Debates We Should Be Having
Apologies for a prolonged absence. I have been running, along with John Ikenberry, a major conference for the Princeton Project on National Security (more about that in my next post) and hosting Condoleezza Rice, Michael Chertoff, and David Petraeus for the launch of the 75th Anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson School, a year long event that will feature speakers from both sides of the aisle and abroad, all of which will be available by webcast on our website. I will post about an interesting difference in Rice's and Chertoff's speeches regarding multilateralism later in the week.
In the meantime my fellow bloggers have had lots of interesting things to say. Reading over their posts, three questions come to mind that I think we need to debate further: on torture, democratization, and public diplomacy.
1) Torture: Is it about them or about us? The comments to Juliette's excellent post on the McCain-Graham bill focus on what kind of conduct suspected torturers merit. And Lee and I hosted a round-table two years ago on "Old Rules, New Threats," arguing that when facing new threats such as non-state sponsored terrorists, we need to update rules such as the Geneva Conventions developed in an another era. Those are important issues. But I think we need to separate those questions from the debate about torture. For McCain and other members of our own military, the issue is much more about who we are and what we stand for as a nation. In his speech on the Senate floor McCain said:
"Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Conventions," he said, referring to the international agreement on the treatment of prisoners of war. "Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death.
"But every one of us -- every single one of us -- knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them."
Similarly, in their open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee this past summer, 12 former generals and admirals urged the Committee to question Alberto Gonzales on his decision as White House Counsel to ignore the Geneva Conventions. They recognized the instrumental value of the Geneva Conventions in protecting captured U.S. soldiers, but argued that the U.S. adherence to the Conventions was also grounded in the "moral principles on which this country was founded and by which we continue to be guided."
- Democratization: Should we be pushing democracy or basic human rights? This is an old debate that flared fiercely in the 1980s; I think we need to revive it. After all, our own founding fathers fought fiercely against democracy, preferring a liberal republic to avoid the dangers of mob rule. I have no doubt that the long term goals of U.S. foreign policy should be to promote democracy for all peoples, but as Bruce Jentleson suggests, the emphasis on democracy per se seems more and more counter-productive. This is an issue on which many of us have strong views, Jim and Ivo in particular. But I am beginning to wonder if we should not refocus on economic development and global social justice, to ensure that individuals around the world have sufficient material means and intellectual energy actually to participate in civic life and to find their own path toward self-government. I do not mean that we should give up on democracy - on funding NGOs and certainly on pressing governments on human rights abuses particularly against political dissidents. But democracy in our own constitution is a means to the end of "securing the blessings of liberty"; perhaps we would do better focusing on how we can help others attain those blessings through means other than elections.
- Public Diplomacy: Is it about ignorance or arrogance? The premise behind Karen Hughes' trip and the White House's public diplomacy more generally seems to be that if they knew us better they would like us better. In fact, of course, many Middle Easterners (and others) know far more about us than we know about them, as is painfully apparent. Perhaps it is time that we recognize that the issue is not so much ignorance of who we are than dislike of our arrogance. If so, then we should be putting out a very different message, one of (gasp!) humility, of recognition of our own many failings as a nation over the course of our own efforts to achieve a genuine and fair democracy. That is the tone that Condi Rice has begun to strike when she travels. As I noted back in June, when she gave her speech at the University of Cairo, she defined the core of democracy as the protection of basic human rights, and continued:
"Securing these rights is the hope of every citizen, and the duty of every government. In my own country, the progress of democracy has been long and difficult. And given our history, the United States has no cause for false pride and we have every reason for humility.""After all, America was founded by individuals who knew that all human beings -- and the governments they create -- are inherently imperfect. And the United States was born half free and half slave. And it was only in my lifetime that my government guaranteed the right to vote for all of its people."
Perhaps Karen Hughes could take a leaf from her boss's book. More generally, in the wake of Katrina, we might do better in the world admitting what we have not been able to do and what we still need to do rather than asking countries to take us as a template. And for those readers who will immediately say that it is not "we" who are putting forth such an image of the United States, but the Administration, obviously. Yet for those of us Democrats who emphasize democracy promotion as a pillar of our foreign policy, aren't we also (tacitly) holding ourselves up as a template?
Now, the world is full of self-proclaimed 'realists' who "know" the score. Cheney proclaimed that those who saw the war in Iraq as fomenting terrorism rather than as somehow a bulwark against international terrorism "don't know how the world works".
The Cheney vision of international relations, which could be summarized in the phrase "the powerful shit down on the weak and expropriate up the good things there are to have" (also the domestic vision of the Bush camp, and the bedrock of most of the elite, including the Clinton Democrats, albeit a bit more sophisticatedly) is one definition of realism. Issues of reforming the Geneva Convention (to make its universal inclusiveness explicit -- parrallel to the Voting Rights Act to supplement the Post-Civil War Amendments), itself a good idea, and musing about 'democracy' at the global level, and 'arrogance' sound awfully like sentimental liberalism to this socialist anti-imperialist. But the first step to a reasonable foreign policy is some kind of concrete vision of what IS happening in the world, and with the US, and where we need to go.
The US, an imperialist hegemon of dubious democratic credentials in the Cold War era, a nation that boosted tyranny from Indochina and Indonesia to Iran, Pakistan, the Arab World, and from Somoza to Pinochet to Papa and Baby Doc to governments throughout Latin America, as well as apartheid in South Africa, is now getting worse and more aggressive, both domestically and internationally in the post-Cold War era.
The word to describe our system today, with INCREASING accuracy of application, is "imperialist".
I view the system that way, and so does most of the world. It is not a question of the psychologism of 'arrogance' although I don't dispute that there is plenty of that. But the word is imperialism, not "arrogance". As Noam Chomsky -- considered practically a tin-foil hat thinker in the US but well in the middle of the mainstream of global opinion -- has repeatedly explained, the US is like a powerful mafia Don that devastates nations in various regions that stand in our way, or might, in significant degree 'pour encourager les autres', to keep other countries obedient and in line. In Indochina in the 60s and 70s, Central America in the late 70s and 80s, and in Serbia, the Persian Gulf,
and possibly other countries since the end of the Cold War, our government has mobilized its power in part to terrorize. It is important that citizens get a sense of what our government does and 'is perceived' as doing (we don't say that the Nazis or Saddam Hussein or anyone WE recognize as bad is 'perceived' as engaging in terror) and to bring that policy to a halt.
I have elsewhere summarized the many highlights of the history of US military interventionism since the Korean War and how few if any interventions ever did the US public interest any good. As for the 'global' interest having anything to do with these, I can only say, "get real": http://www.tpmcafe.com/comments/2005/9/28/91952/8083/12?mode=alon e;showrate=1#12
Does that mean that the US should be militarily isolationist? No, we should radically ramp up the war against terror by more than one order of magnitude, including a myriad of nonrepressive safety measures here in the US that aren't pursued. There are peacekeeping forces in Africa begging for US participation or at least more active support, including in Darfur. These kinds of actions, in the absence of travesties like the occupation of Iraq, would help boost the image of the US rather than damage it.
But looking around the world, we must keep our as well as other nations' self interest in mind. Globalization without universal labor and environmental standards may mean more corporate profits (of the Leninist definition of imperialism, based on low wages in poor countries, and investment based on that) but is drastically harmful to jobs in the US. Reconstituting "globalism" and seeing the contrast between "McGlobalization" and globalization is key. I have written about this at length at http://www.tpmcafe.com/comments/2005/6/3/155330/0459/21?mode=alon e;showrate=1#21
Then there are issues of global threats, which also relate quite directly to US interests, in particular ecological threats and AIDS. These should be getting the hundreds of billions, with money focused on where there are democracies at least somewhat working, like South Africa and India, with eco-industrialization as a cornerstone. But there is no need to have a democracy to have massive desalination of seawater or wind energy projects. In short, a truly pragmatic foreign policy would be vigorously internationalist, cost no more than the present extravagance, genuinely promote world stability, and hone in on terror. Then the absolute ban on torture of any kind under any circumstance would fit into this framework, as would working towards democracy and humility. For the latter, we need to not only get the Repugs out, but strive within the Democratic Party and other formations for a different kind of vision of the world than has governed both parties in the past. Gore seemed to represent a step in that direction, as a mainstream Democrat. So does Kucinich, although with less a chance of success in the near term. These approaches are often (like a Department of Peace) not oriented to practical results that would really help, but that is something that needs to be worked on a lot. In the links supplied, I have tried to give a picture of what a practical and humane foreign policy would look like.
October 9, 2005 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Michael Mandelbaum's The Ideas That Conquored The Worldand Andrew J. Bacevich's New American Militarism from different perspectives both agree that not only did Wilson not fail but that his ideas have come to dominate the world.
As for Noam Chomsky. He might be considered the norm in the rest of the world but he is so anti-American and anti-Israel that it is hard to see why outside of linguists he should be taken seriously.
October 9, 2005 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
From what I read in the non-American Western press, they are concerned by our own betrayal of that template. Pre-emptive war based on a bogus threat, torture, and a disregard for the Iraqi body count are not admired by anyone outside our own borders and if we admire ourselves one has to wonder at our grasp on reality.
October 9, 2005 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
In his day, though, the League of Nations never got US support, and the overall world-without-war vision both then and now is not achieved. Personally, I do NOT stand with those who feel that US participation in WWI was a waste of time, and it is shocking to think that after the sinking of the Lusitania, most Americans still wanted to stay out! Talk about isolationism! I love Clemenceau's famous quote: "God has his ten commandments and Wilson his Fourteen Points. We shall see."
I do not automatically dismiss any sort of Wilsonian idealism out of hand, but consider his track record in practice extremely cautionary (although as you can see, especially if you read through my links, I have quite a visionary notion of US foreign policy myself.)
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I know that at a website such as this it is probably commonplace to dismiss people like Chomsky and Arundhati Roy as "anti-american". But while I occasionally disagree with Chomsky or his emphasis (especially in the particularly inapt publication of his interviews in the book 9/11 -- where I would have to say Chomsky's whole 'unclean hands' point simply shows that the terrorism issue is one that the Left just hasn't grappled with), his critique of US imperialism and how the media cover for it, as in Manufacturing Consent is excellent, and if anything, his media critique is understated grossly, along key dimensions.
We live in a country that simply is not restrained now nor mythmaking aside, has not been in recent decades restrained by anything like adherence to international law or even the faintest blush of true humility.
From inside America, with its media and what is popular to say and feel, the importance of the US blowing off the World Court on Nicaragua, or maintaining a base on Cuban soil without their consent, or having backed apartheid for generations until it was untenable, or the episode of Pinochet are easy to dismiss with a contemptuous yawn or a little handwringing. To some, the invasion of Iraq represents a reversal of past 'humility', but the farce of Rambouillet as a war pretext, the mass starvation in Iraq before the Oil For Food program was put in place at the behest of the French, the relatively small-time travesty of Somalia, on top of actions in Central America through the 80s do not seem like minor 'deviations' from a beknighted nation to the rest of the world nor should they. We live in a system that is mainlining on imperialism.
Why did such a vast majority of Americans line up behind Bush in the leadup to Iraq? Because there is a presumptive trust that "we" are the good guys and, if the president tells us some country poses a threat with WMDs, well then it's true. The idea of the US in any other light is hard to swallow, and certainly was not swallowed leading up to the war by Hillary Clinton, Kerry, Edwards, Clark, Lieberman or, for that matter, The New York Times. The problem is that any truly critical distanced self analysis cannot be seen, including by most mainstream Democrats, as "anti-American". But Chomsky, for whatever flaws you may find in him, does take that kind of distanced view. It isn't just because of mindless ressentiment on the part of the rest of the world (a reflection of American arrogance to see it that way) that someone like Chomsky is seen as right on.
His views on Israel are also, by global standards, quite moderate, and only modestly different from my own. He prefers a binational state, with a two-state solution if no other is possible, and conditions or limitations on Israel that are much less than that demanded not only by Palestinian militants, but most other countries in the world.
I have no doubt that my own views also come across to many as "anti-American", which I simply have to say, is silly. I don't see how the US or the American people have benefited at all from things like the interventions in Central America, Iraq, Kosovo, Somalia, Indochina, Chile and so forth. How is this good for US?????
October 9, 2005 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Without wanting to defend each and every military intervention America has benefitted creatly by the world America has created. Americans can and do travel around the world . We trade around the worlds. This is all possible because of the relative stability provide by many institutions but ultimately and largely backstopped by the United States.
One of the reason Europe and for that matter Japan can afford to persue the policies they do is because they are under the umbrella of American military power
We may want to debate that use but it is not obviously imperialistic. It is also not obvious to me how it is good for Americas if Germany and Japan rearm and their neighbors react to this.
What Chomasky seems to advocate is a view that America is always in the wrong. Europe is is not so sacrosanct and it ignores that the world is dangerous. Who should protect us? Also why is it that people like Chomasky seem to accept the idea that those in the Arab World should be able to engage in temper tantrums at the expense of American lives?
October 9, 2005 5:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
The myth that the Republicans act strong on national defense EXPLODED with the first plane that hit the world trade center on Sept 11, 2001 and drowned with a thousand people in the floods of New Orleans in August 2005.
Noone I have seen has looked at the foreign policy between the US and the Taliban government of Afghanistan from January 2001 to July 2001. George W Bush provoked the 9-11 attacks. He pressured the Taliban to accept an oil pipeline but the Taliban would not accept this. In July 2001 Bush's retired diplomats told the Pakistanis that the US would invade Afghanistan soon because the Taliban would not deal with the US. The Pakistanis told the Taliban and the Taliban struck first in the form of the 9-11 attacks.
George W Bush has so little regard for innocent life as 3000 innocent people got caught i nthe crossfire between the Bush administration and the Taliban.
Running on national defense, the idiot masses bought the fiction that George W Bush made his presidency on the events of 9-11 which he himself provoked. Bush parlayed the 9-11 popularity into an illegal invasion of Iraq he hectored congress and the people for a war based on the lie that biological and chemical weapons existed and cried that Saddam killed the Kurds. Nevermind that Reagan did nothing when Saddam killed the Kurds in 1987 and that Rumsfailed met Saddam in 1983 and shook his hand.
Republican administrations set up dictators and live with their murders until they no longer serve their purpose and then Republicans depose them.
After the short war ended and Saddam ended up in a cell the insurgency has foiled the stabilization of Iraq, and Bush who has gotten exposed of his lies about biological and chemical weapons told 2 more lies in that Iraq had something to do with the 9-11 attacks and that Iraq appears the focus of the war on terror. Somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 innocent Iraqis died because George W Bush has no regard for innocent life.
Then like the cheating husband who gets caught by the wife who finds a pair of panties in the car glove compartment, Bush has had to wear the panties of Democracy ever since making this the new excuse for invading Iraq in the first place.
So now Bush keeps waving the panties of Democracy ever since he got caught in a lie and won't acknowlegde his lying about chemical and biological weapons that never existed and even goes as far to say he got bad intelligence and has every subordinate say that Bush had gotten bad intelligence. Even the whore Likudnik Jew reporter Mona Charen repeats this lie. (I'm Jewish so I can call her a Likudnik Jew)
The Republican Party plain and simple failed in foreign policy and national defense and should get rejected for these reasns also. However the masses of idiot people still consider the Republican Party stronger on defense.
We need to tell the masses otherwise and correct whore reporters on tv with the first sentence of this writing.
Call to action. Stop the Republican Party.
http://tinyurl.com/8ghl8
http://tinyurl.com/b97vk
Where Republicans tread, innocent people end up dead.
October 9, 2005 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Should we be pushing democracy or basic human rights?
Above all else, we should be promoting peace - international peace among states, and civil peace within states, including our own.
Thomas Hobbes wrote movingly and perceptively on what dies along with peace:
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
This doesn't mean violence is never justified, buts its justification is dependent on the local service it does to a broader peace. From peace, all of the other blessings of human civilization flow. In peace, people cultivate justice, enlightenment, charity and respect. Make the establishment and maintenance of peace the nation's chief goal, and everything else will take care of itself.
In the thinking of Wilson himself, the promotion of democracy was instrumental to the promotion of a concert of peace.
October 9, 2005 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps it is time that we recognize that the issue is not so much ignorance of who we are than dislike of our arrogance. If so, then we should be putting out a very different message, one of (gasp!) humility, of recognition of our own many failings as a nation over the course of our own efforts to achieve a genuine and fair democracy. That is the tone that Condi Rice has begun to strike when she travels.
It still sounds like the message is mainly one about ourselves.
But humble people do not talk mostly about themselves, either to extol their own virtues, or to criticize their own past mistakes, or to tell their own "personal story", or to congratulate others for the ways in which they happen to be like the speaker. Self-absorbed people do those things.
Based on your admiration for Rice's speech, it seems you are still looking for the right sermon for Americans to preach, and believe our authorized preachers should add a few admissions of sin to that sermon. But why do we have to preach a sermon at all? Can't we just do business with people on a frank and respectful basis?
Being humble is not something you can just turn on. It's not a matter of "crafting your message" in the right way. The reason Americans can't project humility is because most of them don't feel humble. They feel "exceptional". And that exceptionalism comes through loud and clear in Rice's speech.
She starts with a nice note: "The people of America and Egypt have always desired to visit one another and to learn from one another". But the rest of the speech suggests this statement is an empty rhetorical gestures. Exactly what has Condi Rice, speaking for Americans, learned from Egypt? Does she mention anything? How many Americans could name even one thing we have learned from Egypt!? You know, what with a 10,000 year old civilization and all, you might think there are some important pieces of wisdom about human affairs that the Egytians possess. But how many Americans honestly believe they have anything at all important to learn from Egyptians, or Persians, or Russians, or Chnese? How many Americans are eager to study the languages and cultural history of those people, so that they can read and ponder deeply their writings and cultural artifacts, and acquire that knowledge?
How many Egyptian authors have they read, even in translation? How many Chinese authors? (And I don't just mean dissident writers who have written "problem" plays and novels about the miseries of their own countries.)
The new "humble": message you admire seems to go like this: "We haven't always been so perfect. We were evil once - sort of like you guys are now - we had slaves and whatnot, and women couldn't vote. It took us many years of struggling through imperfection to get to our current perfected state. Your country now has the opportunity to be a leader - to be a leader that is, in helping your people become as perfect as we are now. Here's a big list of things you have to do to straighten up and fly right.
"As I said, we acknowledge that we weren't perfect in the past. We can admit our own past mistakes. One of the not-so-perfect things we did in the past was seek to promote stability in your region. That was indeed a big mistake! We now realize that the root of our mistake was our failure to recognize our own intrinsic perfection. Instead of attempting to promote stability, we should have attempted to convert you to our political religion instead; because, as we now realize, our religion is universally valid for all people everywhere.
"Oh, of course we will not impose our religion on others. We, in our perfected, merciful superiority want to help others escape from their pitiable, miserable inferiority. Our goal is to help others see for themselves how perfect we are; to find their own voice with which to praise our religion; and make their own way to the epiphany which will reveal the truth of our religion to them; to develop their own native variants of Americanism. We're very tolerant people you know - that's one of the things we like best about ourselve. And once we have helped you see why you should be like us, you will be tolerant too"
It is not a more "humble message" that our diplomacy requires, but more modest ends. Let's have fewer profound sermons, and fewer grand narratives. In our diplomatic dealings with other countries and people, lets try this approach:
Call attention to successful instances of working together in the past; express optimism about the prospects of working together in the future; tell them what we would like from them; tell them what we will do for them in return; thank them for past favors; speak frankly about current difficulties in our relationship; accept our share of the blame for the difficulties, and promise to do better; respectfully suggest where they may have contributed themselves to the difficulties in the past, and ask them not to make the same mistakes again. Lay out the benefits of coopertation; spell out the costs of opposition. Be honest, and be credible.
Oh, and here's one: why don't we all spend less time talking and more time listening? Perhaps we should worry just a bit less about the contents of our own message, and concern ourselves just a bit more with the messages of other people. Can anyone honestly say that Americans are well-informed about the diplomatic positions of other countries? Are their ambassadors frequent guests on our airwaves?
October 9, 2005 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
We may want to debate that use but it is not obviously imperialistic. It is also not obvious to me how it is good for Americas if Germany and Japan rearm and their neighbors react to this.
As a German I can only wonder about this patronizing completely out-of touch view of the world. Sure have your "debates" - if even Democrats can not comprehend what damage the tolerance and practice of torture has done to what America stands for in the world then there is really not much hope. Let me spell it out for you: America has lost its moral authority to lead the free world. You will probably find many Europeans who are actually happy about this - I am not. But clearly this country has lost its moral compass. You are unfit to lead.
October 9, 2005 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
That is the tone that Condi Rice has begun to strike when she travels. As I noted back in June, when she gave her speech at the University of Cairo, she defined the core of democracy as the protection of basic human rights...
The protection of basic human rights is not the core of democracy, but an accompaniment.
The core of democracy is rule by the demos...that is, rule of a community by members of that same community; and rule by all the members of that community, not just some. A democratic community is a self-governing community, and one with an equal distribution of governing power. Whenever some community is governed entirely by people outside their own community, then they are not participants in a democratically self-governing community; and whenever some individuals or coalitions in a community exercise an influence over community affairs disproportionate to their actual numbers, the community again falls short of democratic self-government.
The foundation of democracy is the general recognition of both the right and the responsibility of all members of the community to participate equally in the work of government, along with a general determination by the community to maintain the social and economic equality, and the checks on the acquisition of power, that are necessary to prevent power from shifting to an elite within the community.
An aristocracy is not a democracy, no matter how enlightened the aristocrats might be, and no matter how dedicated they might be to preserving certain human rights of those they govern. Plutocracies, autocracies and meritocracies are also not democracies, again no matter how enlightened the responsible officials in these forms of government might be.
The maintenance and equal distribution of certain kinds of rights is essential to the health of a democratic community, but that is because without those rights, power differentials evolve - and the community is no longer democratic.
Democracy is an abstract ideal, which has rarely - perhaps never - existed in a real human community. Still, I don't know why so many American elites have become attracted to the rhetoric of "democracy promotion". Hardly any Americans these days seem really attracted even to the ideal of democracy. They seem perfectly happy to tolerate non-democratic power arrangements in their own country.
October 9, 2005 9:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Debates We Should Be Having
On matters of ground truth, the otherwise admirable Princeton Project is missing some things, flying, as it does, in the stratosphere. It is thrilling, brilliant, but such of it as I saw this weekend was … Swiftian.
In any case, we don’t actually have debates today, no Lincoln-Douglas, nothing in the political conventions, only gasification in Congress, … oh, I forgot!, Crossfire and whatever you make of “We report, you decide.”
I love the blogosphere generally, TPMCafe and Democracy Arsenal, in particular, but they are not a forum for debate, more of that fine medieval institution, the fair or that precious manifestation of Anglo-Austrian liberalism, the coffee-house.
Debates imply either parliamentary or republican institutions of which we actually have none today.
Parliamentary institutions imply more than one disciplined party which runs on, speaks from, and reports out a manifesto. Actually, the GOP today does all of that unilaterally and surreptitiously, hiding behind a media-screen and using Vichy Democrats to help make the GOP appear more moderate that it is. You can ignore me on this point, but not, I think, Jacob HACKER.
Republican institutions are the logical and actual foundations of whatever democracy we have or fail to have here. Those would include, actually, (a) military institutions based on the Roman-Swiss-Israeli coupling of suffrage and military obligation, both universal, or (b) convention-type parties with roots in the robust array of civic institutions, including a “well regulated militia”, that stem from powers and rights “reserved to the states and people”.
Over the course of the Great, World, and Cold Wars we simply jettisoned much of that, I suppose “for the duration”. Little of it has been restored or rebuilt. On the contrary, Harry S. TRUMAN was the last President to have been elected sergeant in an actual militia. On the basis of that, his reserve officer commission in the Field Artillery, and, oh, the written Constitution, he not only stood up to the rotten, treasonous nobility, he fired Pompey Magnus. But, it cost him a second term, and is something that, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, no Democratic faction-leader can now contemplate. Again, you can ignore me on these World Upside Down sorts of observations, but I think you ignore Wm. BACEVICH and Akhil AMAR on the degeneration of our republican institutions at your peril, the impossibility of maintaining a republican democracy with military institutions of the first British Empire.
In any case, framing debates today is sort of like maneuvering to gain the ground on which a set-piece battle is to be fought, not confusing a screening with a main force, identifying a Schwerpunkt, and so on. Here I think you have not chosen wisely but taken bait naively:
1. Torture
This is something tort-lawyers and international-lawyers would jump at for an “issue”. But, it is an elite “gotcha”, not really debatable. Bringing torture into the open, as a certain kind of precious dialog the critics do not take seriously enough to do anything over, only reinforces official indulgence of torture as a signal. The present administration signals to the agro-military welfare state (Darbyites) that its “all volunteer” (Federalist) military, drawn from the whole Pentagon Parody of Horse Guards Parade, The Admiralty, Whitehall, and The Circus, is one with the those (NeoCons) who seek to generalize on and legitimate what South African Jews are prepared to do in order to realize the “Clean Break” and “Eretz Israel”.
Yes, there is some dissent within the military, but as a recent New Yorker cartoon was captioned, “I love dissent, it helps me identify the traitors.”
Legitimating racial ambitions, hatreds, and fears is central to formation and discipline of the sort of armed forces this administration wants to have. The feeble opposition party does not want to debate that and looks for tangential issues to raise, much as lawyers attempt to manipulate the outcome of jury deliberations on a main issue by hammering at a side issue.
But, that is not debate. It is advocate/client discourse that cannot rally political opposition as effectively as the GOP is maintaining political solidarity with both its “base” and its “elite” by using “code-words” and other “signals” or what Col. BOYD called “implicit language”. These are all manifestations of what Newt GINGRICH called “politics as war”. Actually, there has been no response within the Democratic Party’s Congressional Leadership to his initiative and victory in 1994. Our Washington Party is still in shock and essentially routed, fleeing, sauve qu’il peut!
2. Democratization
Talk about a stink-bomb! We could have this debate, but it would be between “grass-roots” “machine” politicians like me and my party’s own self-perpetuating elites. We sorta had that discussion when the pollsters revealed to the Vichy Democrats that they would all lose their damn Blazing Saddles and rotten borough jobs if they had followed their rotten instincts and lined up to impeach our President CLINTON.
If the loyal Democratic voters trusted the self-perpetuating Democratic leadership, pollsters, and pimps or visa versa – which we do not – then we could have this debate among ourselves on the high plane Anne-Marie (and I) would like to see it take place on. It would not be a debate between the parties though. The other party is not for democratizing anything. That is just a flash-bang grenade they have thrown in the room to dazzle and disorient everybody else.
This would be a debate between the Radical Center and the Vichy Democrats. The pacifists and leftists on the fringe of my party are no more for democratizing anything than the Darbyites, NeoCons, and Federalists in the other party, now.
I would love this debate and, I think, it would address and resolve the problem of “scaling back” that Alan KUPERMAN raised in Austin Saturday. Actually, that problem is one of getting economies of scope, scale, and cycle right, something that economists and engineers could help the insufferable lawyers who run the Democratic Party with. You know, we could put back some of the oxygen that the lawyers have pretty much sucked out of public debate by trying to make the advocate/client paradigm, well, an insufferable tyranny.
At the end of the day, I think one would find today, as in about 1900, that restoring complementary principles of Common Carriage to both domestic and international law would support a world in which the sphere of democracy is rather larger now than before the Great, World, and Cold Wars. But, at the core of that sphere, a lot of un-republican and anti-democratic stuff adopted or improvised here for the duration of those wars would be dismantled. On the periphery, we would begin to deal again with the problems of slavery and piracy – an ancient and persistent problem of carefully disentangling war and commerce beyond the reach of ordinary national or even municipal jurisdiction, a problem, for instance, of “cyber-space”, which is a kind of admiralty.
3. Public Diplomacy
This is a debate the GOP is going to have as it tries to hold its coalition of Darbyites, NeoCons, and Federalists together. They will be talking up a storm while quietly driving the NeoCons out of the State and Defense Departments at least until the administration is ready to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively.
I think that Democrats should stay out of this debate and concentrate on (a) restoring constitutional foundations of our military institutions along BACEVICH and AMAR might recognize as well as (b) scaling back from a Mickey Mouse empire of rickety oil concessions based on the old “Coaling Stations” of our Edwardian navalism.
One aspect of this that does overlap (a) and (b) is the wholly extra-constitutional public, private, and secret diplomacy of the CinCdoms. Not only are the failing to suppress piracy and slavery but they may be aiding and abetting it. In any case, what sort of diplomacy might they be?
October 10, 2005 8:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Easily understood how the pooch was screwed in Africa, south Asia, and other locations by White Man's Burden. It was lost to most citizens of London just how folks in the colonies felt about the great benefit brought by charitable and even-handed English rule.
October 10, 2005 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
The problem is that the US is so powerful militarily and economically that if the US goes down into the morass of imperialism as it is (and well on its way as my post suggests) we cannot but drag the rest of the world down too. The indebtedness of the US and its huge trade deficit don't diminish this gravitational force at all either. They merely suggest the special links of dependence on a fiscally weakening US are massive.
There is no way that if the US is militaristic, the world can escape the plague of militarism. If the US pursues an environmentally reckless policy, the world's ecology cannot somehow get around that. And with the great bogs in Russia starting to thaw out releasing massive amounts of Greenhouse gases, the scientific alarms are going full blast but the political elite seems hell-bent on pursuing a world that would end up in ecological ruins, which is AOK by them as long as they preside over the ruins.
Without a political transformation in the US, the cause of the enlightenment, of humanitarianism itself is doomed -- and for a long long long time. Therefore, humanitarians internationally should be joining together to assist the forces of such a democratic transformation in the US, which I can tell you personally are beleaguered, just as we understand that the liberation forces in more overtly tyrannical systems of power (internally -- externally the US is quite overt, as well as covert) are beleaguered and try to offer any kind of support possible.
This implies a different kind of international information order, though based specifically outside the US, that focuses with a 'free America media' network on bringing those voices and ideas squelched in the US, and often kept quite muffled or silent elsewhere, explicitly to global world attention.
I have discussed elsewhere at greater length some of the forms that an international unity against the US drive to ever more intense imperialism could be addressed:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/comments/2005/10/2/13718/6784/19?mode=alon e;showrate=1#19
I would be interested how anti-imperialists consider this, and where on the web such ideas might have an impact
October 10, 2005 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
We may want to debate that use but it is not obviously imperialistic. It is also not obvious to me how it is good for Americas if Germany and Japan rearm and their neighbors react to this.
As a German I can only wonder about this patronizing completely out-of touch view of the world. Sure have your "debates" - if even Democrats can not comprehend what damage the tolerance and practice of torture has done to what America stands for in the world then there is really not much hope. Let me spell it out: America has lost its moral authority to lead the free world. You will probably find many Europeans who are actually happy about this - I am not. But clearly this country has lost its moral compass. You are unfit to lead.
October 10, 2005 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your ideas here are great, and I think we could use the same philosophy here as we try to understand Bush voters better, and as we try to be more responsive to the entire electorate. See "Practice What We Preach" in the Reader Blog section.
October 10, 2005 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink