Freedom from Blog

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Monday, February 13, 2006

Doomed

I'm afraid that my efforts in the previous post have been for nought. Focus, people. I'm not arguing about the good or the right, in the abstract. We hardly have that luxury. Nor am I arguing that the good and the right have some kind of political impact.

In the best world, political leaders would always act in conformity with principles of the good and the right. (I think we can all agree that we don't live in that world.) In the second best world, political leaders would not always act in conformity with principles of the good and the right, but democratic publics would check political leaders when they deviate (significantly) from those principles. In the third best world, political leaders would not always act in confromity with the principles of the good and the right, and democratic publics would not always check those leaders; however, the principles of the good and the right would be espoused by an effective political opposition that would, in the long run, hold those leaders accountable.

We live in, at best, the fourth best world, in which principled arguments about the good and the right enter into political discourse and sometimes work to check abuses by political leaders, when advanced by a somewhat effective (and thus somewhat ineffective) political opposition. But at that same time, arguments ostensibly based on the good and the right enter into the political dialogue, mouthed by political leaders seeking to advance their own ends, far removed from the good and the right. In other words, and in short, we live in a world where the availability of "moral sounding" arguments is itself a significant moral danger. Because, let's face it, the moral principles that you so boldly espouse can easily be turned around on you, when supporters of the War point to so-called "democratic" advances made in the "progress" of the conflict. In the moral and political world in which we live, in short, your moral principles sometimes (often?) serve to short-circuit your own criticisms of the War, and of government policy.

Sure, as TMcD points out, the Iraq War was not based, at the outset, on humanitarian grounds; some pundits mentioned those values, but the main weight of the case for war was "the grave and gathering danger" of Iraqi WMDs. The point must be, however, that your good-faith arguments re: humanitarian interventions were at hand, after the fact, to serve the ends of those who started the War. Sure, you may take solace in the fact that those were not the actual reasons; but can you take solace in the fact that those same rationalizations are offered, today, as the justification?

Maybe in the best world, you could. But in this world, it seems to me, one must work exceptionally hard not to be complicit in the evil that our leaders do. Having pure, good intentions is not nearly enough.

I remember how Michael Walzer wrote that weak, on-the-one-hand, on-the other-hand piece before the Iraq War. Isn't that how all the "responsible" liberals and Democrats ended up? Here's the line (maybe you've said this): "Even if the Iraq War was justified, its execution demonstrates a kind of technical incompetence that belies the seriousness of the effort."

OK, does that mean that you support the War, or that you don't?

Maybe you don't. But by offering some kind of (even tepid) support for the now-offered justifications of the War, you undermine your case in the at-best fourth-best world, where unsophisticated democratic publics have to make more-nuanced-than-they-really-can-make judgments about the morality of international politics . . . so where are you, exactly?

I'm against this War, and any war that purports to be about saving people from their own leaders. And you? How many paternalistic wars do you favor? How far are you willing to go? How much of a Guardian of the World role for the U.S. will you support? And what if bad leaders, in the future, mouth your arguments? Are you confident that democratic publics will be able to tell the difference between Michael Walzer and Michael Ledeen?

For my part, I think that it's important to worry about this. Because this is not the best of all possible worlds.

7 Comments:

At 11:54 AM, Blogger tenaciousmcd said...

I'm glad you've stepped back from the brink in at least one respect: you seem no longer to believe that we can legislate bad wars out of existence by cracking down on all those publicly sexy, secretly eee-vil humanitarian interventions. Now you're just arguing that, in a very very very very complex world ("4th best," yeay!), we need bright line war doctrines to remind the confused and disoriented opposition party (Democrats on Iraq, I presume, not DeLay on Rwanda) not to be a bunch of wussies. Wow, now that makes sense. Those 800,000 Rwandans will be glad they gave their lives so that Joe Biden wouldn't piss you off on the Sunday morning talk shows.

Do I have to remind you that they have yet to invent a bright line that would prevent Democrats from acting like wussies, especially in the face of a hostile MSM, a plain talkin' Prez, and his "straight-shootin'" V-P? Bright lines can't prevent mischief from the bad guys and they don't offer empowerment to the good guys. And when they butt up against reality (say, in Rwanda) they expose the vacuity of those leaning desperately on them.

All "bright lines" do is give us an excuse not to use actual moral reasoning, which would involve weighing reasons and making prudent judgments given actual circumstances. The Michael Walzer cautionary tale: "If we actually stop to think about the war, we may not be knee-jerk enough to stop the madness!" Come on! The madness was not to be stopped. Surely, you recongize that you're grasping at straws here. The war's opponents are not without their victories: they get a deeply unpopular Bush, loathed by the majority of Americans, and they will (probably) get the judgment of history. You can't ask for much more under the circumstances. As for your bright lines argument, however, there comes a time to admit you're beat and give up the ghost. Like, maybe, now.

 
At 4:23 PM, Blogger Frances said...

Why would the US need to have intervened in Rwanda without authorization from the UN? There was plenty of warning that the genocide was being planned, both from UN peacekeepers and from the Commander of the UN forces. The Canadian Commander sent strong warnings about the need for action in January, four months before the genocide started.

If the US had gone to the UN demanding action and putting up the troops to intervene, do you really think there wouldn't have been international support? The UN Security Council barely mustered the backbone to stand up against the US's clearly illegal, non-humanitarian action in Iraq. If we'd wanted it, we could have achieved the result through means that could be countenanced by international law and institutions. Clinton, as you know, didn't want to risk it.

I'm still a believer in law, both domestic and international, and I think Democrats should stand up for it on principle. Arguing with Bush on humanitarian grounds gives him way too much rhetorical latitude, too much freedom from challenge. He should also have to defend (1) why this wasn't an illegal war of aggression, and (2) why we don't have to permit other countries to make the same kind of ad hoc judgments about when to invade other countries unprovoked.

I see this all of a piece with rule of law generally. Laws always constrain executive discretion, and any law will sometimes get in the way of doing justice in particular cases. In the domestic sphere, we can't trust to the pure unrestricted judgment of elected executives. The absence of law is the very definition of arbitrary power.

Even though international law will never have the force of domestic law, we shouldn't write it off as hopeless. It is a constraint, albeit weak. (Looks like even domestic laws are weak, as far as this administration is concerned.) And it gives you a leg to stand on to challenge executive warmongering without having to argue that Saddam Hussein is a good guy who treats his citizens well.

 
At 6:12 PM, Blogger tenaciousmcd said...

Frances, your position expressed in the comment above is not unreasonable. Note, however, that it is NOT the same position that Emery has been defending. Emery has made it clear that his "bright line" would exclude all non-defensive wars (particularly ones that are internal to a particular nation), including Rwanda, and that he was willing to let mass genocide occur as a legitimate "cost" to maintain strict legal consistency.

So maybe you've got your own "bright line" and it's not the same as Em's: no non-defensive wars unless (a) genocide is ongoing, and (b) you get full and unambiguous UN approval. That's an improvement, at least, but still, I think, problematic. First, it depends upon us being able to create wide agreement on a legal definition of genocide. Second, it depends upon our agreement that nothing else aside from genocide warrants outside intervention. And third, it depend upon our trust in the UN as somehow "representative" of a legitimate world opinion. None of these seems a plausible assumption to me.

For example, even if we could agree that Rwanda or even Darfur counts as genocide, what about Bosnia or Kosovo? Chechnya? Vietnam? Couldn't you just as easily claim that the latter reflected a rather normal civil war? You could make a case either way, depending on who's running the show at the UN. As I see it, that's an inescapably "political" decision as opposed to a "legal" one. I'm not saying our interventions in the Balkans were inherently just, but I'm suggesting that it was a reasonable decision, whether or not it met a technical legal definition of genocide. So that flows over into the second assumption:

Why draw the line at genocide rather than "tyranny." Is there any real dispute that Saddam was a tyrant? I don't think so. That is an objective description of the regime. We can say, with Emery, "not my job!" But then again, who supported that guy for years, financially and diplomatically, and before that, who created "Iraq" as a contiguous, poly-ethnic state? The West. We're already "involved" whether we like it or not, and it strikes me as a bit late in the day to tell the Iraqis that we simply wash our hands of a situation to which we once greatly contributed. You ask, "Who are we to speak for the Iraqis?" but we've left them in a condition where they have no ability to speak for themselves.

Finally, the UN. I have mixed feelings here. On one level, I believe in the UN and its mission. There needs to be an organization of nations working to solve problems through diplomacy where possible. But it is not a representative body, and many of its member nations are tyrannies or mildly authoritarian. Do you really want China as a permanent veto on our foreign policy? Do you really trust the UN's Middle East vision when, based on its membership, it so consistently embraces Arab despotism at the expense of Isreali democracy? The anti-Semitism of the UN is often shocking. The UN is valuable in a limited role--as a sounding board for US policies, and as a legitimizer of international diplomacy. But it cannot possibly fill the role of final arbiter on matters of war and peace. It is simply too limited and too compromised to usurp the traditional role of nation states.

 
At 9:14 PM, Blogger Frances said...

TenaciousMcD--To my mind, there's not an alternative to the UN, not unless the world comes up with something better. And that something better would still have to be deliberative, to involve other nations, and to be governed by rules.

As for representativeness, the U.S. surely isn't "representative." It surely cannot legitimately step in and serve as the "final arbiter on matters of war and peace." "Limited and compromised"??? That's the US itself in a nutshell.

Here are our alternatives: It's either us bumbling around by our ignorant, ethnocentric, white man's burden lights. Or it's us, checked and balanced, being asked to try to convince others to go along. I'd go for checks and balances any day of the week, especially when I think about the US public's nearly unlimited ignorance of foreign affairs combined with its nearly unlimited bellicosity and nationalism, and the leaders it tends to elect.

So, even though there are some differences between me and Emery, I see your position as too neocon for my taste. Your motives are good, but I disagree with where they lead. The United States is not competent to the task you set for it, nor would it be legitimate for it to undertake it. Talk about usurpation!

 
At 1:11 PM, Blogger tenaciousmcd said...

(Blogger just ate comments, so I apologize if these end up as a repeat.)

Frances, I think we're coming to some clarity here. But let me bring out an additional point from my remarks above. There I argued that you and Emery were defending very different "bright lines." But, if you think about it, youre not really defending a "bright line" at all, since you've added a series of conditions to Em's rather straightforward "self-defense only!" You'd allow non-defensive interventions IF they met a legal definition of "genocide" and the UN fully approved. Welcome back to the world of complex moral judgment. You just want those judgments displaced, going from us to the UN.

So our argument comes down to this: who do you trust? You trust the UN more than the US, and I trust the US more than the UN. I have to admit that I like how that hand of blackjack played out, so I'll stick with the cards I've got on the table.

 
At 2:10 PM, Blogger Paul said...

Tenanciousmcd writes: "So our argument comes down to this: who do you trust? You trust the UN more than the US, and I trust the US more than the UN."

Just curious. What specifically about the US and UN track records makes you choose the US over the UN?

 
At 6:07 PM, Blogger Frances said...

I trust neither the US nor the UN. I just believe that there need to be lots of rules on the use of military force--restrictions, as Emery put it, on the use of "large-scale mechnanized violence." There should be strict limits on the use of such power. Just war theory provides those limits, as do international law and institutions. I think opponents of the Iraq War should defend those things, in addition to criticizng the inept management of the operation.

Rules, deliberation, checks and balances are all very good things indeed when you're talking about the prospect of inflicting massive destruction, woundings, and death.

If doing good in the world is what you'd like to see the US doing, military force isn't the best way to go about it. Imagine how much good we could have done--stamping out disease, providing educational opportunities, aiding in development--if we'd put even a fraction of the cost of the Iraq war to positive, constructive purposes. Perhaps we be less reviled worldwide, also.

Considering the horrific implications of war, I'd err on the side of caution: "First, do no harm."

 

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