No Praising Neocons in This Hizzie
TMcD writes in comments: Although the neocons are inept to the last man, I have greater sympathy for their long term aims than for those of the "realist" school who would maintain a low-risk "balance of power" at the expense of improving political conditions in other parts of the world.
First rule of Freedom from Blog: No praising of neocons. Period. Do not pass "Go." No appeal. Not even when you invoke the seldom-successful "inept to the last man[imal]" ploy.
Y'all know I hate rules, but this one stands.
Plus, this is one of those false dichotomies I hate: The "idealist" neocons on one hand versus the hard-hearted "realists" on the other, committed only to "a low risk 'balance of power.'" Being insane is not a form of "idealism," it is "idealismism." Thinking that you can remake an entire region of the world, in short order, through the use of force primarily, if not alone, is ridiculous. And don't bust out the Nazi Germany and Japanese reformations on me. Both pre-Nazi Germany and pre-war Japan had modern/democratic or modernizing, and in the case of Japan, Westernizing, influences that are generally lacking in the Middle East. I don;t think that you should give anyone--not the current administration, not the Great Society, not even Abraham Lincoln credit for "good intentions" alone. Results matter, and easily foreseeable results matter, well, more.
Political Islam is a major issue that we must figure out how to cope with for the mid- to long-term. It's a problem with no good solution, not in the foreseeable future. Oh, maybe that's too "realist," but when you see . . . pictures of women in full body coverings stomping on the Danish flag . . . one becomes pessimistic, if not "realist[ic]."
That is all.
posted by Number Three @ 10:32 PM
7 Comments:
It's an unlikely role for me to play, but I wonder if I might moderate here. You see, I basically agree with all 3 of you.
1. Emery: the neo-cons are insane; their vision for 'remaking' the middle east was arrogant and hopeless, and the 'arab spring' was just Bush propaganda.
2. Frances: in terms of deeds, the bush administration has gotten nothing done in the middle east. (Well, they've done a lot of damage, so I guess they've gotten something done.)
3. TMcD: we don't want the dems to over-react to fundamentalists elements that arise democratically, nor to turn away from the vision that, other things being equal, democracy in the region is a good thing.
I'm no fan of the neo-cons, but I am a big fan of democracy. And I'm also OK with the Jeffersonian vision that more democracy is better, even if it causes some strife (and there are elements of democracy in the mob, as we all know).
I think this is particularly important in responding to the election of Hamas. I have a colleague here who lived for 10 years in Northern Ireland, and he says (in a way I find convincing) 'let them have power and they will grow more conservative'. So I think it's crucial to withhold justice on Hamas as a ruling power (of course, we can judge their past actions, and condemn them, as a terrorist organisation). If they continue to promote and sponsor terrorism while in power, then they deligitimate the Palestinian cause and they should be condemned utterly. But we shouldn't be so quick to assume that's what they'll do. Now that they're in power, they'll want to stay there, and that means moving toward the middle and trying to get along.
Thanks for mediating, Sam. Since I agree with everything you say except for your point of agreement with Emery, I'll take a moment to re-polarize our debate, all in good fun. The neo-cons are NOT insane, they're just incompetent and politically compromised. If you take them in isolation they look pretty bad, but if you compare them to the "realists" they come off slightly better. One word: Kissinger! How much damage did he do, and on how many continents? If Cambodia and Chile don't discredit his approach, it can't be discredited.
OK, you'll ,say, but Kissinger is gone to the cocktail party circuit, and now we just have warm, cuddly, cautious realists like Colin Powell, far better than the neocons. Now, based on Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz's record of foresight is pathetic, but Powell certainly has his own record of bad decision-making: didn't want to liberate Kuwait, or send troops to Bosnia, Kosovo, or Rwanda; made the key decisions about troops and tactics that led to embarassment in Somalia. Part of this may be a result of personal failings. Powell divides so much time between sucking up to GOP power-brokers and covering his ass to the press that he hasn't got time for anything else. But he's certainly not a sterling alternative.
My grudging respect for (some) neocon ideals is not giving them credit for "good intentions." It is a recognition that America's long-term international interests lie to a great extent with promoting the democratic ideal, one that is central to our national identity and that suffers at the hands of those who would either retreat before the challenges of the outside world or engage it only on the cold calculations of material interest. Embrace the tradition of Wilson, FDR, JFK, and Clinton. It's time we found ways to stop winking at brutal dictatorships and supporting the somewhat milder autocracies just because they hate commies or engage in mutually beneficial trade.
Finally, I disagree with your contention that Japan and Germany are irrelevant. You invoke these examples dismissively precisely becasue they represent such brilliantly successful cases of democratic nation-building. The primary differences b/w those cases and Iraq are: 1) both J &G were exhausted after a long, protracted and bloody war (see also Bosnia); 2) Truman's willingness to devote serious resources through the Marshall Plan vs. Bush's pinch-penny effort to rebuild Iraq while maintaining his tax cutting agenda. I'm not convinced that Iraq couldn't have been done right if it hadn't been run on the cheap and without an honest effort to build broad bipartisan support. Bush couldn't do that because he and Rove mostly wanted this war to discredit the Dems in the 2002 midterms and 2004 prez elections, and an honest case made for a bipartisan audience, coupled with serious planning and troop build-up, wouldn't have fit the GOP timetable.
Interestingly, we've had this debate before. I dredged up an e-mail exchange we had in 2001 over whether democratic self-government was a "good per se" or something fit only for the truly "civilized" (in Mill's paternalistic sense). I defended the former, you the latter. Funny how consistent we both are after all that's happened politically in between.
One small point relevant to the Japan/Germany analogy to our Iraq enterprise: Japan and Germany were both already nations in the minds of their citizens prior to our post WWII efforts. In both countries, there was a widely shared and strong (perhaps too strong!) sense of national identity. After the war, they needed governing institutions and rebuilding. Iraq wasn't and isn't a nation in nearly the same sense. Ethnic/religious identity still comes first there.
This is one of the major reasons why US led nation building was not going to be successful in Iraq no matter how much money we spent on it. Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis have many grievances that have to be resolved or at least fought out. Prior to the invasion, there was no reason to expect that such peoples could in any reasonably short period of time learn to trust one another to take turns in governing. Are the Shiites and Kurds supposed to work closely with people responsible for atrocities against them? Are the Sunnis going to submit to a revolutionary displacement of their historic place in Iraqi society by an external invasion? Are the Sunnis going to work with a new government that launches death squads against them? All these problems were EASY TO FORESEE.
The US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent nation building project were 100% delusional ideas from the very start. Good intentions perhaps (but perhaps not--who knows?), but those impulses were linked to insane policies. These policies were not merely ineptly carried out, but grotesquely poor judgment from the very start.
Frances, you're certainly right to cite the factional divisions in Iraq as the major obstacle to creating a stable democracy within the current territorial boundaries. Although Iraq has yet to completely splinter, it looks as if that's the trajectory on which they're now heading. I don't know that it's a guaranteed outcome, but it does look like the most likely scenario.
On the other hand, we simply don't know what would have happened had Iraq not spiralled so quickly into anarchy and insurgency. It is a distinct possibility that a better managed post-Saddam transition would have avoided many of the current conflicts. There's also this: given your thesis, Iraq was already heading for a crisis once Saddam died or was otherwise deposed, whether or not we invaded. So our choice was not between a long-term stable Iraq and the mess we have now, it was between mess now or mess later, and b/w various levels of US involvement in resolving that mess. You can argue that the way we invaded and managed the post-invasion have significantly compromised our ability to positively affect the outcome, but it's hard to argue that the region would have avoided trouble as long as we just stayed out.
TenaciousMcD: Preemptive war is a bad enough idea. Surely you don't want to imply that it's appropriate for the US to go meddling around in other countries trying to avert potential "instability" in the distant future. That is not remotely a moral cause for the use of military force.
Who knows what would have happened within Iraq had we left the country alone? Saddam Hussein was an old man; his sons didn't have his political abilities (only his brutality). Dictators have been brought down with popular movements within their own countries--and peacefully, too! Nicolae Ceausescu's 1989 overthrow in Romania is a great example. The Cold War itself ended because of internal reforms in the USSR.
I suspect if you tallied up all the countries where the US kept its distance against those where we bumbled around trying to install friendly regimes during the Cold War that those we left alone have come out better for everyone involved (us included!). And nowhere during the Cold War's proxy wars did we ever attempt somthing as hubristic as the Iraq misadventure.
I will not disagree with you that the Iraq occupation was incompetently managed, but it was a ridiculous enterprise from the start. The US has/had no credibility among Iraqis. Iraqis, even those who hated Hussein, did not and will not trust our motives; not even they view us as liberators. Even among Hussein's enemies, the fact that Hussein was deposed by alien US forces is a humiliation. This was a fool's quest from the start.
Frances, I never argued that invading Iraq was a good idea. In fact, I've consistently argued that it was a stupid idea from the beginning and incompetently managed ever since. But I've always found the practical objections more persuasive than the moral ones, which always end up making it seem like Saddam either had some right to maintain his rule, or like Iraqis didn't desire a change and/or couldn't handle democracy.
The Iraqi staus quo was not good, although, given their relative calm and containment, it was in some ways convenient for us. IF we could establish a functioning democracy (or even a significantly less oppressive autocracy), and as a result help reshape the ME in positive pro-western ways, then this war could be morally justified, despite its many flaws and its all-too-real costs in terms of human lives. For the sake of argument, let's say the cost of establishing such an Iraq were 4 years, $400B, and 4000 American lives. Would that be worth it? Yeah, I think it probably would be. It's hard, morally, to put a cost-benefit analysis on political freedom, but that's what we often have to do when we think about foreign policy.
The problem, however, is the big IF I led with. As it turns out, we're likely to spend that cost and more without actually receiving the benefit, and in fact may make things considerably worse. So the problem has always been the strong practical unlikelihood that our means would achieve our ends (read charitably). I can't remember who said it, but one of the best lines I've heard about this war was "You can't entrust the promotion of liberalism and democracy to the least liberal and least democratic faction of your society."
My concern is that Iraq will create such a hangover for American military intervention that we'll overcorrect next time a crisis comes along, acting as if our involvement would be automatically futile and counterproductive. It was NOT a mistake to intervene in Bosnia or Kosovo, and it wouldn't have been in Rwanda (Clinton's single greatest failure). Iraq may have been doomed from the start, but we'll never know, since the Bushies have done everything possible to screw it up, and their decisions would have destroyed even a workable occupation.
I'm not making moral arguments, so to some degree we're talking past one another. But morality and practicality are not entirely disconnected. No matter how good your intentions are, moral use of military power also requires one to take into account the likelihood of success. It is not moral to launch even a just war if there's no chance of success.
There are many injustices in the world that American military force is not competent to fix. It's worth remembering that military power is primarily destructive. It can stop actions (like ethnic cleansing efforts that are underway). But it cannot rebuild infrastructure or governing institutions, construct civil society, or engender social trust in the population.
Saddam Hussein was an oppressor, and his regime was cruel. But he was not engaged in ethnic cleasning when we attacked Iraq. We did not avert a humanitarian crisis. We caused one.
Even after taking account of Hussein's brutality and the UN sanctions on the country, our actions have caused more death than Hussein caused while he was in power, taken on an annual basis.
And don't forget: the death and destruction caused by the insurgency is also on our heads as well. Hussein's regime wasn't just, but it did provide for basic social order, something we're not capable of providing now or anytime soon. Many Iraqis who would otherwise have grown old and lived fulfilling lives have been cut short by our actions, with absolutely no guarantee that future generations of Iraqis will have it any better than they did.
These considerations of practicality should not be forgotten or pushed aside in future judgments about the morality of using military force. If the Iraq war chastens future such endeavors and demands more reality-checking in advance, this will be a very, very good thing. I think the lessons from the Iraq war are good ones, and we'll do less harm in the world if we adopt a more conservative, cautious approach in the future. Too much caution is far, far preferable than too much recklessness.
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