition. Besides the re-emergence of a vigorous dissent against the Neo-Conservative neo-imperial project by paleo-conservative figures such as Patrick Buchanan [1], the Neo-Conservative component of the conservative coalition is increasingly isolated from the Republican Senate leadership and made vulnerable by the fact that they don’t have significant numbers of grass roots supporters. Their grass-roots support came in the past from the Christian Right and populist anti-government movements - allies who might desert them if their Iraq project fails. Therefore, should Bush lose in November because of the Iraq War, some observers argue that the stage is set for a major purge of the Neo-Conservative faction of the conservative coalition.

Judging from the proposed Democratic platform document, Kerry will govern as a centrist establishment politician and appeal to moderate republicans and the military by embracing as much of Bush’s international security program as possible So he has promised not so much a change in the goals of the "War on Terrorism" as a more competent management of that war. The Democratic platform only concedes that "people of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq", before going on to state that the U.S. "cannot allow a failed state in Iraq that inevitably would become a haven for terrorists..." It goes on to flatly say that : "Today, America is waging a war against a global terrorist movement committed to our destruction." [2]

The major difference on Iraq between the neo-cons unilateralist policy and Kerry’s neo-realist variant is that Kerry promises that victory in the war on terrorism "will be found in the company of others, not walking alone." [3] A Kerry administration promises to "rejoin the community of nations", but again primarily "to win the war on terrorism". Even here, Kerry moves towards the unilateralist policy of preventive war when he declares "we will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake but must enlist the support of those we need for ultimate victory." Indeed, some observers argue that this shift has already begun to occur and explains the "midnight" changes in the public policy declarations of the Bush administration in recent weeks. Bush however is not a credible spokesman for the neo-realist policy orientation. John Kerry, on the other hand, might be.

This stance of accepting the puts the Kerry campaign and any future Kerry Administration on a collision course with broad elements of its own Democratic party base who according to the most recent NYT/CBs poll favor 56% to 38% having "US troops leave Iraq as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable." A complication for Kerry is that the anti-war elements of his party have their own campaign cyber-organizations such as Howard Dean’s Democracy for America, True Majority and MoveOn.org, that cannot be counted on stay "on message," and that will continue to attack the Bush administration over its Iraq policy in their independent ad campaigns.

[1] See Hitchens opcit, but also Patrick Buchanan, “Three Steps to Sanity,” June 30th, 2004, www.antiwar.com

[2] See selected quotes in Ronald Brownstein, “Foreign Policy Tops Agenda for Democrats,” Los Angeles Times, July 4th, 2004, www.latimes.com

[3] David Balz, “Democratic Platform Assails Administration,” The Washington Post, July 4th, 2004, Page A04