Lee Harris: Reflections on "Blowback"

tcsdaily.com ^ | December 12, 2007 | Lee Harris

[Tolik]

Lee Harris's articles at the TCSDaily are archived here: http://www.tcsdaily.com/Authors.aspx?id=218. His ideas may be controversial at times and are not always easy to digest. I disagree with him often enough. But take time to read some of his classics -- the following articles are the reason why I started paying attention to what Lee Harris says. I am sure you will find these articles interesting.

Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology By Lee Harris (FR post)   "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," (original)

The Clausewitz Curse (FR post)             The Clausewitz Curse (original)
Given our uncertainty, what alternative does this, or any, administration have? 

 Our World-Historical Gamble  (FR post)           Our World-Historical Gamble (original)
The collapse of the liberal order and the end of classical sovereignty.

 The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing  http://www.policyreview.org/dec02/harris.html

America-bashing has sadly come to be “the opium of the intellectual,” to use the phrase Raymond Aron borrowed from Marx in order to characterize those who followed the latter into the twentieth century. And like opium it produces vivid and fantastic dreams.

His books:   

 

Civilization and Its Enemies : The Next Stage of History

 

The Suicide of Reason

[Tolik]

Nailed It!

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention. You can see the list of articles I pinged to lately  on  my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about). Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.  

[wastedyears]

***The rule of laissez faire can never be the basis of a foreign policy.***

Ron Paul should take note.

[mnehring]

..any conversation of ‘blowback’, especially by unnamed politicians, completely lack a discussion of positive blowback as well as the blowback of inaction. Frankly, major negative blowback instances can be counted on one hand but get all the media attention, but we have hundreds, if not thousands of examples of positive blowbak (rebuilding after WWII for example) or blowback from inaction (1937 Europe)

[Tolik]

A political vacuum in the World will be filled, always. If we withdraw, somebody else will take our place. Who is going to provide a better stewardship? China, Russia, Islamic world? No, thanks.

[Tolik]

"Given the fact that the behavior of radical Islam is on an order of unpredictability and inscrutability that eclipses all previous geopolitical challenges that our nation has faced, it is a utopian dream to imagine that the United States, as the world's dominant power, could possibly escape blowback by any course of action it tried to pursue. We are both damned if we do, and damned if we don't."

Our current enemies are less predictable than Nazis, Japanese imperialists and Soviet communists ever were. Radical Islam lives in a fantasy world and acts in the real word with fantasists expectations. We've got to be nuts to let them get away with that (unfortunately we were and are).

See his articles linked above.

[Tolik]

“positive blowback”

Just one small example: maritime safety. Without US leadership and fleet presence everywhere, world wide shipments would be subject to world wide piracy.

We take so many things for granted, when in reality our freedoms were/are paid in sweat and blood.

[Sherman Logan]

If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.

Excellent point. I wholeheartedly agree.

[Paladin2]

"...Given the fact that the behavior of radical Islam is on an order of unpredictability and inscrutability that eclipses all previous geopolitical challenges..."

Really?

World conquest seems pretty clear to me.

[Sherman Logan]

America-bashing has sadly come to be “the opium of the intellectual,” to use the phrase Raymond Aron borrowed from Marx in order to characterize those who followed the latter into the twentieth century. And like opium it produces vivid and fantastic dreams.

He's misusing Marx's metaphor. Marx used it primarily because the proletariat used religion to dull their pain and distract themselves from their hopeless condition.

He was not referring so much to the addictive and recreational aspects of opium use, which are the parts of the metaphor that apply to America-bashing for intellectuals.

[GoLightly]

I’ve seen atheists & agnostics argue, if there is a God, why does the world have (insert something in the world that’s bad)?

I’m not equating any government with God, but a lot of blowback we’re dealing with now doesn’t have to do with previous intervention, so much as it does with our lack of intervention. If we were the good guys & the most powerful nation in the world, why didn’t we use some of that power to make their lives better? Why didn’t we throw down all of the evil dictators instead of dealing with them?

It has left a perception that we are a) weak or b) evil. If we withdrew from the world into fortress America, both choices a & b would remain. If we continued to arm ourselves to defend fortress America, many would think we're gathering strength to strike. If we didn't continue to arm ourselves, we'd be sitting ducks.

Good article. Thanx for the ping.

[lonestar67]

I think this article is good but does not go far enough. The muslim world has had no more generous friend than the United States. Whether liberating muslims in Kuwait, Afghanistan or Iraq, we have suffered for the well being of muslims. If one only looks at the oil trade, no larger exchange between rich and poor has ever taken place in world history. All of this trade primarily benefits allegedly muslim fiefdom lords. US provides direct security assistance to a variety of muslim nations such as Egypt and Jordan.

Blowback is an absurd metaphor which presumes that the US has done something to offend or harm the muslim world. That is positively absurd.

[Tolik]

“If we were the good guys & the most powerful nation in the world, why didn’t we use some of that power to make their lives better?”

Yes. Its for real. There are utopian expectations of what US can do. When it does not happen, or not quickly enough (like in reconstruction of the abused ran down Iraqi infrastructure) - its because we don’t WANT to do it.

[GoLightly]

There are utopian expectations of what US can do. When it does not happen, or not quickly enough (like in reconstruction of the abused ran down Iraqi infrastructure) - its because we don’t WANT to do it.

Exactly! Even in domestic affairs you'll see that kind of thinking. New Orleans isn't put back to the way it was before Katrina yet?

[NonValueAdded]

exactly

[ModelBreaker]

Lee Harris is such a fine writer and thinker.

[ModelBreaker]

He was not referring so much to the addictive and recreational aspects of opium use, which are the parts of the metaphor that apply to America-bashing for intellectuals.

Spiritual emptiness would qualify as a "hopeless condition." But that brings the analogy full circle.

[Billthedrill]

An excellent article, and thanks for posting.

If a policy of disarmament and appeasement turns out to increase the power and prestige of nations ruled by warmongers, this is every bit as much a case of blowback as the defeat that an aggressive nation unexpectedly brings on itself when it precipitately goes to war.

Certain Europeans who have been adamant about appeasement, negotiation, and against deployment of missile defense are about to find themselves within range of the missiles of a country that is simultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons. A policy of denial is suicidal.

On the broader topic of foreign policy, it should be fairly obvious that it is affected by factors different from those of economic policy, especially when the latter are governed by any degree of laissez faire. Harris points this out from a theoretical basis; I simply note that whether it is theoretically true or not that difference is demonstrable in application. The economic policies of certain other Europeans in promoting the progress of Iran in both the nuclear and the missile technology arenas run directly contrary to the putative foreign policies regarding non-proliferation. A good deal of ineffective legislation attempts to mediate between the two. There may be a model under which laissez faire might produce a successful foreign policy but I humbly suggest it hasn't much congruence with the real world, and all the self-righteous rhetoric coming from its proponents is most unlikely to change that fact.

[Tolik]

Have you seen this Lee Harris’ article?

[r9etb]

Our current enemies are less predictable than Nazis, Japanese imperialists and Soviet communists ever were.

No, they're not. Just like the Nazis, Japanese imperialists, and Soviet communists, they're telling and showing us exactly what they have in mind.

The problem is that, just as in those earlier cases, we cannot actually believe that people will act that way; and we therefore ignore the reality of what they're doing, and we're afraid of the possible bloody consequences of action -- which will only make bloodshed inevitable. The barbarity of radical Islam is such that we want to pretend that we don't understand what they're doing.

That doesn't mean that our only options at present involve massive bloodshed. But what it does mean is that we need to do two things. First, don't be shy about stating what it is that Radical Islam is doing. And second, don't be shy or reticent to defend and proclaim our culture.

And, most deadly of all to Islam, free their women.