"For a thousand generations the Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire."
Posted on 02/04/2002 12:10:19 PM PST by ouroboros
President Bush’s first State of the Union address was a historic occasion. It is impossible for contemporaries to predict how current affairs will translate into history, but I venture to assert that Michael Gerson and speech writing staff–who went through nearly 30 drafts–finally presented him, and us, with a mature ideological framework that reflects the balance of outlooks within the present Administration, and that the resulting strategic blueprint will have momentous consequences for America and the rest of world for decades to come.
The preceding debate may have been the last chance for any remaining republicans (small “r”) within the national security team to raise their voices, and to insert certain qualifications into what has emerged as the “Bush doctrine,” but this has not happened. The neoconservative Weltanschauung has triumphed. The doctrine now stands unambiguously as the foreign policy of the United States, and is likely to gel into bipartisan credo. For the first time since the end of the Cold War we have been presented with the ideological basis and fully developed self-referential framework for the policy of permanent global interventionism. The full implications of his words are startling, so let us review the key non-domestic points of the speech itself before examining its repercussions.
1. In addition to “ridding the world of thousands of terrorists” in Afghanistan the U.S. had “saved a people from starvation and freed a country from brutal oppression… [T]he mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today women are free, and are part of Afghanistan’s new government… Our progress is a tribute to the spirit of the Afghan people, to the resolve of our coalition and to the might of the United States military.”
2. The President was vague on the estimated number of terrorists still at large, but in any event “our war against terror is only beginning” and it will encompass the whole world: “Thousands of dangerous killers, schooled in the methods of murder, often supported by outlaw regimes, are now spread throughout the world like ticking time bombs, set to go off without warning… tens of thousands of trained terrorists are still at large. These enemies view the entire world as a battlefield, and we must pursue them wherever they are… freedom is at risk and America and our allies must not, and will not, allow it.”
3. The list of enemies also includes “regimes who seek chemical, biological or nuclear weapons” and “at least a dozen countries” that offer refuge to “a terrorist underworld.” Three countries in particular are “threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction,” North Korea, Iran, and Iraq: “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”
4. America welcomes friends and allies in this endeavor, “but some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will.”
5. To handle the threat the United States must “develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect America and our allies from sudden attack.”
6. In addition the U.S. will preempt any possible threat. Mr. Bush says he “will not wait on events while dangers gather” and “peril draws closer and closer”: “This campaign may not be finished on our watch, yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch.”
7. This task is transcedentally ordained: “History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom’s fight.”
8. All this will require a lot of money, more than anything spent on defense even at the height of the Cold War: “My budget includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades, because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay.”
9. As “government works to better secure our homeland,” Mr. Bush invited Americans to volunteer two years of their life to the new USA Freedom Corps: “America will continue to depend on the eyes and ears of alert citizens… We want to be a Nation that serves goals larger than self.” He invited his audience to join the new USA Freedom Corps, whose major role will be homeland security.
10. America seeks “a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror” and it will “lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere… America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance.”
11. The “real” Islam is an ally in this bold endeavor: “Let the skeptics look to Islam's own rich history–with its centuries of learning, and tolerance, and progress.”
12. All of the above is based on a deeper understanding of the world and our purpose in it: “We’ve come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is real, and it must be opposed… Rarely has the world faced a choice more clear or consequential.”
What does all this mean? Let us address these twelve points one by one.
1. AMERICA AS SOCIAL WORKER TO THE WORLD
So Afghanistan has been saved from starvation and brutal oppression, and its women are free to venture out of their homes and attend schools. That’s nice, except that none of this was among the originally stated objectives of the military operation in Afghanistan. That operation was justified on the basis of those stated objectives–reasonably clearly defined, rational, and focused on Usama Bin Laden, his network, and their Taliban hosts.
From the outset there have been warnings that a megalomaniac mission-creep would turn the whole thing into another exercise in Benevolent Global Hegemony. Now we know that such misgivings were justified. The original goals have been retrospectively blended with the mission of bringing democracy, progress, and human rights to the oppressed people of that country. The embarrassing failure to capture or track Bin Laden (who was not mentioned once in Mr. Bush’s speech), his key aides, and their leading Taliban allies, is now covered up by the allegedly splendid results of America assuming the responsibility–not announced at the beginning of the Afghan mission–of the social worker and empowerer to the world.
It was possible to support that mission in the name of hardheaded, Jacksonian realism, and this writer has done so. Belatedly we are told that globalist-missionary impulses–the legacy of Woodrow Wilson–have been a key ingredient all along. This is disastrous: a realistic attachment to the national interest–the art of the diplomatically possible–has the potential to realize moral purposes, while the mantle of “morality” leads to the moral collapse of Western and American values that we have witnessed with the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo.
2. MERE NUMBERS NO LONGER MATTER
By throwing vastly different–and always neatly rounded–figures about the number of terrorists still at large at his audience, the President has the impression that the actual numbers no longer matter. Precise quantitative parameters are essential if you are planning a limited response calibrated to the magnitude of the threat, but those parameters have to be relativized if you are planning an unlimited and open-ended global campaign. Judging by the President’s treatment of those numbers–which he magnified tenfold from one sentence to another–this is no longer a war against a clearly defined threat, caused by a number of actual or potential adversaries willing to do us harm. The “Terror” in the War on Terror has been transformed into an ontological category, and therefore it has ceased to be amenable to mere quantification. In practical terms this means that the intelligence community now has a bureaucratic incentive and institutional vested interest to keep its estimates on the wild side. If thousands or tens of thousands today why not hundreds of thousands, or even millions, tomorrow?
The casual reference to “thousands of killers” suggests that at least as many thousands of terrorist murders have been carried out by them. We know that 19 known killers caused the carnage on September 11; where are the rest of the victims of those “killers,” unless everyone connected with UBL automatically qualifies? It is not merely pedantic to point out that his trainees should have been called “potential killers,” if their training has not been tested in practice as yet. Undoubtedly the threat still exist after the end of the Afghan campaign, and it is serious enough to warrant our undivided attention, but the President of the United States should not treat it as if it were some metaphysical category, where measurable parameters give way to nebulae, and “terrorism” joins “poverty,” “racism,” “injustice” etc. in the repertoire of ills that will never be eradicated–for the devil never gives up–but nevertheless must be fought, eternally, with vast bureaucracies, and tons of money.
3. “AXIS OF EVIL”
Sixty years ago we had the original Axis, and it took the rest of the world five years to break it. Until 1989 we had the Evil Empire, and it took five decades of determined effort by the Free World to make it snap. How exactly the latest blended metaphor applies to the three countries named by the President is unclear. They are certainly not allies, and therefore the “axis” is purely coincidental: Iran and Iraq are eminently bad neighbors, regional rivals whose bloody war fought after Saddam’s attack in 1980 has been neither forgotten nor forgiven in Tehran. Their ideologies are irreconcilable: Saddam is a secularist dictator who appeals to the Baathist variety of Arab nationalism. Iran by contrast upholds Islam as the basis of its ancient polity, but its Shiite leaders detest the Wahabi “heretics” of al Qaida and the Taliban. North Korea, by contrast to both, is a zany neo-Stalinist hell on Earth, whose minimal external links may go as far as Peking but certainly do not extend to the hotbeds of Islamic militancy in South Asia and the Middle East. In brief, the “Axis of Evil” was another rhetorical device that sought not to describe reality, but to blur it and replace it with another metaphysical figure of speech.
We suspect that North Korea, an irrelevant loser in the game of international politics, was included exclusively so that its medium-range rockets–developed in case of a conflict on the Korean peninsula, and theoretically capable of reaching the westernmost tip of Alaska, but not California–could justify the unnecessary and harmful missile defense program (see No. 5). Under pressure from Russia and China, three years ago North Korea suspended indefinitely flight testing of its missiles–a necessary prerequisite for their operational deployment–so long as the United States engaged in negotiations on issues of mutual concern. Continuing these negotiations is seen by most U.S. allies–including South Korea!–as the best way to contain the North Korean missile threat. In addition, its inclusion on the Most Wanted list can be counterproductive in giving it an incentive to actually develop retaliatory weapons of mass destruction that can be used against 40,000 American soldiers in Korea as a means of deterring threatened attack.
Iraq, by contrast, had always been the intended next target for the trigger-happy duet Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz and their think-tank and media cohorts in both parties. Within days of September 11 Paul Wolfowitz had argued that even if Iraq wasn’t involved in the attacks it simply did not matter: this was a good time to settle the score with Saddam once and for all. A week later, in an open letter to the President, Kristol and two-dozen neoconservative leading lights–including Richard Perle, Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Martin Peretz, and Norman Podhoretz) argued that “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power,” and warning that “failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.” These people want America to initiate an all-out war with all of the enemies of its “only reliable ally in the region,” starting with Iraq, whether they be real, potential, or imagined, and regardless of whether this is in the interest of the United States to do so. Their efforts are summarized in the words of the editorial in the right-wing Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot of January 31: “Bush positioned himself exactly at Israel’s place: without saying it, he clarified that Israel’s enemies are also America’s foes.” The war-on-terror blanket proved to be a handy device for the advocates of this principle to finally impose their agenda and preclude debate.
While Iraq had always been an intended target, the inclusion of Iran in the “axis” is unexpected, and represents a major and extremely dangerous victory for these neoconservatives who must think that if Osama Bin Laden did not exist he should be invented. Dangerous because a simultaneous campaign against both Iraq AND Iran can be desired only by those who want to turn America’s current passionate attachment in the Middle East into a cataclysmic clash of civilizations. In addition, contrary to the President’s assertion, Iran has a democratically-elected president and parliament, albeit constrained by a conservative theocracy. Compared to such American allies as Saudi Arabia, Oman, and even Pakistan, Iran is positively democratic, and partly as a result of the loosening of the clerics’ grip it has been steadily veering in the direction of greater moderation in foreign affairs. A conflict with the US could set back the development of democracy there by decades. It is most unlikely to have the support of Europe, which sees Tehran as a regime to be cultivated and encouraged. The Iranian government does provide support for Hamas and Hizbullah, but the activities of those militant groups depend on reaching a lasting Israeli-Palestinian settlement. They are an Israeli, and a Palestinian, but not an American problem, unless each and every armed and dangerous fanatic everywhere is an American problem–in which case we need to send the Marines to Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone,.
It almost defies belief that Mr. Bush has accepted their arguments for a simultaneous massive confrontation with a regional power par excellence–Iran–as well as a huge chunk of the Arab world, a confrontation that probably cannot stop short of nuclear exchanges and, ultimately, lead to new terrorist attacks on America, attacks that would make September 11 look like Bull Run to Antietam. Contrary to this disastrous course, he should have rejected the impression of a permanent U.S. bias in Middle Eastern affairs that breed anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism. We all need a stable peace in the Middle East that should be based on an even-handed treatment of the conflicting parties’ claims and aspirations. There are problems that may not have a solution, such as the valid title to the Temple Mount, and the desirability of any possible solution must be assessed from the point of clearly defined American geopolitical, economic, and diplomatic interests.
4. TIMIDITY OF OTHERS WARRANTS ACTION BY AMERICA
That “some governments will be timid in the face of terror” is inevitable, but their precise reactions undoubtedly will have a lot to do with the definition of “terror” and the selection of measures to be used against it. There is no doubt that, if the logic of the “axis of evil” is applied and Iraq is attacked, America’s remaining Arab friends will display extreme timidity. In some of them timidity may turn to hostility, including above all Egypt–the most populous and arguably most important Arab country–but also Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, not to mention the non-Arab “allies” such as Pakistan. Should those guilty of timidity also fear armed retribution in view of the President’s warning: “And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will”? We suspect that Osama Bin Laden’s real objective all along has been such cataclysmic war that can only benefit those who desire the destruction of the remnants of our race and culture.
What will the Government of the United States do if the “timidity” about starting an all-out War of Civilizations spreads to our European allies, who have already expressed amazement at the implications of Mr. Bush’s speech? This reaction is noticeable even in the right-of-center, usually pro-American camp. The neoconservative equivalent of The Wall Street Journal on the right bank of the pond, the Financial Times of London, felt compelled to warn on January 31 that Mr. Bush’s ringing rhetoric will divide the alliance with Europe, rather than seal a common purpose: “North Korea and Iran do not belong in the same breath as Iraq. To lump them together is simplistic and will alienate new allies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.” In France equally conservative and usually U.S.-friendly Le Figaro noted on the same day that Mr. Bush “avoided any reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an issue over which the Europeans are almost as touchy as the Arabs.” In Germany commentators opined that “Bush needs this war in order to explain the budget deficits the country is facing for the first time in years, to justify the recession, and he needs it as a recipe for fighting the economic crisis. And Bush needs this war and the popularity it is bringing him because congressional elections are coming up” (Sueddeutsche Zeitung of Munich, January 31). In Greece Eleftherotypia noted that nobody dared say that many terrorists were trained by the Americans in order to confront the ‘Evil Empire,’ “nor did they take into account that Bosnia, a host of terrorist camps according to Bush, has been practically under NATO rule since 1996.”
Perhaps the Europeans had better watch their step, too: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has warned them that the U.S. was ready to act outside traditional alliances in its fight against terror, and that it would take “a dim view” of anyone who tried to sit on the fence: “Nations cannot afford to act like those neutral nations 60 years ago,” Wolfowitz told a 43-nation security conference in Munich on February 2.
5. MISSILE DEFENSE NON SEQUITUR
The logic of justifying the missile defense project by September 11 has never been explained. On that day death came to ordinary Americans not by means of an ICBM but by a more prosaic route, and the real and present threat that remains with us all does not include a rogue missile. Mr. Bush and his team must know that this paranoid Marxist dictatorship is not part of any “axis” and it will not be attacked or otherwise bothered by the U.S. unless its leaders decide to commit suicide. For the past fifty years they have not shown any such desire.
Without North Korea’s inclusion on the list, however, NMD critics could argue that September 11 made the expensive and elaborate scheme all but irrelevant for the foreseeable future. Without it the decision by President Bush to abrogate the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia would be seen for what it is: a decision likely to harm American interests at a time when the threat of global Islamic terrorism, and the need for coalition building, require a thorough reexamination of some key tenets of the Administration’s national security team. Branding terrorism and rogue rockets together may be clever from the point of view of domestic politics, but nevertheless disingenuous. Very different “effective defenses” are needed against terrorist attacks on one side and “rogue state missile attacks” on the other. The former are likely, even imminent, in the years to come; the latter are and have always been extremely unlikely. A hundred-billion-dollar antimissile shield will do nothing to protect American cities from nuclear or biological weapons smuggled across a virtually uncontrollable southern border and detonated from within the country. Ironically it may render such attacks more likely, by forcing any possible aggressor to consider alternatives to the method of delivery that leaves a clear “signature” and may be countered by the antimissile shield.
It should be noted that many U.S. allies in the anti-terrorist struggle see the insistence on missile defense as proof that Washington’s multilateralist rhetoric was only a temporary expedient, used while the Administration searched for and obtained wide international support immediately after the terror attacks. The impact of the missile defense obsession on America’s relations with Russia is also likely to prove more complex than Mr. Bush apparently assumes. It is seen even in Putin’s own camp as proof that promises of a new partnership amounted to empty talk: “When the U.S. needed support in Afghanistan they called us a partner, but they forgot the partnership once they decided to scrap ABM.”
All that for the sake of a deeply flawed project, justified by fraudulent intelligence assessments and based on unproven technology. The proponents of NMD and threat assessors are as unable after September 11 as ever to present a credible scenario of “rogue” attack on the United States. Its assumptions were not only technically flawed but also politically paranoid. In practical terms America’s true safety is not in anti-missile missiles, but in tightly controlled borders and a well-equipped military capable of defending its territory and its clearly defined national interests. In fundamental terms the missile defense “philosophy” as currently conceived assumes the desirability of the global hegemony as the basis of U.S. foreign policy. A “good” missile defense system would only be compatible with a return to constitutional foreign policy.
6. ON OUR WATCH
President Bush’s aides and advisors, and other Administration officials have elaborated what will happen “on our watch” with more precision. Donald Rumsfeld says he has told the Pentagon to “think the unthinkable.” Vice President Dick Cheney, the President’s reliable voice, has said the US is considering military or other action against “forty to fifty countries” and warns that the new war may last “fifty years or more.” A Bush adviser and Defense Department consultant, Richard Perle, explained that there will be “no stages” and that not even a pretense of some international “coalition” is needed: “This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there ... If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.” In Singapore, where several al Qaeda-linked arrests have been made, U.S. Ambassador Franklin Lavin was explicit: “We must remain on the offensive… Sometimes this will be through the U.N. system, sometimes it might be through NATO or other organizations, and sometimes we might have to do this job ourselves.” And finally, less than a week after the President’s speech the United States signaled it would take pre-emptive action in the next phase of its war on terror. “The best defense is a good offense,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a security conference in Munich (February 2), referring to the “axis of evil”: “Our approach has to aim at prevention and not merely punishment. We are at war.”
Bill Clinton had to invent the “Kosovo genocide” in order to justify the bombing of Serbia, and cajoled NATO into giving him the mantle of multilateralist legitimacy. The war against terror eliminates the need for similar constructs in the future. America will go it alone, or not, as it deems fit, and attack is the best form of defense. The concept of national sovereignty, functioning within an international system based on a balance of power among the major actors, has formed the basis of Western politics, liberalism and the rule of 1aw ever since the Peace of Westphalia (1648) is now being formally replaced, in America’s war against terror, by the Bush Doctrine, a more developed variant of the Brezhnev doctrine of “limited sovereignty” which was used as a pretext for the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. While Clinton had to use an abstract notion of universal "human rights" as the pretext to violate the law, tradition, and all established procedures in international relations, the war on terror provides a more convincing and ever present alibi for the interventionists to do literally as they please. This mindset is rooted “benevolent global hegemony,” as the world’s self-appointed guarantor of peace, executor of justice, and champion of democracy and freedom.
The vision presented by President Bush, and so frankly elaborated by his officials, hinges on the continuing technological and military superiority of the United States, not on its moral authority or political magnetism. They openly proclaim that America is to be obeyed because it is strong to impose its will, not necessarily because it is accepted as the legitimate leader. The rest of the world is put on notice that it is more advisable to share in the Fifty-Year War than to attract suspicions of disloyalty. This mindset–especially when it comes from a presumably “conservative” Republican team–dims the lingering hope that America is still a Republic, in the sense of the res publica of informed and responsible free citizens exercising their rights and fulfilling their obligations.
7. ANSWERING HISTORY’S CALL
The belief that one is on the right side of “history” is one of the most dangerous delusions in history. This historicist fallacy has bred not only Gnostic ideologies that murder millions of those who are deemed to be on the “wrong” side of history–foreigners as well as their own citizens–but also results in the inevitable destruction of the over-expanded, over-extended bearer of the divinely appointed task. The symptoms of imperial over-reach are already present in the case of the United States: Can we permanently guarantee Israel’s security (regardless of what it does to its neighbors), bring Arafat back to the table or else get rid of him, teach North Korea, Iraq and Iran a lesson they’ll never forget (provided that they live long enough to remember anything), maintain “friendly” regimes in the Muslim world in power while this carnage proceeds, guarantee the “security” of the Chinese province of Taiwan against the most populous country in the world, prop up Turkey, keep Bosnia safe for the local Muslims while telling them not to play hosts to terrorists, occupy Kosovo for the benefit of the Albanian dope-smuggling pimps, build a space shield to ward off rogue missiles, surround Russia with an ever expanding NATO, keep India and Pakistan from a nuclear shootout, destroy Colombian drug lords, protect the porous Rio Grande border, control Internet messages and guns and phone calls at home, and stop the nosedive of the economy? The question makes the answer superfluous. We cannot pay the price of the new Imperium, even if it was worth paying.
Epistemological hubris is in the heart of every utopian who wants to make the world obey. God knows; man only thinks he knows, and actually knows far less than he thinks. When he thinks he can play god, he does abominable things.
8. “WHATEVER IT COSTS WE WILL PAY”
When honey changes pots, according to Chinese folk wisdom, fingers get licked. When hundreds of public billions are about to go into private hands, with the President saying that “we” will sign the check regardless of how many zeros it has, we should ask “cui bono.” For some friends of the A-team in Washington all this is nothing short of corporate bonanza. The day the Wall Street stock market opened after September 11, the few gainers were the giant military contractors Alliant Tech Systems, Northrop Gruman, Raytheon, and the biggest supplier of them all, Lockheed Martin, whose shares jumped by a staggering third.
The Bush Administration, and most notably Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, spent the previous nine months of 2001 promising to “transform” the U.S. military by canceling or cutting back obsolete systems to forge a quicker, more mobile force. But Mr. Rumsfeld’s budgets for this year and next, supplemented by the President’s additional largesse, have managed to retain each and every major, Cold War-inspired weapons program that was in the pipeline when the Administration came into office. This includes hardware eminently ill-suited to the “war on terror,” such as nuclear attack submarines, heavy destroyers, the 70-ton Crusader artillery system, and the F-22 fighter plane–at two hundred million a piece. None of that has anything to do with the new, post 9-11 challenges, or indeed with the old, post-Soviet ones. It has everything to do with the Republicans’ supposed disdain for “big government,” which simply does not apply to the big military, and their corporate suppliers. “Everything that's being done in the name of the war on terrorism is getting kicked through,” said Christopher Hellman, senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information, an independent Washington think tank.
Take the $32 billion defense-budget increase, which brings the Pentagon’s total to $343 billion and is the biggest hike since Reagan's cold war buildup. The money has nothing to do with shredding al-Qaeda, and the increase was on the table before the towers came down. With the current deficit, the increase will be paid for with Social Security money. And yet, most people are unaware that war spending mostly does not come out of the military budget. Thje cost of the Afghan campaign had to be covered from $20 billion of emergency spending passed after Sept. 11, and more fast-tracked bills are expected to pass soon.
Of the defense appropriations bill Mr. Bush signed amidst much pomp on January 10, about $7 billion to $10 billion will pay for programs the Pentagon did not even ask for. As part of the bill, Boeing will supply the Air Force with 100 tanker jets it says it does not need, at a cost to American taxpayers of $26 billion. This is not war on terror, this is not defense; this is pork. Mr. Bush’s subsequent announcement that he will seek a $48 billion increase in Pentagon spending this year only confirms that notions of military reform have taken second place to the “needs” of weapons contractors, military bureaucrats, and members of Congress from militarily-dependent states and districts.
As Paul Krugman of the New York Times has noted, Rumsfeld's decision to save the Crusader system from the budget ax directly benefited his old college roommate and wrestling partner Frank Carlucci, whose Carlyle Group investment company owns United Defense, the manufacturer of the Crusader. Carlyle, which also employs former Secretary of State James Baker and former President George Bush Sr., took United Defense public late last year and raised over $200 million in capital in the process. Suggestions that Rumsfeld may have cut a deal to help an old buddy (not to mention the company that employs our current president's father) have been met with the argument that Don Rumsfeld just doesn't do that kind of thing.
9. CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
The shock of September 11 was a painful opportunity for America to rediscover a world in which it will be secure and free, and will not threaten security and freedom of others. These goals are inseparable from the preservation of our identity and our liberty at home. Unless the government defines foreign policy strategies founded upon the notion of America as a real, completed nation, a state with definable national interests that ought to be the foundation of its diplomacy, it is not possible to reanimate civil activism based on the healthy assumptions of a genuine community, a shared polity. This is miles away from the neoconservative call–articulated by Kristol and Kagan in their famous 1996 article “Benevolent Global Hegemony,” for “citizen involvement,” which is in their terms tantamount to militarization of the populace and their seduction into the imperial enterprise: “to close the growing separation of civilian and military cultures in our society,” to “involve more citizens in military service,” to “lower the barriers between civilian and military life.”
It is indeed desirable and necessary to have informed, responsible and willing citizens participating in the effort to protect the nation at home and present its best image abroad, but this can be done properly only if the participants in this endeavor are imbued with “enlightened nationalism” based upon the Golden Rule, in line with the U.S. Constitution and in accordance with the true spirit of “citizen-soldiers.” Republican government involves civic activism, and as Sam Francis has reminded us, the early champions of republicanism in European history were insistent on the virtues of the vita activa over the vita contemplativa, the contemplative life, which is more consistent with monarchy. Republican citizens must work at being free all the time. They have to go vote, but far more important than voting is the immense amount of time they have to spend in discussing public affairs and informing themselves about them, and even more time-consuming is the actual participation of the citizen in public office or in public duties, including military service. Mr. Bush’s plea for participation is coupled with further centralization of authority and decision-making, which inculcates passivity into the population.
But instead of a new Golden Age of republican virtue and self-sufficiency that is still possible and desirable, the Kristol-Kagan-Bush model offers “citizen participation” of the kind we’ve seen all too often in 20th century Europe, where ideological assumptions of the ruling establishment are not only beyond critique or reproach but where any doubt is in itself evidence of bad faith. That this call is accepted at face value indicates that the American polity is losing a rational and self-authenticating principle at the root of moral distinctions. Its subjects are encouraged to “participate” but they are no longer expected to make a meaningful specific contribution to rational decision-making. Many no longer know, or care, that morality and justice is to discharge that vocation. But to live otherwise is to be spiritually diseased, and unworthy of the appellation of “citizen.”
10. NON-NEGOTIABLE DEMANDS OF HUMAN DIGNITY
If “America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance,” we shall have permanent war for permanent peace that will not be limited by time or geography. It is light years away from candidate Bush’s response in the second debate with Al Gore (October 2000), when he warned the Vice President that it is not America’s role to patrol the planet and arrange other peoples’ lives in its own image:
One way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you… The United States must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.
This was, we still hope, the “real” Dubya, positively a breath of fresh air after Mrs. Albright’s triumphalist ravings about the “Indispensable Nation.” Another ray of hope was Bush’s pledge, made shortly after he was nominated, to order a review of America’s foreign commitments, and his promise to “scrutinize open-ended deployments, reassess U.S. goals, and ascertain whether they can be met.” But his present apostasy was made possible by the fact that Bush’s guiding principles, insofar as they exist, are contradictory, and not strong enough (as it turns out) against pressures from hegemonists. After the decline of higher cynicism in the name of Human Progress, followed by the Clinton-Albright brand justified by Human Rights, we now have the ascent of higher cynicism in the name of Human Dignity.
The proponents of all three varieties share the same fear that the world will happily pass them by unless America imposes herself, rises to the challenge and throws her weight about. But to live for the adrenaline is to ride for a fall and to walk with Hubris. The longing to be the world's social engineer-in-chief cum policeman will never be admitted as the basis of policy. Clinton knows that he should always deny the charge. Throughout the Bosnian Intervention he was the respectable front-end of the Albright program. Inside the State Department and the CIA there is always room for the pretense that policy is more limited and calculated than the passions and arrogance which drive it. In the same vein German policy before 1914 was defined, on paper, by men more rational and cool than their political bosses.
American power and prestige are in the hands of men and women unable, or, worse still, unwilling to resist the Temptation to invent new missions, lay down new embargoes and fabricate new courts. They sense limitless opportunities, and we must ask what ambitions they will declare next. Such declarations are there for all who care to read and listen on both sides of the dominant political spectrum. Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan have gloated for the past six years in what they call “benevolent global hegemony.” The neocons’ definition of Pax Americana is summarized in those two gents’ exultation that we have never lived in a world more conducive to [our] fundamental interests in a liberal international order, the spread of freedom and democratic governance, [and] an international economic system of free-market capitalism and free trade. They don’t tell us how the US will preserve the traditional moral fabric, social structure and economic interests of its own people–what most Americans still mean by ‘national interests.’ Their concern is exclusively with the blessings America should bestow upon the rest of benighted humanity.
11. THE REAL ISLAM?
Bush may be disingenuous here, rather than seriously deluded–we certainly hope the former is the case–because Islam as such, and not some allegedly aberrant form of it, is the main identifiable threat to America’s global security in the coming century, and, in the longer term, to the survival of our civilization. Islam has been synonymous with violence and intolerance since its earliest days. Like communism or Nazism, it is part-religion and part-ideology that seeks to impose mind-numbing uniformity of thought and feeling on its faithful, to subjugate and ultimately destroy all non-believers. It accepts no “peaceful coexistence” and never will. But while Mr. Bush should have no illusions about the nature of the beast–which may lead him to serious miscalculations as to who is, or can be, America’s friend or ally–there is no reason to continue alienating over one billion Muslims in Asia and Africa. Their peculiar ways notwithstanding, he should make it clear that we have no immediate quarrel with them for as long as they do not threaten America. Once again, the U.S. foreign policy must avoid creating conditions for specifically anti-American Islamic hostility (the general anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-European bile will always be there). It therefore must avoid the perception of a permanent bias in Middle Eastern affairs. The U.S. needs a stable peace in the Middle East that should be based on a scrupulously even-handed treatment of the conflicting parties’ claims, including Israeli security and Palestinian statehood.
At the same time, it is vitally important and necessary to deny Islam (the adjective “militant” is frankly redundant) the foothold inside America, and the omission of a moratorium on immigration is the most remarkable missing link in the President’s antiterrorist strategy. Like its red ideological sibling of yore, Islam relies on a domestic fifth column–the Allah-worshiping Rosenbergs and Hisses–to get its work done. Not one in a hundred communists was a Soviet spy, just as perhaps not one in a hundred Muslims is a bin Laden asset–but reducing the risk then demanded denying visas (let alone green cards or passports) to all self-avowed communists. Doing likewise now with Osama’s potential recruits is the prerequisite of any meaningful anti-terrorist strategy. Since the first WTC attack in 1993 the FBI has known that belligerent Islam had a firm foothold within the Muslim diaspora in America, but the demographic deluge has continued unabated. Islamic extremism exposed on September 11 must end another kind of extremism: the irrational and manifestly false claim that each newcomer to America is equally meltable in the pot. That dogma costs lives.
12. “WE’VE COME TO KNOW TRUTHS THAT WE WILL NEVER QUESTION”
By postulating America as the epitome of all that is good, and those who wish it ill as the incarnation of evil, and by telling the rest of the world that the choice is clear and must be made, the President is effectively precluding any meaningful debate about the correlation between U.S. foreign policies and terrorism. Ottawa, Copenhagen, Zurich, and Oslo were not attacked; Washington and New York were. He refuses to acknowledge even the possibility that this country was a target, and others–just as democratic and affluent, and therefore worthy of jealousy and envy–were not, because of what America does around the world (and most notably in the Middle East), whether we believe that to be good or bad.
Some years ago my friend Brian Mitchell has diagnosed the “twin faults” of this mindset leading in the same murderous direction. The first is “a gnostic belief in our own anointing as a nation, a belief without any foundation in scripture or tradition, chosen merely because it flatters us.” The second is an undeserved confidence in our ability to know and reason, which makes it easy “to pass judgment on others and bear the sword against them, accounting ourselves blameless for the destruction we cause”: We all know how well men rationalize their nonrational preferences, yet after doing our just-war calculations and obtaining an answer in favor of war, we then proceed with a clear conscience to commit ghastly acts.”
Reality is always more complicated than we imagine, and the farther the reality is from our own experience the less we can understand it. This is the moral basis for nonintervention, for staying out of other peoples’ problems and not imposing “non-negotiable demands” on them because we do not know well what to do about them. Even in moral matters, our ability to discern right and wrong is limited, and many times we must choose our course without full confidence that our choices are correct.
To deal with the terrorist threat effectively and on the basis of consensual leadership, the United States should discard the pernicious notion of its “exceptionalism”–reflected in Bush’s claim that “we’ve come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is real, and it must be opposed… Rarely has the world faced a choice more clear or consequential”–and that had previously been thrown at the world in Madeleine Albright’s memorable phrase that “the United States stands taller than other nations, and therefore sees further.” Both imply that America is not only wise but also virtuous, and that its foreign policy is influenced by values and not by prejudices. This idiocy makes literally billions of people livid.
*****
The State of the Union address shows that the main lesson of the tragedy of September 11 has not been grasped by the President and his national security team. It is that the danger to ordinary Americans will remain with us for as long as the United States remains committed to the concept of unrestrained projection of power everywhere in the world. Instead of realizing that the threat to America exists because of the policy of global hegemony we are now told that that hegemony will be confirmed as the divinely-ordained, morally mandated, open-ended and self-justifying mission of America for decades to come. America’s national interests are assumed to include, more firmly than ever before, the ability to project power everywhere and all the time. If that is so, then indeed the terrorist threat is also unlimited and permanent.
The pursuit of Global Power for its own sake is the Great Temptation in human history, the path of ruin that winds from Xerxes, the Persian King of Kings, to Napoleon and Hitler. President Bush’s first State of the Union address should raise the alarm that what he is planning to do today is what Athens did after leading the Hellenic coalition against Persian aggression, attempting to convert consensual leadership into imposed hegemony. The result, as we know, was destruction of Hellas as a political and military factor for all time, and America will be just as surely destroyed if its rulers are allowed to proceed with their quest for the Weltmacht.
As per Cicero, failure to remember what has gone on before condemns us to remain forever children. The hubris of “knowing unquestionable truth,” “imposing non-negotiable demands,” “answering history’s call” and “paying any costs” in the endeavor is the path which Washington and Jefferson forbade America ever to take. Given the choice, the people of this country would never opt for it, but can they prevent it, in this age of ‘managed mass democracy’? The American foreign policy elite–and this term is woefully inadequate in the context–is hell-bent on forcing 280 million to follow their path of Global Glory, and their co-conspirators in the media are calling it a pilgrimage. They deny the certainty that power will ultimately generate countervailing power. We do not know how and when this will come about; but the least we can do is to warn against the Project, and the pointless sacrifices it will entail, including the ruin of America itself.
The hegemonists will deny all this, of course. Ultimately they and terrorists need each other, and feed upon each other. The victim is the Old Republic. The winner is: Empire.
So what is wrong with this picture? This idiot has forgotten it was Thomas Jefferson who sent the United States Marines to "the shores of Tripoli!"
Good point. Notwithstanding all the anti-Saddam hype, Iraq is only a threat to its immediate neighbors and to Israel.
I say to hell with the wretched people of the Middle East and let them fight to the finish themselves.
"For a thousand generations the Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire."
This bears repeating.
It is indeed desirable and necessary to have informed, responsible and willing citizens participating in the effort to protect the nation at home and present its best image abroad, but this can be done properly only if the participants in this endeavor are imbued with “enlightened nationalism” based upon the Golden Rule, in line with the U.S. Constitution and in accordance with the true spirit of “citizen-soldiers.”
... Mr. Bush’s plea for participation is coupled with further centralization of authority and decision-making, which inculcates passivity into the population.
President Bush called for all citizens to be alert to unusual situations and act using common sense. His changes in governmental structure are designed to enable decision-making where before there was buck-passing.
How anyone who listens can interpret President Bush's use of the phrase, "Let's Roll!, as inculcating passivity is beyond me!
1) A lot of really sophisticated analyses don't take into account where we're standing right now, and what we should do from now on. There's plenty of room for criticizing where we stand, what our government is, what we've done up to this point, but a political figure has to think about what to do from this point on, carrying all the baggage that intellectuals don't have to. So Bush's approach will of necessity differ from Trifkovic's.
2) When I read a neo-con telling me all the countries we have to invade with only the scantiest of grounds, I think that they are extremist, crazy and bloodthirsty. When I read a paleo tell me that Islam is the enemy, I have to wonder if the same isn't true of them. Maybe it's pro-Serbism. Or maybe it's the feeling that if we are to remain a Christian society in Christendom we have to have some opponent or "other" to define ourselves against so that we can avoid getting sucked into secularist and managerial globalism. Or maybe it's due to the Muslim immigration that threatens to make Europe less Christian and less Western. But why paleos should want to sound more extreme and militant than those that they criticize is a mystery. The initial paleo argument that live and let live isn't always a bad policy or an impossible option gets called into question when we realize that paleos too can be crusaders at heart.
It certainly is worth thinking about, though, that every war that we get into tends to be transformed into a crusade to change the world. Democracy puts a high value on human life. Therefore, when blood is shed in war, there has to be a higher, transcendent and redemptive meaning. And once the rhetoric is geared up one can't stop short of total victory. But what comes out of war is never as utopian as it's made to appear. Defeating one enemy may be necessary, but new enemies will move into the void created or arise out of it. The end result is often cynicism.
Interesting message from David Brooks at the Weekly Standard. The war means that the Republicans are back on top. It's also transformed them into McCainites. Something else to worry about.
And the govt. will be making the decisions, not individuals. Thus, they will be passive, not active participants in any decision.
Yes, Americans have been told to be alert and more aware. But they aren't to take action themselves, they are to let the govt. handle the situation. That also makes people more passive and less responsible.
For another example, check out this article Leaders to develop disaster relief plan. Notice these comments:
"It's not going to be one government that responds. It's going to be a collaboration of governments..."
Resources include hospitals and police and fire departments...
Notice that individual citizens are not being considered as resources. When push comes to shove, they will have no active role in dealing with anything out of the ordinary.
OK, so this is going to be YOUR excuse for not doing anything?
I have already done something. I have a CHL, and have learned to remain aware of my environment and those in it. I have accepted responsibility for my personal safety and those near me.
I refuse to just sit there quietly and helplessly, waiting for some policeman or other "official" to come rescue me in case something bad happens. The police cannot be everywhere, nor are they obligated to protect individuals. Yet the govt. wants everyone to rely solely on them during a crisis.
I hope and pray it will not be necessary, but if the situation arises, I prefer to protect myself, not wait for anyone else to do so - whenever they get around to it - if they ever do.
Does this mean I will never call for help? Of course not. If the situation gives me the chance, I will call 911, or inform the proper officials if I see something suspicious or wrong.
But my personal security and safety is my responsibility, and I have taken care of that.
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