Posted on 02/22/2006 8:00:42 AM PST by Reagan Man
House International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde, the 81-year-old Illinois Republican, embodies the institutional memory of modern American foreign policy, which is why it mattered a great deal last week when he politely made plain he is not marching in President Bush’s global crusade for democracy.
Hyde used a committee appearance by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to call America back toward what he called the “clear-eyed and sober-minded understanding of this world” embraced by our forebears.
Hyde’s own “sober-minded understanding” is a morally responsible realism. “Fidelity to our ideals means that we have little choice but to support freedom around the world. No one with a heart or a head would wish it otherwise,” he said. “But we also have a duty to ourselves and to our own interests which may sometimes necessitate actions focused on more tangible returns than those of altruism.”
Hyde did not cite President Bush or Secretary Rice by name. But his presentation--available in video on his committee’s website--masterfully rebutted the point-of-view expressed in written testimony Rice submitted but did not read. Here, Rice prominently quoted President Bush’s soaring declaration that it is “the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
By contrast, Hyde bluntly warned against what he called “the Golden Theory,” which rests on the false assumption that “our interests are best advanced by assigning a central place in the foreign policy of our nation to the worldwide promotion of democracy.”
His critique of this “Golden Theory” suggests a foreign-policy principle that echoes an ancient principle of medicine: First, do no harm.
“We can and have used democracy as a weapon to destabilize our enemies and we may do so again,” said Hyde. “But if we unleash revolutionary forces in the expectation that the result can only be beneficent, I believe we are making a profound and perhaps uncorrectable mistake. History teaches that revolutions are very dangerous things, more often destructive than benign, and uncontrollable by their very nature. Upending established order based on a theory is far more likely to produce chaos than shining uplands.”
It is also a mistake, he argued, to assume that the democratic development of East Asian and European nations liberated by U.S. forces in World War II-- and then occupied by U.S. forces for long periods afterwards--foreshadows what might happen now in other regions of the globe. Even in Western Europe, “we devoted enormous resources toward enforcing order, promoting cooperation, defending against invasion, removing barriers, reviving economies, and a host of other unprecedented innovations,” he said. “The resulting transformation is usually ascribed to the workings of democracy, but it is due far more to the impact of the long-term U.S. presence.”
His perspective on this, it must be assumed, is informed by his own experience in both military and political combat.
In 1942, when he was 18, Hyde stopped out of Georgetown University to join the Navy. On January 9, 1945, he commanded Landing Craft Tank 1148, an amphibious vessel that dropped U.S. forces on a beach Northwest of Manila in the Japanese-occupied Philippines.
He remained on duty in the Philippines until a year after V-J Day.
Hyde was elected to Congress in 1974, when the Cold War was descending towards its darkest hours. But in the 1980s, serving on both the International Relations and Intelligence committees, he would become the most eloquent congressional spokesman for the policies of President Reagan that brought down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union without precipitating another world war.
Now, in what he has announced is his final term, Hyde may become an intellectual Founding Father for an enduring post-9/11 foreign policy--a policy rooted in reality, not ideology.
Hyde’s most crucial insight is that a global U.S. crusade for democracy is not only unwise, but unsustainable. It would, he says, “require that we possess an unbounded power and undertake an open-ended commitment of time and resources which we cannot and will not do.”
Attempting it could bring unexpected and tragic results. “It may, in fact, constitute an uncontrollable experiment with an outcome akin to that faced by the Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” said Hyde, referring to the boy whose ill-considered magic made a mess of his master’s house.
An ill-considered U.S. foreign policy, by comparison, could make a messy world even messier.
Sooner or later, U.S. policymakers will discover that Henry Hyde is right again. America will be safer the sooner they do.
I will miss Hyde....
I assume Hyde had no problems with Reagan's departure from the long established order of dealing with the stinking commies. I have no problems with Bush's departure on how we now deal with the ME.
True. Something the MSM seems to have forgotten. They want all solutions to take effect immediately--at least if Bush is in charge. Of course, the MSM has yet to issue diatribes against Bill "our troops will be out of Bosnia within a year" Clinton. (How long ago did he say that? 9 years ago?)
First of all, the promotion of democracy isn't merely "altruism"; rather it is the ONLY way that we have even a chance to move the middle east away from radicalism.
Second, "realism" has a history of creating new monsters, a la Saddam and Osama. I'm not arguing that the policies that strengthened these men were not appropriate; I'm just pointing out that "realism" has its limits too.
“We can and have used democracy as a weapon to destabilize our enemies and we may do so again,” said Hyde. “But if we unleash revolutionary forces in the expectation that the result can only be beneficent, I believe we are making a profound and perhaps uncorrectable mistake. History teaches that revolutions are very dangerous things, more often destructive than benign, and uncontrollable by their very nature. Upending established order based on a theory is far more likely to produce chaos than shining uplands.”
See "Hamas and the Palestinian Authority"--Bush and Rice's fatal mistake--today, Iran announced that they would financially support Hamas and the PA--the enemy of their enemy is their friend. Hyde is absolutely correct--Hamas is the democratically elected government of the PA and will never support our aims...
This is all vote calculus. Does she muster more domestic votes by parading around the Arab world telling them to dis Hamas or does she try to solve the problem. Hamas was voted in because previous leaders were also dissed.
Sounds to me like ol' Henry is in complete agreement with our foreign policy (read: national security) efforts in the war on terror.
What Henry Hyde is saying is simple. On issues related to foreign policy, the USA should not be the policeman to the world. No, this isn't about isolationism, so don't jump to conclusions. This is about a well thought out foreign policy strategy that enables the US to remain engaged, without becoming involved in every aspect of global democracy building. On foreign policy, this has been the clarion call of American conservatism for decades and was always the alternative to liberal idealism that says, the US military should police the world. It didn't work in Korea and it definitely didn't work in Vietnam. And there is no evidence it will work in the Muslim/Arab world either.
Hamas is but a fly spec on the big TV screen.
Now, they have to operate out in the open. You want power? You got it. Let the Europeans take a look at Hamas in action and try to defend them. Now, everyone knows where the Palestinians stand.
If they want to engage in open, state-sponsored terrorism of Israel, let them suffer the consequences.
Read his statement carefully. What he says is that democratization can legitimately be used as a weapon to further our national interests. That's precisely what we are doing in Iraq, or trying to do--fight the powerful appeals of Communist and Muslim extremism by putting forward an equally powerful ideal--freedom.
That is legitimate. But what he is saying is, don't get carried away. Clinton used similar idealistic language, of a more politically correct sort, when he attacked Yugoslavia in the name of promoting Multiculturalism and the New World Order. The problem with that was that clinton deliberately fought the war on the wrong side, against our national security interests and the interests of formerly Christian Europe.
Bush's 2005 SOTUS addressed these issues, and what he spoke of, contrary to Peggy Noonan, was Democratic Realism. But it's awfully easy to slide from Democratic realism into Democratic idealism, and from there into the usual leftist nonsense that has plagued our foreign policy for so long and still dominates the State Department.
Well, I'd say we ARE NOT the policeman of the world, and have never been. We invaded Grenada and Panama to get rid of worthless POS from power in our hemisphere. We took active roles in toppling Allende and Ortega for the same reasons and staunchly supported Duarte in El Salvador. We supported the Afghan Mujahadeen against the Soviet Empire and we had several African proxy wars at any one time. It was not to be the policeman of the world, but rather to further our national interests, and Henry Hyde was there for all of these.
We could have easily finished off the North Vietnamese, had the a**holes like John Kerry and his traitorous allies not pulled the rug out from the S. Vietnamese. In Korea, you have a prospering South in stark contrast to a pathetic basketcase to the north. And they are our Allies and our effort there helped deflate the ambitions of the Chicoms.
Our foriegn policy should always be about self interest, and it usually is. The mess in Yugoslavia is an exception in my mind. We had no dog in that fight and should have left Europe to deal with it.
It is because of the activism and vision of Ronald Reagan, not Henry Hyde, that the Soviet Empire is on the ashheap of history. If not for Reagan, it would be alive and well and still in cahoots with the terrorists of the ME.
And it is because of Bush's bold moves that Afghanistan is on the road to becoming a proper country and a fierce fighter of terrorism, as opposed to a welcoming training ground. And it is because of Bush and Bush only, that Saddam is now ranting at his trial judge instead of plotting more "revenge" against the USA. The fact that Bush couches his moves with the ideals of liberating oppressed peoples, in no way detracts that it is in the US's national interest that the ME be reformed and that hostile regimes be put out of business.
Baloney. The US has been employed as the policeman of the world from President's Truman, to LBJ and to Clinton. Grenada and Panama had Monroe Doctrine policy implications attached to them, as did many other events that warranted US engagement in the western hemisphere.
The facts remain. We fought the communists in Korea to a draw and we lost to the communists in Vietnam. The Weinberger/Powell policy of military engagment says, if the USA goes in, we go in with overwhelming force and we go in to win. Period.
>>>>It is because of the activism and vision of Ronald Reagan, not Henry Hyde, that the Soviet Empire is on the ashheap of history.
You obviously didn't read the article. Henry Hyde and Ronald Reagan were great political alies in the Cold War.
"Hyde was elected to Congress in 1974, when the Cold War was descending towards its darkest hours. But in the 1980s, serving on both the International Relations and Intelligence committees, he would become the most eloquent congressional spokesman for the policies of President Reagan that brought down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union without precipitating another world war."
Again. What Hyde is saying is simple: "he politely made plain he is not marching in President Bush’s global crusade for democracy."
PresBush went into Afghanistan as a direct result of 9-11 and completed the mission. Bush went into Iraq because of Saddam's involvement with WMD programs and his connections with the global WOT. That conflict continues. The idea that the USA playing policeman to the world, is miraculously going to turn Islamofascist nation states into bastions of democratic freedom, is pie in the sky idealistic BS!
It hasn't even been 5 years since 9/11, and everybody is ready to go right back to the 9/10 attitude. And Bush's approach is actually quite moderate and sober: it's just difficult. The 'sober' alternative is that we go back to 9/10; get whacked again even worse than last time, then give up even more of our civil liberties and return to the Middle East, raze their cities to the ground and kill the 10% - 20% of the population needed to bludgeon them into submission.
That's supposed to be 'sober realism'? The blind ignorance and cowardice of our political class is beyond belief.
Hyde points out some of the obvious concerns with taking on this foreign policy objective. Such concerns are valid and need to be considered.
However, our interests are best served if we are dealing with democracies rather than dictatorships. There will be some uncertainties involved in the transition of dictatorships to democracies. I don't think our best interests are served if we ignore those uncertainties.
This foreign policy objective points the national foreign policy in a direction which is in our best interest in the long term.
bookmk ping , read today , and...
,.... thanks Reagan Man
So Hyde doesn't like our current policy.
I'm still waiting for ONE of these so-called experts to come up with an alternative.
Talk's cheap, and so is this puff piece.
Policing the world would work, but we'd have to neutron bomb various places into unpopulated status first.
It was NOT being the world's policeman to oppose communist expansionism, whether it was Korea (a "draw" that produced a thriving democracy by the 1980s) or Vietnam (which should have and could have easily been a glorious example of an anti-communist success) or Africa. It was ALWAYS in our national interest to make the USSR, at a minimum pay, a heavy price for its policies.
If you think we had no business in Vietnam, fine. Reagan called it a noble endeavor and had he been in charge it would have been won, easily and quickly.
I know Hyde was a partner with Reagan. But it took a LEADER with Reagan's vision and strength to get the Congress to do anything positive in the fight with the USSR after Vietnam. What was Hyde doing as Ford and Carter offered nothing but doom and gloom. Did he stand up and run for office of the President? Or was he like most of the GOPers at the time? Too timid to confront the babbling idiots who thought America's best days were behind it. Did Hyde support Reagan in 1976 over the feckless Ford? It's easy to grab coattails, and Reagan was the ONLY human being on the planet who could have done what he did. Everyone else hopped on the juggernaut.
I'm not saying this to say Hyde has not been a good and shrewd congressman. He has. But the difference between being a president and a congressman is astronomical. The President will get the glory or the blame for the foriegn policy he lays out.
Bush is reshaping the ME and the muslim world. If you expected it to be pretty and smooth, then you know nothing about the history of ANY reshaping, internal or imposed, that countries have gone thru thoughout the ages. It is always painful, it is always messy, it is always time consuming, it is never "miraculous". And in the case of the ME it is absolutely necessary.
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