Writing The Good Fight
The Good Fight begins with a meta-argument: that reviving liberalism requires better understanding our intellectual history. Put another way, we have trouble defining what we believe because we don’t know enough about what we once believed. Liberal activists these days want to banish the political consultants, and elect “conviction politicians” who say what they really think. Which sounds good to me, except that I’m not sure most liberals really know what they think—not clearly enough to put it on an index card—especially about foreign policy. The Good Fight is an effort to rummage through our heritage, and suggest some answers.
For the purposes of inaugurating this discussion, let me suggest two. The first is a belief in interdependence. Historically, conservatives have oscillated between isolationism and neo-imperialism, in both cases believing America can protect itself largely alone. The liberal tradition, as I see it, insists on America’s inability to secure its prosperity and security without international cooperation. And that cooperation requires strong international institutions. At the dawn of the cold war, America represented fifty percent of the world’s GDP and Western Europe was on its knees. But through NATO, the Truman administration gave weaker countries some influence over American power, and partly as a result, many Western Europeans decided that American power benefited them. George Kennan recognized that if America did not become an empire—if the Western alliance was based on persuasion, not command—it would outlast the Soviet bloc, which held itself together through brute force. And he was right. For George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, power creates legitimacy—if America acts alone, others will have no choice but to follow. But in the liberal tradition, the truth is closer to the opposite: legitimacy creates power.
This lesson is especially relevant today because globalization leaves America more threatened by pathologies incubated in other countries (jihadism, pandemics, financial instability, environmental degradation, loose nuclear weapons). It gives America a greater interest in how other countries are governed. For our own security, we need standards for how other governments act at home. But if we unilaterally define those standards—if America announces rules for democratic governance, anti-terrorism and non-proliferation on our own, as George W. Bush has, they will seem illegitimate. And if we try to enforce them largely alone, as in Iraq, we will fall into exactly the trap that Kennan tried to avoid: we will look like an empire. A central liberal project in the years to come must be the construction, and reconstruction, of international institutions, in the model of what the Roosevelt and Truman administrations did 60 years ago. Ironically, the more aggressively we want to act against the threats we face, the stronger the international institutions through which we act must become.
This belief in interdependence, I argue in the book, rests on a particular vision of American exceptionalism. Conservatives tend to stress America’s inherent virtue, out of a long-standing fear that democracies are prone to debilitating self-doubt. America, this view, represents good fighting evil, and any suggestion that we can also do harm constitutes a sinister attack on our will.
Liberals, I argue, should see America as capable of greatness precisely because we do not take our virtue as self-evident. Because we know we are fallible, we do not seek unrestrained international power, and the imperial temptations it brings. And because we know we are fallible, we don’t succumb to moral complacency at home. Unlike George W. Bush, we don’t hold out American democracy as a fixed model for a benighted world. Instead, we show the world what a democracy can do if it bravely faces its own deficiencies, and struggles to overcome them. Instead of suggesting that things like Haditha don’t really matter because we are so morally superior to our enemies, we prove our moral superiority by acknowledging our crimes, and taking steps to ensure we don’t repeat them.
A second key liberal principle is that fighting totalitarianism requires fostering economic opportunity. This was the premise of the Marshall Plan, which assumed that if Western European democracies could not provide for their battered people, they would fall. Cold war conservatives like Barry Goldwater vehemently rejected the suggestion that communism had roots in poverty and economic despair. And today, many conservatives say the same about jihadism. But it is the economic stagnation of much of Islamic world, combined with vast population growth, which has left governments unable to provide basic services for their people—leaving a void that Islamist groups have filled. Describing their region’s plight, the Middle Eastern Scholars who wrote the UN’s Arab Human Development Reports adopted Amartya Sen’s concept of “development as freedom.” This is entirely consistent with the liberal tradition—from the Marshall Plan to John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress to Tony Blair’s calls for debt relief. And it has to be part of any liberal vision of the anti-jihadist struggle.
Finally, the relationship between economic opportunity and the war on terror is just as important at home. During the cold war, America sustained massive international expenditures over many decades—including very large foreign aid programs—because the period from World War II to the 1970s was an extraordinary period of economic progress, especially for working class Americans. Since then, however, the breakdown of the American social compact—the refusal of employers to provide the health care, pensions and other benefits they once did, and the refusal of government to effectively respond—has made life for middle and working class Americans much riskier. Under these circumstances, it is more difficult to sustain enlightened international policies. It is hard to be generous abroad when America is not generous at home.
In his first debate with Richard Nixon, which was on domestic policy, John F. Kennedy got the first question, and began his answer by saying that everything he was about to discuss bore directly on America’s ability to win the struggle for freedom around the world. Then he talked about American industrial capacity, poverty in West Virginia, and black children who didn’t graduate high school. George W. Bush has said little about the domestic requirements of a “long war” against jihadism. But liberals must. And those requirements do not simply involve national fiscal strength—because we cannot fight an expensive “long war” while conservatives defund the government just in time for a baby boom retirement that sends government expenditures through the roof. They also involve the economic strength of average Americans.
Of all the ideas that our heritage bequeaths, perhaps the most audacious is that America defeats its enemies not by becoming more like them, but by becoming a better version of itself. With the Bush era mercifully coming to a close, that will be our challenge in the years to come.
OK, so my question, and based on other discussions I've already seen around the blogs prior to this week's Book Club, I think it will come up often, is: who exactly are these liberals who don't agree with and understand these points?
- Interdependence and the need for strong allies (not unilateral imperialism)? Check.
- America is fallible and we should admit and correct our mistakes? Check.
- Deficits are bad? Check.
What liberals don't agree on these points?
Maybe I'm not really a liberal, then...
Have questions about the Cafe? Try here.
June 5, 2006 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Peter
Welcome to TPMCafe.
Your two main points above see right on the money. However, you are likely to take hits from many here who either reject any notion of American exceptionalism, and who largely want to leave the rest of the world alone.
You make a big point of refering to liberals. To me liberals include Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton. Do you make a distinction between liberals, progressives, leftists or socialists? You mention Roosevelt and Truman but other are you other models for liberalism?
Many at the Cafe take something of a pacificist perspective. This seems dangerous in this world How do you fit pacificism in your perspective?
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I’m not sure most liberals really know what they think —- not clearly enough to put it on an index card —- especially about foreign policy.
Really? It seems to me that the liberal-internationalist recommendations you describe above are (as Matt Yglesias wrote more than a year ago) essentially consensus beliefs on the left half of the political spectrum, including people on both sides of the Iraq war issue.
It's just that people who opposed the Iraq war because it violated the principles you now recommend -- as well as because it would be a gross setback in the fight against jihadism -- were dismissed by you and others as unacceptably "soft." Indeed, you felt we should be drummed out of the party for espousing ideas that you now endorse ... and, for good measure, have the nerve to tell us we don't understand.
Instead of preaching at us, perhaps you should consider starting off with an apology.
June 5, 2006 10:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pacifists?
Find me one post of someone on this blog that thinks we shouldn't have gone into Afghanistan to bring al-Qaeda to justice for 9/11.
Anyone? Bueller?
Opposing the disaster in Iraq, and opposing it before it even became a disaster, does not make one a pacifist.
Have questions about the Cafe? Try here.
June 5, 2006 10:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Beinart,
I just bought your book this weekend, and have made it through about a third so far. I have a few early impressions on the historical narrative you construct in an attempt to find a "usable history" of postwar liberalism for Democrats.
The first is how tragic that history is. The divisions on the left are nothing new, but certainly set in with a vengeance following the death of FDR and then the end of the Second World War. The Democrats lost the South over the issue of civil rights, and then the many ideological battles over the developing Cold War divided socialists and other left-wing progressives from modern liberals in an atmosphere of fear, paranoia and recrimination.
So far as I can tell, we have never really recovered from that division. Truman's administration was bedevilled by bitter Cold War ideological struggles and he was forced to withdraw in 1952; Kennedy won a very narrow election, faced tremendous internal foreign policy opposition, and of course his administration ended tragically; Johnson's administration was also brought down by foreign policy matters. There is no Golden Age of clear, unified liberal triumph in postwar America, but only division, weakness and ambivalence on fundamental principles.
It is also depressing to reflect on the endless war footing that has set in and come to define the United States during this period. This condition of permanent war, and the erosion of liberty and self-government, go hand in had. War is inherently hostile to liberty. The period you descibe saw the construction of the hideous national security state, purges and loyalty investigations, the establishment of official secrecy and deception as permanent fixtures of US government, and other perversions of American ideals.
I'd like to find something usable in all this, but so far it is just too depressing - even sickening.
June 5, 2006 10:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Any liberal security policy that buys into the Cheney/Rumsfeld "Long War" construction is doomed from the start. Here's Rumsfeld in a speech titled 'The Long War':
If you are going to repeat the construct of a "Long War" you had better deal with the maximalist fantasies of "changing their way of life". Good luck.
As for my notecard policy "Don't Tread on Me" works for security and "Good Neighbor" works for diplomacy. FDR said it best:
How to convince average folks that Democrats are tough?
Don't spout nonsense like 'The Good Fight begins with a meta-argument: that reviving liberalism requires better understanding our intellectual history.' A good fight begins with a vicious counterpunch against anyone who dares attack the US (that would be Bin Laden, not Iraq), not meta-argument.
June 5, 2006 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
"I’m not sure most liberals really know what they think" Huh.
Liberals knew they opposed Iraq. They knew it was a bad idea, and that the guys pushing it were lying. They also knew it was much more important to go after al Quaeda. Read Al Gore's MoveOn-sponsored speech if you're confused as to what most of us thought--it's the jist of it.
What we never figured out is what the hell people like you were thinking? And why you thought it was a good idea to denigrate liberals, who were (and still are) making a hell of a lot more sense than you and your neo-con and Bush Administration allies.
Right now, liberals think you're pretty stupid. We think the war on terror is going to be won when people like you, who were wrong about everything, follow the lead of the people who were right about everything instead of telling us what our PR problem is. Right now, you're our PR problem. We are the ones who kept the liberal faith, not you, and the more you try to pretend that these are your ideas and not ours, the less legitimacy these ideas have because YOU WERE THE GUYS WHO WERE WRONG.
You were wrong. Admit you were wrong. Admit that your flirtation with the Bush Administration's neoconservatism has left you diseased, and you need to come back home to the liberals for some strong medicine.
And then we can work together. But before we can effectively work together, the world has to understand that you were wrong not because you listened to us, but because you didn't.
June 5, 2006 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr Beinart,
Initially, your focus seemed to be calling for the left to return to anti-totalitarianism. Now, you emphasize Truman's preference for power through institutions and legitimacy. This new take, maybe chosen because of a desire to move on from the Iraq debate, seems virtually indistinguishable from the work of that other tpm blogger, and princeton professor, john ikenberry. How is your work different than his?
June 5, 2006 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I truly don't understand the recent fixation on "reviving liberalism," which you imply, in your first line here, that your book is about, and on which so many in the left-of-center blogosphere seem fixated.
We don't have a a Liberal Party in this country. (I mean as a large nationally functioning party.) We do have a Democratic Party.
Are you who are talking of "reviving liberalism" talking about trying to do politics or change the culture?
With a two-party system and one of the parties including self-indentified liberals as an often uuhappy subset, which during my life (I'm a boomer) the Democratic Party has been, I think it's a little crazy to expect the word liberal to be of much practical political use at this time.
If you're looking to start a 30-year cultural machine, like the conservatives did, to take over the GOP, well, look at where that has gotten them so far. And I mean really look at what they have gotten and what they haven't, and what happened to the country in the process. Were the 2nd term Clinton years really so bad, you didn't like peace and prosperity and 2/3 of the public on Clinton's side in the culture wars?
Do you really want a Liberal Party instead of the Democratic Party? Mho, it's going to be a real long haul if ever.....
June 5, 2006 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
In his book, Peter forcefully argues that American liberals must embrace a fighting liberalism that confidently wages battle against Islamist totalitarianism just as Cold War liberals fought against Communist totalitarianism. Kate Cambor
While in his initial posting Peter has not emphasized this argument, it seems to me to be an unspoken given. And the proposition is questionable, problematic, and debatable.
We Democrats have been, post-World War II, responsible for more worldwide mayhem and killing, more death and maiming of our fellow citizens, than Republicans could, in their wildest imperial dreams, imagine.
Until we decide how it was that we became the "Party of Death" (and I'm not talking about abortion), admiring the history of how we conducted foreign affairs in the past is a prelude to more of the same in the future.
June 5, 2006 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great inaugural post, Peter. Let me preemptively agree, with Yglesias inter alia, that I think we have a lot of common ground here--and substantially more than we did two or three years ago (more on that in a minute). I'm fairly familiar with your P.O.V. going into this book, and I would be interested in your views on the following theses, if not on this occasion then how/whenever they come up here this week:
1. I was for Iraq War I; I was for Balkan intervention; I was for going after the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But I was foursquare opposed to Iraq War II. I am beyond tired of being called a wuss, a guy-who-don't-get-THEWARONTERROR, a traitor, and worse. Particularly now that Iraq is a charnel house, an unsolvable disaster, and a grenade in our lap, will people like yourself, at least, stop calling me and those who have agreed with me these kinds of things? Thank you in advance.
2. A key reason why liberals are mistakenly said not to know what they think on foreign policy is that they don't know how to counter effectively the peurile big-swinging-dick posturing of the War Party, and they are at a loss for words when it comes to trying to talk about international institutions, multilateralism, and the rest to a polity that is besotted with Patriotic Gore and fearmongering. Is that properly speaking liberals' problem, or is it a deeper, more meta problem in our national conversation and our polity?
3. A key reason why liberals are said not to know what to do to solve the Iraq situation is that there is no evident solution to the Iraq situation. So is it liberals' fault that they do not know what to do to solve the Iraq situation (or chaotically disagree on the subject), or is it the fault of the War Party that got us into this unholy, irresolvable mess in the first place--and if so why are they not (yet) bearing the brunt of public judgment on that score?
I look forward to a thorough airing of these and related issues this week.
June 5, 2006 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with those posters who are uneasy with your characterization of a "long war," which sounds too much like the "war on terror" nonsense from this Administration. I agree with John Kerry's assessment, that this is criminal action which should be prosecuted with a combination of strategies, not an all out preemptive war on any country we feel is a threat to us (while first, of course, getting a whole bunch of other countries to go in on it with us!).
Your comments on liberalism and international institutions sound dated to me. This is not the same world as it was back then. The damage the Bush Administration has done to our standing in the world combined with the shifting geopolitical alliances and schisms as a result of that damage makes this a whole new ballgame. We no longer have the trust of the "free world" as we once did. Any kind of international institutions will not be what they were when we did have that imprimatur, rightly or wrongly, as a world leader who could be trusted. Given that, for you to suggest that we somehow be the "example" is, I think, unproductive. There's a lot of cleaning up internally in this country that has to be done before we could even think of being an "example." And that depends very much on the upcoming elections.
My chief impression of your post was of someone who is very much behind the times as far as understanding where Democrats and liberals stand today. I think you had better catch up to what is going on now before you offer advice to everyone else.
June 5, 2006 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Peter,
Haven't read your book yet, but I've enjoyed reading what you wrote above and your interview ith Kevin Drum at TNR. As other commenters have noted, the key principles you've articulated - interdependence and economic opportunity (incluing the domestic-international link) - are widely shared, though I do think you do a good job glossing each, and I find the allusions to Niehbur interesting (I do intend to read the book). I have a question though, which you may address in the book but which I haven't seen you speak to either above or in the Drum interview:
You've traced the intellectual history of cold war liberalism primarily on the basis of the European experience, in which communism was unambiguously a tyrannical, external imposition. However, much of cold war liberalism - and US foreign policy - played out during the 40s, 50s, and 60s in Asia, Latin America, the middle east, and Africa. These locales - in contrast to Europe - featured both US decisions to reimpose/retain European colonialism following WWII, and communist/nationalist movments (and eventually regimes) that at least initially, and sometimes for a long while after, hand significant - even overwhelming - domestic support. I would argue that while the cold war liberals got European policy largely right, they often (though not always) made serious mistakes in supporting despotic anti-communist regimes, many of which (esp. in central america, Africa, and the ME) were inimical to economic progress. Precisely through backing such regimes, the US ended up where Kenan didn't want it: acting like (and perhpas thereby being) an empire.
If we consider the world today, I think we face a similar risk in conflating all of political Islam with Al Queada. This creates a danger of us getting into military conflicts which are widely and correctly viewed as having no legitimate connection to our efforts to stamp out the particular, extremist Islamic organizations that are seeking to wage war on us. Worse still, we may thereby undermine popular movements for political justice and public accountability that may prove to be the driving force for democratization in regions still dominated by autocracy.
I believe that danger is especially actute today with Iran. I heard a bit of a speech this weekend in which Mark Warner was describing his foreign policy vision, which I liked a lot except for a reference to "Iranian expansionism." This is pretty silly: Iran hasn't invaded anyone, has no apparent plans to do so, and is currently in the US's sights for reasons that have nothing to do any Iranian foreign aggression (let alone with the war or Al Queada).
Do you believe that cold war liberals had a mistaken view of the political situation outside of Europe and how would a revived anti-totalitarian liberal foreign policy avoid confusing potential partners (such as Islamists in Turkey, Lebannon, Egypt, and even Iran) with our sworn and dedicated enemies?
June 5, 2006 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
This reminds me of "some people say" straw man line often used by FOX "news" and Bush.
They build a straw man argument by saying "some people say Satan isn't such a bad guy" and link the opposition to their straw man.
This is what Peter Beinart is doing. Claiming "some people on the left" don't want to defeat terrorists. Who? Michael Moore? Last I heard Michael Moore was all for going after Al Qaeda. He was opposed to the Iraq war. And who knows if Michael Moore had been in charge of the "war on terror" we might have caught Osama Bin Laden by now and avoided the quagmire in Iraq. Howard Dean? He is another straw man. First of all Dean is not left wing. He is also not a pacifist. He supported the first Gulf War, the war in the Balkans as well as the war in Afghanistan. He opposed the war in Iraq.
So, Mr Beinart enough with the straw man arguments about "some people on the left".
Another thing; enough with comparing the "war on terror" with the Cold War. The cold war had a specific geographic location, a country, an enemy with a flag, nuclear weapons and an army.
June 5, 2006 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
With dmihm1 and others, I sense that hidden beneath the placid surface of moderation lie troubling cross-currents which will roil the waters right soon.
Fighting Faith (TNR)
"The United States, Bush has argued again and again, will help the people of the Middle East fulfill their democratic desires--thus undermining Al Qaeda's appeal. And, while many Democrats have criticized Bush's reliance on unilateral, military means, few oppose Bush's goals themselves. The suggestion that Iraqis, or others in the Middle East, may not really want democracy has remained largely taboo in Washington, a violation of the democratic-universalist ethos that both parties share... But liberals can scale back their expectations of what is now possible in Iraq without abandoning democratic universalism--they can simply say the Bush administration has bungled the job. Now, more than ever, democratic universalism needs defending--not simply in Iraq, but in Washington, too."
Faith like a mustard seed might make the Easy Editor work properly!
Nice ass BTW.
[TNR May 22, 2006]
June 5, 2006 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Many at the Cafe take something of a pacificist perspective. This seems dangerous in this world How do you fit pacificism in your perspective?
If, by your seemingly perjorative comments Daniel, you mean people who oppose unilateral wars of aggression under false pretenses then I would be one of those "pacifists"...and damn proud of it!!!
June 5, 2006 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr Beinart, I heard you speak for an hour on Wisc. Public Radio. I like that you are trying to appeal to liberals, but it appears more like damning them with faint praise.
It GRATES on me when I hear echos of the Decepticons about Liberals not knowing this, or not knowing that, or not having ideas or convictions.
This may be obvious, but it is NONE of the above. What we have here is one part of our country doing EVERYTHING wrong, and the other part is trying to put their fingers in the holes appearing in the dikes.
Conservatives have been pushing the UP button when DOWN is correct, Left when Right was needed, Black when we all saw something as white. Conservatives, and their corporate masters have tried to profit from everything. That leaves millions and millions of people in a world which is going wrong everywhere you look. And most of it is caused by the other side, and their single minded obsession with money. They only have One or Two planks in their platform, but the conservatives affect EVERYTHING with those planks. If all they cared about were gays and abortions, we would be a happy place. But instead they care about religion over reason, money over merit, and it makes the whole world unfair when they get their way.
Dems and Lefties come in and clean up the mess. But help is needed everywhere. Like Post Katrina, where do you start? Because Lefties are the responsible party, we get stuck with all the details and sufferings and many-faceted problems. When asked to put that in planks on a platform, it is justifiably confusing and broad.
The right looks at their own disasters, and declares war on Terror or Gays or Liberals and off they go in a cloud of fear, incompetence, money-grubbing and denial.
The Right causes a multitude of problems, and the Left gets stuck trying to sort them out. Human psychology what it is....many citizens see the problems on all hands and decide it is easier to saddle up and ride off with the Terror Posse than to stick around and actually try to fix the broken system the Right has ruined and abandoned
Think Regionally. Act Regionally
June 5, 2006 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Econimic despair more often than not results in vast population growth. Or, as poverty is eliminated, birth rates decrease. The resulting advantages to a country as a whole are obvious. Your discussion of admitting our fallibility to the world would definitely benefit our image and perhaps eliminate the hypocracy others see in our global policies. However, in this domestic climate of fear (played up ad nauseum by this administration) fallibility in a leader is a death sentence. Kind of puts any political party and its candidate on the horns of a dilemma.
June 5, 2006 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
The ideas you put forth with regard to increased American liberalism sound very good when reading them, but the rub is that it is much more difficult to put such ideals into practice. One of the more glaring omissions in your well-formulated post is the fact that Americans disslike increased taxation, which is a staple for the Democratic Party.
Beyond this, however, George W. Bush has been a very interesting president. On the one hand he has acted unilaterally in places such as Iraq. Fabricated intelligence and clever uses of propoganda and rhetoric have been used very effectively to state his case.
Yet, there is still a great deal of multilateral qualities to this presidency as well. We cannot speak of North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, or Libya without giving credit to the diplomatic efforts of this presidency. Elsewhere, the U.S. has never been as diplomatically close with either India or Pakistan as we have been under the Bush administration. Liberals tend to dismiss such overtures by pointing out that Bush has created a short-term alliance in the face of terrorism. Be that as it may we are nonetheless presented with a very good chance at bolstering the good will which has been created in that neighborhood since 9/11.
The Iran question is one which also deserves a closer look. Democrats lambast the president as being narrow minded and unwilling to compromise with Tehran. This may be so, but there are certainly justifiable reasons. First, the EU-3 has spearheaded negotiations with Tehran for the last couple of years. It has not been until recently, in the wake of Ahmadenijad's Hitler-like rhetoric, that the U.S. has truly moved into the front seat. Furthermore, the EU-3 (Britain, France, and Germany) are all in complete concert with the diplomatic efforts being made by the United States. If criticism is warranted they must share an equal portion of the responsibility (not just Bush). Second, Iran has openly defied the United Nations both in principle and in practice. Indeed, when many on the left attack Bush for his seeming disdain for the international body (think John Bolton), they seem to conveniently overlook the fact that Washington's hardline rhetoric towards Tehran has been brought forth largely by the latter's own doing. Tehran has not only ejected the IAEA from its facilities (ala Saddam Hussein in 1998) but it has also defied the UN charter by intentionally processing uranium when it has been expressly forbidden.
If the liberalism described in the parent post gives us any indication of what is to come after Bush leaves office, then I am afraid. Yes we can easily negotiate with Tehran; thus allowing them, essentially speaking, to gain an atomic bomb (which will most likely happen regardless). At that point we can diffuse a situation and pat ourselves on the back and say we made ourselves stronger by admitting our mistakes. At the same time, however, Tehran will have obtained their bomb and will be able to do with it what they will: blackmail, threat, sell to Hezzbollah or Al Qaeda, etc.
The point is that the United States, unlike any other nation in the world, is seen as the predominent regulatory nation of the world. Yes we sometimes demand a lot from other nations--and sometimes these demands are not in everyone's best interest. But when natural disasters strike (like Tsunami's or earthquakes)we are also the first to send relief supplies, as well as the one nation that sends the most. Outside of Africa we tend to protect borders of peace-loving nations such as Kosovo in 1999 when they were unable to fend off the Serbians. In a sense, the United States is faced with an international double standard. On the one hand, if we do TOO MUCH by way of forcing our will, we are seen as an empire that wishes to exploit the other nations of the world for our own gain. Yet on the other hand, American isolationism is seen as by the world community as us being selfish and not sharing our vast universe of resources.
Bush has not been a great president but he has been a realistic president; and one that was probably essential. Whomever occupies the White House for the next several decades will be careful not to make the same mistakes that his administration has made, yet will likely inherit a much more stable world than what we are seeing now. After 9/11 George W. Bush made the decision to use American might to blow a hole in the hornet's nest that is the Middle East. His presidency will be remembered for the chaos and stings of that action. But remember, after a time those angry hornets simply disperse because they come to see that their beloved nest is gone forever. Future presidents will have a calmer world with more opportunity at diplomacy and alliances because Bush, for his part, was willing to take the initial risk of destroying the nest. For all the good he did domestically, Clinton merely opted to bypass the growing nest during his 8 years in office because he did not want to deal with the consequences.
As I've said before, in the midst of war there often appears to be little hope for salvation. We saw this during the bleak years of our own Civil War when many, north and south, believed the country was irreparably damaged no matter the outcome. They were very wrong. In Europe during World War I an entire generation of men were killed and it appeared as if the stalemate would last until the end of days--and even in the slim chance that it did end somehow, the continent would be forever militarized against each other. Though there was still one more great war to be fought, they too, were wrong. In Vietnam the United States fought a terrible war in the hope of checking the spread of Communism. During the latter days of that conflict many in the U.S. believed we had "shot our wad" as it were. They surmised that our era of strength and dominance was over. They were wrong. Not only did Communism become increasingly marginalized over the next twenty years, but America went on to see even more unprecedented growth at home. Today, the Democrats argue that Bush has shattered all post World War II alliances in the name of profit and has angered an entire region of people. The Iraq War has been poorly managed, yes, but calm will once again find the region--just as it has in much worse places (like America after the Civil War or Europe after the World Wars). People are inherently peace loving and when the smoke clears there will be a new hope for everyone.
Liberalism, it seems, is but another fancy political word meant to inspire people to vote for lefty versus righty. In the end the U.S. will be strong because we are resiliant and our people directly challenge adversity--a trait which has defined our existence since independence was gained. This will be no different.
June 5, 2006 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Peter:
Thanks for participating on this forum. As I'm sure you've anticipated, you've come in for a lot of harsh criticism thus far, and I'm sure it's just the tip of the iceberg. For my part, I'm not looking for an abject apology about you being wrong in the lead-up to the disaster that is the Iraq occupation. I do hope however that you will engage in the comments section of the Book Club. I think if you really want your ideas to be taken seriously (and there's a lot to engage in what you've written) you do need, as Michael Tomasky has suggested, to answer some very specific questions about what you were thinking in 2002-2003, and does what you advocated as a course of action then really sit within the parameters of the values you've articulated above.
What I want to know is did you really believe Iraq posed a threat to U.S. security best met with invasion and occupation? And please don't use the elision that "all the other intelligence services thought X." The pillars of the imminent threat argument--the fantasy drones, aluminum tubes, yellowcake, the facile manner of the Bushies using the terms WMD and nuclear interchangeably, the "we'll be greeted with flowers," etc.--were either shredded prior to the start of hostilities or childishly absurd on their face.
In other words, if the sum total of bullshit in the discourse surrounding the lead up to war overwhelmed you, just say so. There's no shame in that. If you were just sucked up in the Rovian gambit to paint anyone who sought to forestall in the slightest this war as a limp-wristed Frenchie, I think you can admit that too. Because you were not alone in being gulled like that--the majority of the country was gulled too. I think understanding what went into that process can help prevent the country from being drowned in toxic bullshit again, so that then--and only then--we can move forward to your vision of a unified nation fostering international interdependence. What we really need is something akin to a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission--not to punish everyone who was so dreadfully and tragically wrong, but to see the truth that was so plainly evident three years ago but was somehow missed and make sure it never happens again.
PS I'll let others take you to task for the fatuous claim that liberals "don't know what they think, especially about foreign policy."
June 5, 2006 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Lesson Plan [Nation Builders 'r US]
"But, while pro-war liberals need to learn from the mess in Iraq, antiwar liberals may be learning too much from it--and repeating the overreaction to Vietnam. The first is a belief in nation-building...If Iraq doesn't prove that nation-building is futile, neither does it invalidate the connection between dictatorship and totalitarian Islam. The danger is that, in the wake of Iraq, liberals will turn inward, as many did after Vietnam. They will abandon the belief that U.S. power can positively change the Muslim world and instead argue that the United States should merely aggravate it(!!!) less while killing terrorists where we can. "
June 5, 2006 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am pretty sure I do not know what you mean. Are you quoting someone? Are these your thoughts? What do you sense is lying beneath placid surfaces?
Think Regionally. Act Regionally
June 5, 2006 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Again, are these your thoughts, or a quote from somewhere? I cannot tell if you have an opinion or if you are astride the fence...saying liberals take TOO LITTLE away from Iraq's lessons AND TOO MUCH...depending....
Think Regionally. Act Regionally
June 5, 2006 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome Mr. Beinart...
On the first point you make on interdependence I couldn't agree more. We need to engage the rest of the world diplomatically and economically. Acting unilaterally from a "position of power" like Bush has done not only makes our power illegitimate it undermines the legitimacy we have. We can not force the world to follow our lead we need to lead by the example of our values.
On your second point I don't completely agree, unless I misinterpreted what you were saying in that section. I agree with the general premise that the US can be most effective fighting totalitarianism by spreading economic opportunity throughout the world. But I don't feel in the case of jihadists that is a key to defeating their ideology. They are not driven by material wealth. In fact the the opposition to the pursuit of material wealth is one of the ideologies that appeals to their adherents the most. The "our way of life is being attacked by the West" message can't be defeated by the spread of economic wealth. We need to have a nuanced view of the world and not get caught up in a "one solution can address all the problems" approach. That is why the neocon philosophy is bound to fail in promoting America's best interests abroad. They incorrectly feel they can deal with the Russians, Islamic jihadists and Latin American populism the same "spread economic wealth" policy when in reality it can hurt our cause in some cases.
On the last point I do agree with you. Our country's strength is due to our people, their economic condition and the condition of our infrastructure. Between health care costs, a crumbling infrastructure and the diminishing of economic health of the American people our country's strength is being undermined.
June 5, 2006 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Gettysburg,
If Bush is the "realistic president", that you describe, what is his plan to deal with this "reality", since he "owns it". His adminsitration reversed a federal budget surplus; an income tax structure that should have been left alone, since it helped provide revenue to balance the budget, and left the new Bush administration with only one fiscal management challenge.....reducing the trade deficit, which has doubled to more than $800 billion annually, on his watch.
The following is what we face now, IMO:
the combined U.S. federal budget and external trade debt continues to accumulate annually at a rate of at least $1.4 trillion. At minimumn, the combined existing federal treasury and external debt is $14 trillion. At 6 percent annual interest, it costs $840 billion to service the interest on the $14 trillion, and next year the combined debt will have accumulated to at least $15.4 trillion.
The total U.S. GDP in 2005 was $12.5 trillion, and federal spending was at least $2.466 trillion
Hoping for world peace, considering what I've outlined as far as U.S. military capability and the runaway U.S. debt accumulation, aggravated by growing competition for petroleum and other raw materials, with a Chinese currency that rises in value, as the U.S. dollar falls.....causing even higher petroleum, import costs, with no sign of any lessening of the amount that the U.S. imports, or of new signifigant discovery of supply, and the increasing "off budget" expense of financing delayed occupation aggravated by deteriorating security climates in both Iraq and Afghanistan, seems a bit unrealistic.
I'm betting that most Americans will be unwilling to accept the coming costs of peace, which probably include a doubling of the dollar price of oil, and everything that we currently buy at Wal-Mart, in a span as short as in the next 36 months. Expenditures on the military intelligence complex will fall as our already bankrupt U.S. government can no longer borrow money at rates under....say.....12 percent....
[quote][url]http://counterpunch.org/roberts02152005.html[/url]
.......When the dollar loses its reserve currency role, America will not be able to pay for the imports on which it has become dependent. Shopping in Wal-Mart will be like shopping at Neiman Marcus...........[/quote]
The question then will be simple....do we use the military power, before it rusts at the dock, or on the launch pad, in an attempt to force Russian and China to disarm, or be "taken out", or do we quietly fade into an Argentina style decline?
I know what we will decide....so....why wait? Every new day where we import 14 million more bbls or petroleum equivalents, borrowing an additional $980 million each day to do it....brings us closer to the day that no one will extend us the credit to do it. On that day, the U.S. will be weaker economically and less militarily powerful than it is today, and Russia and China will both be stronger and richer than they are now. There is no plan that I know of, to lessen the speed of the U.S. spiral into paper currency spending power implosion, and no plan to stop it and reverse it.
All I see is an avoidance to even pay any attention to the trend....can anybody offer an alternative, or rosier set of predictions? If not, shouldn't discussion focus on when the best time will be to threaten China and Russia into capitulating, militarily, and what to do to them if they refuse?
June 5, 2006 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Fighting Faith [The Russians Are Coming! Redux]
"Obviously, Al Qaeda and the Soviet Union are not the same. The ussr was a totalitarian superpower; Al Qaeda merely espouses a totalitarian ideology, which has had mercifully little access to the instruments of state power. Communism was more culturally familiar, which provided greater opportunities for domestic subversion but also meant that the United States could more easily mount an ideological response. The peoples of the contemporary Muslim world are far more cynical than the peoples of cold war Eastern Europe about U.S. intentions, though they still yearn for the freedoms the United States embodies.
But, despite these differences, Islamist totalitarianism--like Soviet totalitarianism before it--threatens the United States and the aspirations of millions across the world. And, as long as that threat remains, defeating it must be liberalism's north star."
Today's word "EXTIRPATE"
"DON'T LOOK now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback — and not among the Republicans who have made it famous but in the Democratic Party....The Moveon.org types are hardly prepared to go down without a fight. At the moment, with no end to the imbroglio in Iraq in sight, they — the populist left — are poised for their greatest influence in the party since the McGovern era.
The new Democratic hawks, like the old neoconservatives of the 1970s, represent an insurgency, a direct challenge to the establishment. And if they are to revamp the party, they will have to do a lot more than simply evoke the ghost of Truman and Co.
Still, it is amusing to see that at the very moment when hawkish realists are trying to extirpate the neocon credo in the Republican Party, it's being revived in the Democratic Party that first brought it to life."
Some of us are not at all amused -not amused at gratuitous swipes at the new Jane Fondas (Michael Moore and MoveOn) and not amused at the pre-pubescent grasp of national power.
June 5, 2006 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why would anyone other than a mindless ideologue want their thoughts on foreign policy to be summarizable on an index card?
June 5, 2006 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
My question to Peter Beinart is as follows: Cold War liberalism, the ideology he wants to revive, brought us the Vietnam War, 56,000 dead American servicemembers, 1 million dead Vietnamese, My Lai and other atrocities, and a country that fell to the Communists anyway. After Saigon fell, NONE of the bad things that were supposedly going to happen in terms of the advance of Communism happened.
Why is the ideology that produced the most atrocious American foreign policy disaster of the 20th Century something that we would want to revive now, especially after its adherents also gave Bush crucial bipartisan cover in killing another 2,400 American servicemembers and 30,000 Iraqis in the current war?
Haven't the opponents of Bienart's brand of liberalism, whom Bienart demonizes, been twice proven right?
June 5, 2006 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the thing: the liberal party - the Democratic party - is essentially in consensus about what it believes our foreign policy should be. The party has had this discussion before in the pre and post Vietnam war eras, and the agreement has been pretty universal. To go into combat we subject the incident to a number of things: Is there a threat? What's the goal? What's the exit strategy? Numerous foreign policy incursions by Dems have met this test: Bosnia, Haiti, etc. Afghanistan surely met the test, while Iraq clearly failed (there was no threat and no exit strategy). The left was in agreement, save for publications like Beinart's New Republic and more than the right amount of Democratic senators who voted out of sync with their own constitutents. The consensus was there, it was just ignored.
So why did Beinart apparently feel the need to fill a whole book with this stuff? Because he, like so many other members of the left, get their view of what liberals believe not by actually talking to actual liberals amongst the great unwashed masses of America, but rather come to their beliefs by what people are saying in DC and in the elitist circles of the press and amongst politicians. Of course you're going to get a distorted view of reality if your primary source is the gilded set, and Beinart no doubt thinks he's doing a service by railing against what looks like a battle of ideas to him --- but he's just fighting against a straw construct that doesn't exist.
Oliver Willis
June 5, 2006 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Neocons in the Democratic Party
by Jacob Heilbrunn (Los Angeles Times, 5/28)
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimes180.html
June 5, 2006 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think I should qualify what I said. Rightwingers cause a lot of problems DOMESTICALLY, I should have said.
I understand that much of Mr Beinart's piece has to do with International Agenda and Policy.
How Liberals have succeeded or failed, vs Rightwingers...in the international settings...I guess I do not have much good ammo. I think where Liberals have failed, they were trying to do the right thing, the human thing. But they have screwed up or failed as much as rightwingers...probably. It's just that ReichWingers NEVER act for the good of the whole. Makes their failures despicable and inhumane.
Lefty failures are just normal human fallibility and many times, good intentions were not enough.
Righty failures include bad intentions, bad goals, bad practices, bad results. And they are always motivated by the ONLY thing that makes Reichwingers do ANYTHING...money.
Domestically, again, the Left is trying humane solutions to Human problems. The Right looks down their list of Free Market Mantras and Religious Nonsense, and usually pulls out the same tactic/solution/bloody weapon.
The terrible asymmetry is that most of our issues, problems, and devestating inequalities are borne from Right Wing Decepticon Bad Idea Hatcheries.
Think Regionally. Act Regionally
June 5, 2006 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know if he is trying to appeal to liberals or trying to give some good advice about defining who we are instead of letting the GOP do it.
The truth of it is the average American has no idea of what liberals stand for except from what they have heard from the Repug noise machine. I completely agree with your critique of the diasterous consequences of GOP rule in this country. But by just saying that the Repugs are bad people and their policies are all wrong does not define what liberals are and liberalism is.
June 5, 2006 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
> After 9/11 George W. Bush made the
> decision to use American might to
> blow a hole in the hornet's nest that
> is the Middle East.
Oh really? Too bad he never saw fit to mention that that was his strategy during the 2004 election. Or 2000.
Just one of those things that had to be kept Secret from mere Citizens, I guess. Apparently we can't handle the truth.
sPh
June 5, 2006 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Peter,
Good points. I would make a couple of observations with regard to the economy. First, unemployment is remarkably low for a country the size of the United States. Despite job growth under Bush (which is perhaps not because of anything he has done, but being president he gets the credit--just as Clinton did for the Tech Boom which he had no hand in) many on the left point out that job stability is weaker as are wages, from say, the 1990's. These things may be true but when people are working, even if their annual wage is slightly less than in past years, they are still willing to consume. In fact, consumer spending has been trending upward for the last few years (http://www.bls.gov/cex/home.htm#overview). Moreover, the long-term probability of Bush-style tax cuts are almost non-existent. Even moderate Republicas will, and already are, expressing some reluctance at making the tax cuts permanent. If the Democrats do well in the next few elections as predicted, I'm guessing we'll see taxation rise and take some pressure off of the deficit. Granted, the trade deficit with China is a serious matter that I'm not convinced the next president will be able to do much about.
My point, in general, is that other nations, like China and Japan, will continue to fund our debt spending as long as our economy remains fairly active and productive. Our stock market is nearing all-time highs, consumer spending is up (so businesses are profiting), and unemployment is down. These are good indicators that the international community will not bail on us anytime soon.
As far as the military scenario goes, that is far trickier. It is at once both a quantitative AND qualitative problem for those in power. Like the oil industry the military complex is so firmly established with lobbyists and contracts that it almost seems as if substantive reforms are impossible. Furthermore, any president or politician that votes to curtail military spending opens themselves to a myriad of criticism come election time--a factor which, in today's era of politics, cannot be merely dismissed out of hand.
In the end I would agree with you that the price of goods will rise simply because it is inevitible given the market forces which have been put into place. I am not of the philosophy, hoewver, that 8 years of Bush will inherently destroy what we, as a nation, have been building for the last 230 years. I actually believe that whomever replaces Bush has an incredibe opportunity to appear to the world as some sort of rational savior--who will be able to promote our collective agenda both diplomatically and economically.
June 5, 2006 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Speaking as someone who is constantly accused of being almost anything BUT a liberal, would some please define at least what a liberal is not?
For example, do you have to fear the government to be a liberal? What does that imply if liberals take over the government? Self hatred?
I have always thought liberals were, well, just that, liberal. They embraced change, tried to create a future, while conservatives tried to conserve the present. I mean, at least the labels make sense that way.
More importantly liberal and conservative were not antonyms, not enemies, they had different goals that sometimes could come into conflict if liberals wanted to change something that conservatives thought valuable to conserve.
Then, all that happened was that a compromise was reached, where change didn't occurs as fast as liberals wanted, but not as slow as conservatives wanted, either.
What the heck is wrong with that definition?
June 5, 2006 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Love your work in TNR, Mr. Beinart, and will likely read your book soon. Question for you, though: opposing totalitarianism means what, exactly? It can't always mean using military force, can it? If it does, or even if it means using military force a whole lot more often than we do now, I can't get behind it.
I'm no pacifist (I supported the invasion of Afghanistan, just wish it'd been done better) but I find myself breaking ranks with other liberals and Democrats on issues like Darfur. I don't want our volunteer troops getting torn apart in that Hellish seeming place. I don't think it's fair to ask our soldiers to die for that particular cause.
But there are other ways to fight totalitarianism, aren't there?
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
June 5, 2006 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
For my part, I think you--and the poster above who talked about the differing Cold War experiences in the Third World vs Europe-- raise an excellent point: Cold War liberals screwed up a lot, and not minor screwups either. Now, I think it's worth bearing in mind the myriad successes--the world is still here, for starters, and the Soviet Union is defeated--is worthwhile as part of a historical assessment, but are the successes more relevant to today's world than the failures, and indeed didn't some of the the successes directly lead to the world we inhabit today?
I wouldn't go so far as to say "opponents of [Beinart's] brand of liberalism" have "been proven twice right" because I believe pretty strongly that the broader sweep of how we conducted ourselves during the Cold War was really our only way to fly. But I think it's a worthwhile question to ponder whether the best way to implement Beinart's prescription means perpetual low-intensity warfare, and if it does how do we mitigate the fallout so the next generation doesn't have to clean up the mess.
And since we're quibbling about our intellectual history in this thread, I wouldn't call Vietnam our most atrocious foreign policy disaster of the 20th century. It was a pretty prodigious domestic policy disaster and a watershed moment in creating the bifurcated America we live in today, but I believe the notion that Vietnam weighs heavily on other nations' views of us today is mostly projection. I mean, we enjoy pretty normal relations with Vietnam today; in a lot of ways it's like the war never happened. For longstanding eff-ups which color today's world, look to the lack of credibility we have in our own hemisphere for encouraging and enabling murderous juntas or the forgotten neo-imperialist debacle in the Congo or our tossing the fortunes of people in the Phillipines and Indonesia under the bus just to assuage our fears about fantasy Commies.
June 5, 2006 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Libertine said: "But by just saying that the Repugs are bad people and their policies are all wrong does not define what liberals are and liberalism is."
Well, it does define us if we are always in the mode of fixing their work. When trying to make sure everyone gets a fair shake becomes less of a habit with us, and more like an insurmountable goal. We have our hands full with their misbegotten litter.
I was born in mid 60's. No one told me what a Liberal is, nor what the secret handshake was.
I just took it to mean, Liberal with Justice, Liberal (you know, Plentiful) with thought, Liberal with wealth. Giving as freely as one takes.
There is no Dictionary definition that we use to help usher us into one party or the other (no one is standing by a poll or voter booth with the Standard Accepted Liberal Checklist), and certainly the great unwashed does not 'know' what Liberal stands for these days. They know it means left, and opposite of Decepticons and Conservatives. "Conservative" seems like some of the first DoubleSpeak....sounds like cautious and trustworthy but was really code language for Protectors of Money Grubbers and Agency of Intolerance (stuck in the old ways and damn sure to keep them that way!)
My point is that Conservatives have some cover stories, but in the end they are for MegaPower and MegaWealth.
Liberals stand for everything, everybody! That is why we don't have a cute, short answer or Liberal Checklist.
To answer Libertine...it is not just that the Rightwangers are "bad guys". Like the Wolf shapes the Moose, Like the Mouse shapes the Cat....The conservatives are shaping the liberals. We clean up their messes. We react to their inconcievably stupid actions. Liberals maybe are the perpetual RESPONDERS. Life is what it is. Trying to bind up the wounds and get us all through is the business of Lefty...at all times. Our shape and service is always shifting to accomodate the wounds caused by the Monied Ones. Maybe it is an inescapable fate...to always be the soother, the caregiver. Once we may have declared our objectives, now we are too consumed with trying to ward off Global doom and our own government/corporatocracy atrocities...too busy to be declaring High Faluting new ideas. Hell, the idea is to live...harmoniously.
Why is it Lefties problem, to come up with solutions....when the other side is always blowing things up? Shouldn't it be on the RightWings head?....their move. Stop trying to Ruin America. Stop Trying to Ruin the WOrld. Stop lobbing bombs and gutting america, and declaring war on your own citizens....and then maybe Lefty can start advancing ideas about what we will do when we are healed and able to move around again. If roughly half of our country is dead set on destroying itself, is Lefty's job to come up with Beautiful, Arching philosophies? Or to stop the bleeding?
Think Regionally. Act Regionally
June 5, 2006 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I am not of the philosophy, hoewver, that 8 years of Bush will inherently destroy what we, as a nation, have been building for the last 230 years. I actually believe that whomever replaces Bush has an incredible opportunity to appear to the world as some sort of rational savior--who will be able to promote our collective agenda both diplomatically and economically."
Bush ain't so bad because:
1) we'll survive him--(sure, but a pretty large number of people have not).
2) his successor will look better in contrast--(with a huge amount of unpleasant baggage courtesy of the successor's predecessor).
Faint praise, indeed.
June 5, 2006 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Justin Raimondo's take on Beinart:
Our Terrorism, and Theirs
Liberal apologetics for American atrocities
Money quote:
"We expected Bill Kristol and the usual neocon suspects to dismiss the atrocities committed by U.S. troops at Haditha as nothing to get too excited about. After all, these guys don't believe in any morality but that which comes out of the barrel of a gun. So what else is new? Yet there are, perhaps, a few among us – not me, however – who somehow expected a little less knee-jerk defensiveness from the likes of liberal Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic. Alas, no:
"This horrible story from Haditha powerfully underscores the liberal vision, which is this. We are not angels: without sufficient moral and legal restrictions, and under conditions of extreme stress, Americans can be as barbaric as anyone. What's makes us an exceptional nation with the capacity to lead and inspire the world is our very recognition of that fact. We are capable of Hadithas and My Lais, so is everyone. But few societies are capable of acknowledging what happened, bringing the killers to justice, and instituting changes that make it less likely to happen again. That's how we show we are different from the jihadists. We don't just assert it. We prove it. That's the liberal version of American exceptionalism, and it's what we need right now in response to this horror."
To begin with, all meaningful moral and legal restrictions on American behavior were swept aside with the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of a country that had never attacked the United States, and represented no threat to us. Having embarked on a war of aggression, it wasn't too long before we began to slide down the slippery slope all the way to the bottom, wherein dwelled the subterranean horrors of Abu Ghraib [pdf].
Now more monsters from the American id are uncoiling, and we stand, aghast, in horror. All except Beinart, who sees this as the perfect occasion for a little self-congratulation. Certainly his sense of timing is off. He comes off as almost a caricature of the archetypal Ugly American, a poster boy for the unselfconscious display of American arrogance.
Secondly, I see that we're running up against the "extreme stress" exculpatory syndrome again, one first given voice by Rep. John Murtha as he sought to explain – although not excuse – the Haditha massacre. What is it about the word "stress" that gives it – for Americans, at least – a magical power of absolution? A postal worker goes ballistic, kills a dozen people, and the whole thing is "explained" by "stress." A mother of five drowns her children in the bathtub, and, again, we hear about the debilitating effects of "stress" from her defense lawyer. I'm sure if Lee Harvey Oswald had survived to face trial, we would have heard the same B.S. – "stress" made me do it! I have news for the stress-ophobes – most of life in the rest of the world take place under extremely "stressful" conditions. Imagine having an income of a few hundred dollars a year, no access to medical care, and little prospect that your children will escape a legacy of grinding poverty and hopelessness. Now that's stressful!
But I digress. Let us get to the core argument of the liberal apologetics for American terrorism in Iraq: the loopy idea that American atrocities are somehow different in kind from those routinely committed by the Osama bin Ladens of this world. American bombers strafe the Iraqi countryside, killing hundreds of innocents in the course of the war; U.S. soldiers routinely fire on Iraqi civilians with little or no provocation, they drown them, they torture them – and yet, our atrocities are somehow different. Nobler. They even "underscore the liberal vision"!
Jeezy-peezy, you can't make this stuff up. What the heck is Beinart babbling about? He is wrong when it comes to the facts. His contention that the U.S. government is freely "acknowledging what happened, bringing the killers to justice, and instituting changes that make it less likely to happen again" is simply not true. If it weren't for Iraqi human rights activist Taher Thabet, who videotaped the immediate aftermath of the Haditha atrocities, the cover-up engineered by local commanders (and possibly others higher up the chain of command) would have succeeded. When Marine units arrived at Haditha in the wake of the massacre, they found women, children, and an old man, shot dead – not victims of a roadside bomb, which was and still is the official story. As Tom Ricks points out in the Washington Post,
"Despite what Marine witnesses saw when they arrived, that official version has been allowed to stand for six months. Who lied about the killings, who knew the truth and what, if anything, they did about it is at the core of one of the potentially most damaging events of the Iraq war, one that some say may surpass the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison."
And now we have these reports:
"Marine commanders in Iraq knew within two days of the killings in Haditha in November that gunfire, not a roadside bomb, had killed Iraqi civilians but they saw no reason to investigate further, The New York Times reported on Saturday."
The first response from U.S. military authorities was denial – and cover-up. And it was only by the grace of outside investigators – meaning outside the U.S. – that the horrors of Haditha came to light. And it isn't just Haditha. In Hamandiya, U.S. Marines stand accused of kidnapping and murdering an unarmed Iraqi civilian, and planting an AK-47 and a shovel near him to make it look like he was an insurgent planting a bomb: and in Ishaqi, 11 villagers were slaughtered after American troops packed them into a small room, burned three vehicles, killed a herd of livestock, and then ordered an air strike on the house so as to bury all evidence of their crime. The military has just announced their "exoneration." This "underscores the liberal vision," all right – but only in the Bizarro World of Beinart and his neocon buddies.
The big debate between Beinart and the neocons is over what constitutes the true "American exceptionalism." What "proves it," says Beinart, is that we move quickly to punish evildoers in uniform, and make sure that "justice" is done. Except when it isn't, in Ishaqi, for instance – and even if the eventual triumph of truth is made possible by non-American investigators, such as the heroic Mr. Thabet. For Kristol, however, all this is irrelevant:
"What makes us exceptional is that we stand for liberty, and that we are willing to fight for liberty. We don't need to 'prove' we are different from the jihadists by bringing our own soldiers, if they have done something wrong, to justice. Of course we must and will do this. But our doing this 'proves' nothing. Even if there were ten Hadithas, we would still not have to 'prove' that we are 'different from the jihadists.' The idea would be offensive if it were not ludicrous."
Here the essentially Soviet flavor of neocon ideology comes to the fore. According to the old Commie view, actions were to be judged not by some objective code of morality, but according to a "class-based" criteria. Mass murder committed by the evil capitalist top-hat-wearing West was "terrorism," whilst the "liquidation" of the kulaks and others by the millions was winked at. This "revolutionary morality" was defended by Leon Trotsky, in his mildly famous essay, "Their Morals, and Ours," who denounced as "moralizing Philistines" anyone who considered Lenin's crimes equivalent to the czar's. Then all is permitted?, asked the "petit bourgeois moralizers." We stand for liberty, brayed the founder of the Red Army – or, in his exact words, "That is permissible, we answer, which really leads to the liberation of mankind."
The Red Army didn't have to "prove" anything, according to the Trotskyists of old: the "proof" was in their sheer firepower. Today's neocons – who count, among their earliest intellectual ancestors, more than a few Trots – have merely transplanted their "revolutionary morality" to the "right" side of the political spectrum.
Our reaction to the recent revelations of widespread atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Iraq must not – I quite agree with Kristol on this – lead to a bout of what he calls "liberal hand-wringing." Beinart's sappy ode to "American exceptionalism" is a conceit that will soon be dissipated by the sheer brutality of the shocking details, as the story of what happened one bloody day in Haditha comes out. It will shortly become readily apparent that that we don't need to institute sensitivity training for occupation forces: the problem goes deeper.
The problem isn't a lack of "sensitivity," a blindness to the subtleties of the "battle for hearts and minds," or a lack of oversight by commanders in the field: the problem is the occupation. It must end."
June 5, 2006 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
With respect to the post at hand, a liberal is not someone who doesn't understand Beinart's three points.
Nor is a liberal someone who "fears" the government. I assume you got that from the discussions we had here at TPMC about illegal wiretapping.
And, if so, you apparently have completely misunderstood the arguments against.
Have questions about the Cafe? Try here.
June 5, 2006 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is a problem with this post. This is one of the key steps in the rehabilitation of Peter Beinart. He makes the talk-shows, engages in genteel fashion his former political foes, gently chides the anti-war left for not having the big vision but generally shows that he is cut from the same cloth. You know, one thing that liberals ought not be and that is opportunists. When the war fever swept the nation, was it liberalism's role to talk sense or fan the flames. Let's ask Peter Beinart. Not only was he supporting the war then, but not so genteel-ly he was urging the Democrats to purge Michael Moore (who has more sense in his big toe than the guru of neocon liberalism has in his brain. This may sound like it is an ad hominem attack. It is not. I mean this as fact. The proof is in Baghdad today) and Move-On. So it is not the disagreement on politics that separate us, it is a question of moral character and values. Beinart has a moral outlook akin to Joe McCarthy. He deserves the same response from the liberal community."
But what of his insight that this period is like the period of the late forties as the Cold War was developing. This is the period which is the basis for Beinart's political viewpoint. You won't find Beinart inveighing against McCarthy. He is too busy praising the Democratic Party members who engaged in McCarthyite practices. Now we should rejuvenate the Democratic Party once again by purging the progressive antiwar faction...only...it is a little late now...public opinion has shifted a bit... that moment has passed when war fervor was in high dudgeon and Beinart was then the " full-fledged, talon-baring hawk on Iraq" that WaPo described; ready to divide the party, throw out the traitors, and lurch right with Bush and the Republicans. Many of us date the slow decline of the Democratic Party as dating from Beinart's glory period in the late 40's, the attack on Wallace, and Humphreys support of Joe McCarthy and the DFL purge of leftists in Minnesota. It is always a little surprising to me that the Democratic neo-cons can simultaneously sell themselves as a way of resuscitating the Democratic Pary by recreating the policies of the period of its decline.
June 5, 2006 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . Vietnam . . . was a pretty prodigious domestic policy disaster . . . .
58,000 American deaths and uncounted post-combat disbilities and a million Vietnamese deaths in order that we can now "enjoy pretty normal relations with Vietnam."
I'd say that's a bit more than a "domestic" policy disaster.
June 5, 2006 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bluebell and Hoppy immediately come to mind. Transhuman I also believe opposes the war in Afghanistan.
Let me ask you. If after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center if Clinton could have convinced Americans to go to war in Afghanistan in order to wipe out Al Qaead and the Taliban then would you have supported such a war?
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
So fallibilism/learning in foreign policy/self-restraint in our int'l manipulations, fostering economic "development"/change abroad where said change will tend to favor a wider group of interests at home whle not being too destabilizing, and a continuation of domestic redistributionist policies at home to keep the party-machine in power are the key principles?
I think one also needs to account for the cultural-wars related complications that led to the decline of the Liberalism and the rise of K-street. It seems in the past there was a general political quietism among conservative protestants that is unlikely to return and more likely to mutate.
At any rate, any vision that simply wants to turn back the clock is incomplete, IMHO.
dlw
A blog-activist dedicated to the reduction of the faith-based political acrimony in the United States of America so as to make our political system more democratic and just and to improve our witness to the rest of the world.
June 5, 2006 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it is very strange how a genuine question evokes such a defensive comment. I think that pacificism is a perfectly respectable position, I went to a Friends high school, but mistaken. I also think that it leads to political problems.
I disagree with you that leaving Saddem in power was moral. Bush's lying about every part of the effort was indecent.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay; agreed; Beinart's a bum -- but how do we get elected?
Truman and Marshall didn't recognize Taiwan, twist the PRC's tail, and let McArthur run his racist mouth because they thought it was good policy. They did it to win elections. Lyndon "American boys shouldn't be sent to do what Asian boys should do for themselves" Johnson didn't send the Marines into Danang because he thought it was good policy. He did it because he remembered the "Who Lost China?" slur.
How do we get elected and then, not screw up the world with our lust for political power? How do we get elected without being bums?
June 5, 2006 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I oppose going into Afghanistan with the intent to take down the Taliban government.
Going after BIN LADEN was a different issue entirely and could have been done without involving the destruction and - failed - reconstruction of a country of no interest or concern to the citizens of the US (as opposed to UNOCAL.)
We went into Afghanistan with the EXCUSE of bin Laden in order to get an oil pipeline and heroin.
Of course, that doesn't make me a pacifist, either. My standing offer - one billion in advance, bin Laden in ninety days - remains open.
June 5, 2006 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just to respond to the first paragraph first...
So liberals are for freedom of thought, for liberal justice (I am not sure I understand that) and are for charity. This is an image we can present to the electorate that will sway them to our side?
We need a concrete and comprehensive at what we stand for and yes it starts and ends with freedom. We are free to say and think what we want, we are free to worship or not worship any religion we want, we are free from government intrusion into our privacy, we are free to demand that our government be accountable to we the people, we are free to control our own bodies as we see fit, we are free to make as much money as we want or as little was we need, we are free to live our lives how we see fit and engage in any lifestyle we feel like, we want other countries to enjoy our freedom and chose their leaders and the form of government they see fit, those countries should be free to follow policies even if the US might disagree at the time, we believe in freedom and we need to consistently say it or we don't have credibility...just like the Bush Cabal doesn't.
They speak of freedom but the aren't for the freedom of women reproductive rights, they oppose freedom of thought and speech by wanting to limit dissent and what we can read and watch, they don't believe we should enjoy privacy in our own homes, they don't want to be accountable to the people, they aren't for freedom around the globe because they want countries to adopt the policies we support even if those countries are opposed, they aren't for freedom of a people to chose their leaders of their choice (i.e. Chavez and Venezuela). Basically they are for limited freedom which means it isn't freedom at all and undermines any credibility they have when they speak of freedom...
And we need to drive home which is the real party of freedom and democracy...which hasn't been done yet. And Mr. Beinart is just pointing out the fact that we have a problem in the public's confusion about what we stand for...don't kill the messenger. Even if you don't agree with some of the specifics of his suggestions, or mine on this thread, or anybody else's this needs to be discussed.
June 5, 2006 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I say we should leave the rest of the world alone, I mean we shouldn't invade them or lecture them or sanction them every time we don't like something they do.
We should deal with other countries as George Washington advised - fair economic dealings and no foreign entanglements.
That isn't "pacifism".
And like others, I can't recall any "pacifist" posts around here.
June 5, 2006 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Greenbaum, is it ever possible for you to either represent an opposing position accurately, or indeed to respond to a particular point without dissembling, or is it something to do with the Zionist inability to have any intellectual integrity at all?
You accused people here of being pacifists.
The response was that nobody hear can recall anybody advocating pacifism.
Try to keep to the point.
June 5, 2006 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
In scouring history for usable models, there is always the danger of hitting on a misleading analogy. The idea of a "Marshall Plan" for the Middle East strikes me as one such misleading notion.
The Middle East, except now for parts of Iraq, is not a region in ruins that needs huge infusions of cash and in order to be "reconstructed". The region is instead mired in prolonged economic stagnation due to corruption, kleptocracy, illiberal economic policies, traditional social arrangements and habits of life that are not favorable to economic vibrancy, and an unsafe and insecure environment that scares off investment. They mainly need internal reform, not overseas economic saviors.
Our status in the region being such as it is, any bold plan for economic reform and reconstruction spearheaded by the United States is likely to be discredited, simply by virtue of the fact that it is coming from the the US. This is really the sort of thing that should be done through the UN developmental agencies, with coordinated multilateral encouragement for economic change coming from a variety of world governments.
But don't expect political miracles from this. Since at least part of the impulse behind jihadism is a reactionary opposition to the effects of economic integretion, and the cultural pressures integration entails, the immediate effect is likely to be more jihadism, not less.
June 5, 2006 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Second, Iran has openly defied the United Nations both in principle and in practice. Indeed, when many on the left attack Bush for his seeming disdain for the international body (think John Bolton), they seem to conveniently overlook the fact that Washington's hardline rhetoric towards Tehran has been brought forth largely by the latter's own doing. Tehran has not only ejected the IAEA from its facilities (ala Saddam Hussein in 1998) but it has also defied the UN charter by intentionally processing uranium when it has been expressly forbidden."
NONE of this is even remotely true.
The IAEA continues to inspect Iran's facilities - they just don't do "surprise" inspections required by the Additional Protocol - which Iran WAS following VOLUNTARILY until Bush started acting like a moron.
NOTHING Iran is doing now violates the UN Charter OR the NPT and the IAEA has been explicit in saying so.
Gettysburg isn't even remotely close to telling the truth here - just the usual neocon troll "truthiness."
June 5, 2006 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
LOL...it wasn't about the question per se it was about defining pacifism as and the people who might advocate it "dangerous". And even though you are backing away now I think the tone of your comments on pacifism were perjorative Daniel.
And I am not defending Saddam or think that he is somehow a victim. But we did undercut all we stood for, and in a sense became like him, when attacked him without provocation and unilaterally. That begs the question...it is immoral to leave him in power to see him kill tens of thousands but it is moral to invade Iraq and kill tens of thousands to remove him?
June 5, 2006 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the thing: the liberal party - the Democratic party - is essentially in consensus about what it believes our foreign policy should be.
You could have fooled me.
June 5, 2006 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
No after 1993 but yes after Bin Laden declared war on Americans, military and civilian, "everywhere."
Note: Can we please stop calling flying a bunch of B-52s in circle patterns and putting a few wannabe Afghan warlords on per diem a "war."
June 5, 2006 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Peter can and will defend himself here, but since a running critique of his work is that needs to admit he was wrong about the Iraq war, it bears mentioning that he, in fact, has. It's in his book. It's in his columns for TNR. Not only did he concede his error, he went further, asking himself tough questions about *why* he was wrong--the sort of scrutiny that many of us, myself certainly included, shy away from turning on our own cherished beliefs. Far from being "diseased," Peter doesn't need lessons in intellectual rigor or intellectual honesty from anybody.
Spencer Ackerman
June 5, 2006 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Step One is to win one more state than we won in the last election.
June 5, 2006 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
No question--a moral disaster born of unbridled arrogance.
June 5, 2006 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like it, Dan K. And then, we go to war with Iran. Wahoo!
June 5, 2006 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Transhuman
I guess you and I will just never get along. You seem to be so anti-Bush that you forget that you are an American. You are an American right? Based on your above post I would deduce that you are some sort of Iranian nationalist.
June 5, 2006 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you are asking seriously there are no guarantees. I think we have to start with the Democratic Party, believe me this is no pleasure for any of us, and try to change its direction. There have to be costs for Beinart, Lieberman, Zell Miller, Marshall Wittman and the whole unsavory lot; this is where they know the key fight is, and this is where the right wing politics must first be countered. We may win the fight in the Democratic Pary and still elect bums; but it is guaranteed we will elect bums if we base our efforts on "electability" and listen to the crap out of DLC/TNR. These guys spend more time, money and effort lambasting the progressives in the Democratic Party than they spend effort attacking the likes of Zell Miller (one of the DLC's own). I think since Miller went so visibly nuts, the only DLC criticism was a half-hearted apologia for Miller by Ed Kilgore who formerly worked for Ol' Zell.
June 5, 2006 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I am naming what Liberality signifies....not what our Current Platform and Ideas Stable should look like.
Just like Conservative does not spell out what conservatives are really up to, Liberal does not spell out our platform or ideas.
And just generally, I think Liberal meant what I said. Liberal Justice means, not in the 'plentiful' aspect, rather that we had enlightened ideas about crime and punishment that reflected our Liberal light...was informed by our Liberal views and our enlightened - more modern - approach. You know the old saw about How Noble your society by how it treats it's lowliest.
Contrast that to conservatives Shoot First ask questions later....Yell Fag in a burning theater....hang em all and let God sort them out mentality.
Now, Libertine...I wasn't killing any messengers. My most reproving remark to Mr Beinart was that it GRATES on me to hear people say Liberals don't stand for anything or have any ideas.
Anyways, here's an idea. "Quit Destroying America". How is that for a slogan? My whole point, this whole thread...why do WE have to have any ideas? The only one that counts, the only move we can make today is to stop the bleeding, remove the knife from our backs.
And lastly, how do you fight with ideas when the other team doesn't do what they say and doesn't believe what they are selling? Their ideas and rhetoric are one thing, what they are really doing is another. This war shifted thru about 8 phases of 'goals' and 'rationals', until the repukes finally settled on mealymouthed blah blah that no one can really refute. Like Condi and GW always say "I believe it is the desire of every human to be free" but that is the farthest thing from their minds (and actions)
Think Regionally. Act Regionally
June 5, 2006 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Peter, thank you for taking the time to participate in this forum.
I agree with your key points when put into the broadest possible terms (interdependence, economic opportunity, rejecting isolationism). But I think we need to come to terms with the fact that the vexed economic and political situation in the Middle East cannot be readily addressed by a "Marshall Plan". More importantly, the lessons to be learned from the Cold War are more complex than you tend to present them.
The early Cold War is simply not a good analogy for the current campaign against terrorism. We are not dealing with a massive nuclear-armed enemy military and large-scale guerrilla wars on four continents. Furthermore, not only are the situations non-parallel, but your policy prescriptions have been skewed in the wrong direction. When faced with an existential threat from the Soviet Union, Truman pursued a policy of containment. When faced with a much lesser threat from jihadist terrorism, the neocons prescribed a greater response-- military conquest-- and the TNR hawks bought into it. You've admitted that you were wrong about Iraq, but you don't seem to understand *why* you were wrong.
The key false lesson learned from the Cold War by conservative and liberal hawks alike is that containment was the right policy because, and only because, of mutually assured destruction. In this mindset, the threat from the Soviet Union kept America from doing what it could and should rightfully do... kick ass all over the globe with impunity whenever it serves our interest.
I would argue that containment was the right cold war policy not merely because of the external limits placed by the Soviets, but by the inherent limits of military force to solve political problems. The key deviation from Truman's policy of containment, the commitment of a large number of US troops to Vietnam, was an unequivocal disaster for this very reason. The people of South Vietnam, by and large, simply did not support the Diem government or the US military presence. No amount of napalm was going to change that equation, except to worsen it.
You are right to discuss the importance of international "legitimacy" for military actions, but you still seem to think that the Iraq War could have worked with UN support. In Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Kurdish Iraq there were local allies with popular support capable of forming a government. In the rest of Iraq, we had no such thing, and therefore we had no hope whatsoever of securing the country without a huge increase in the number of boots on the ground that would have required a draft. And even then we still would found ourselves committed to patrolling a country on the verge of civil war.
Only if a solid local majority is willing to fight on our side, can we expect a military intervention to succeed.
I would also like to see a new liberal consensus emerge that incorporates the ideals of interdependence and economic development with a willingness to use force when necessary. But I remain disheartened at the tendency of many liberal hawks to mischaracterize Iraq War opponents as a bunch of squishy pacifists. And until we can agree upon the lessons of history, I remain skeptical of the ability of Democrats who supported the Iraq War to lead this country in the right direction.
June 5, 2006 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
I have not read the book. I read most of his columns as a former on-line subscriber, and Lexis'ed 20 or so for this event.
I assume that the book's self-criticism is similar to this from "Lesson Plan" (TNR .December 27, 2004 -- January 10, 2005)
The article goes on to bootstrap the liberal hawk revisionist sqwak - "brilliant war plan, bungled peace". I leave the verdict about intellectual rigor and honesty to others who can compare Beinart 2002 with v.2004 and decide for themselves whether the repentance fits the facts.
June 5, 2006 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Clinton didn't. He did manage to bring the bombers to justice.
But, no, I wouldn't have supported a "war." Just like I don't agree that a "war" is going to solve the problem of terrorism.
That's very different than saying I'm a pacifist. Use of the military to get bin Laden and Company in Afghanistan was the right action. The U.S. certainly has a right to defend itself, and, therefore, war, sometimes, is justified.
But the problem we have today is not one solved by war.
Still doesn't make me a pacifist.
Have questions about the Cafe? Try here.
June 5, 2006 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
The wonder of it all to me is how these Liberal war flaks parlay their world-class malfeasance as propagandists into a major career move - a post-war bonanza of ass covering. Having drawn paycheck and lecture circuit fees for pre-war huckstering, and in every material particular being proved a sham in the event, Beinart's and Packer's manage to gorge on book royalities, fatter salary and lecture checks. Apologizing, repenting, obfuscating, and revising for their merry way to the bank - it's a real pisser isn't it.
June 5, 2006 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps, instead of name calling, you could provide us with some links proving TH wrong?
So far, from what I've found, he's right.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go give tidings to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Oops -- I mean, go cook dinner.
Have questions about the Cafe? Try here.
June 5, 2006 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
First things first...
Regarding the most important question of international politics seen in a generation --whether or not to invade & occupy Iraq as proscribed by George W. Bush-- there are two distinct groups of observers: those who were right and those who were wrong.
The Bush invasion plan was to unilaterally end WMD inspections before they were complete, then immediately invade & occupy Iraq without sufficient troops, equipment, allies, a post-invasion plan or an exit strategy.
They individuals who supported this course of action were dead wrong.
The alternative course of action was to continue forced WMD inspections and contain Saddam Hussein while continuing to prosecute the war against the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.
The individuals who advocated this course of action were right.
For the record, this latter group comprised a concensus of conservative/Right, centrist and progressive/Left political leaders from both parties and our most respected military, diplomatic and weapons proliferation experts: Adm. Brent Scowcroft, Gen. Wesley Clark, Navy Sec. James Webb, Gen. Anthony Zinni, Gen. John Hoar, Gen. Merrill McPeak, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Commander Eric Massa, Gen. John Shalikashvili, weapons inspector Scott Ritter, Jim Ciricione, Hans Blix, Pat Buchanan, Sen. Daniel Inouye, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter, Ambassador Joe Wilson...
This is by no means a complete list and doesn't include the likes of Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela and, uh, the overwhelming majority of world governments.
There were also those members inside the administration who subsequently revealed their opposition to the Bush invasion plan, such as Lt. Col. Wilkerson, Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neil.
There is no way to deny plain facts -- Peter Beinart was on the wrong side of the most important geopolitical debate of our time. Part of the reason he is so wrongheaded is that he uses bogus assumptions about who and what counts as "liberal" when, in fact, opponents of the Bush invasion plan were from every part of the political spectrum. He tries to camouflage his bogus stereotypes by yammering endlessly about, say, Michael Moore (a former Green Party filmmaker) while ignoring, say, Brent Scowcroft (a former NSC Chief during the Gulf War).
How did the Iraq invasion come to pass? The advice of a concensus of military, intelligence and diplomatic experts --initially supported by a majority of Americans-- was stifled by a tiny minority of neocon ideologues inside the administration and opinion elite.
One cadre was the Peter Beinharts of the world who were stampeded into and then helped stampede a political cattle herd --out of fear that they would be called "unpatriotic," "afraid to fight" or "weaklings."
Rather than stand for honest principle, the Beinarts fell into a kind of mob mentality --much like segregation era whites who had to prove they weren't "n*igger lovers" by joining in the abuse of blacks, often with greater vigor than the official Klansmen.
Frankly, anyone who advocated and served as apologist for the Iraq invasion lacks the requisiste good judgement to lecture people about what constitutes "good" liberalism, interventinism and the moral use of military force.
Please --no more advice from people with such flagrant records of failure.
June 5, 2006 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
May I remind you that:
"Liberalism is an ideology, philosophy, and political tradition that holds liberty as the primary political value.[1] Broadly speaking, liberalism seeks a society characterized by freedom of thought for individuals, limitations on power, especially of government and religion, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market economy that supports relatively free private enterprise, and a transparent system of government in which the rights of minorities are guaranteed. In modern society, liberals favour a liberal democracy with open and fair elections, where all citizens have equal rights by law and an equal opportunity to succeed[2]. Liberalism rejected many foundational assumptions which dominated most earlier theories of government, such as the Divine Right of Kings, hereditary status, and established religion. Fundamental human rights that all liberals support include the right to life, liberty, and property. In many countries, "modern" liberalism differs from classical liberalism by asserting that government provision of some minimal level of material well-being takes priority over freedom from taxation. Liberalism has its roots in the Western Enlightenment, but the term now encompasses a diversity of political thought, with adherents spanning a large part of the political spectrum, from left to right. In the context of economics, the term "liberalism" refers to economic liberalism, which is associated with the political ideology of liberalism itself."
Why else did the Bush administration invade Iraq, spend hundred of billions in blood and treasure but to secure our economic interdependence with the oil-producing middle east and parts of Africa. Beinart understood this in the beginning when he supported the "preemptive war". Now that it appears the empire-building - not to mention the nation-building - exercise is failing and flailing, why shouldn't the concerned citizen take action to remove the elected representatives who provided no legislative oversight to an over-reaching executive; demonstrated no interest in keeping on the path of righteousness the private enterpriser's who contracted to perform in the public interest to generate economic interdependence, i.e. returns on investments.
What will it take to galvanize the liberalism in America, a decline in asset values, accompanied by stagflation? Globalization of the economy will in the long term result in a lower standard of living in the U.S. due to world wage rate equilibrium and prices of goods and services will rise if the dollar is no longer the reserve currency. I don't see any such discussion emanating from either political party in the U.S. Where is Ross Perot when you really need him.
June 5, 2006 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having been on the wrong side of the Iraq war and having been a cheerleader for Bush's misguided foreign policy why should anyone now want to hear what you have to say?
With a record like that, who are you to be giving advice to people who were right all along. Take your pseudo-liberal ideology with you as you close the door on the way out.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
June 5, 2006 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't oppose Afghanistan because I don't oppose wars in self-defense. I do STRONGLY disagree with Beinart who I don't think is really much different from a neo-con (he did support the Iraq war).
If the US was once exceptional, it no longer is (Read Newsweek. There's a great quote from the head of Intel on our self-delusion).
I believe it is wrong, wrong, wrong to take a kid from Iowa who enlists in the National Guard to get tuition money (since liberals are failing to adequately support public funding of higher education) and send him off on one of these "liberal" wars that have nothing whatever to do with the defense of Iowa.
If that makes me a pacifist, I'm a pacifist. I believe war is hell. While I can understand why Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima -- I don't worship him because of it. While my Irish Catholic parents took me to see JFK when I was 9, I don't romanticize the Bay of Pigs or have any illusions about the hundreds of thousands who died in SE Asia largely due to our hubris.
I see Beinart as just another of those "best and brightest" chickenhawks, romantic about war, grandiose in their vision of America, never ever counting the costs in bodies, dollars and deferred or abandoned priorities.
June 5, 2006 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll tell you how Beinart and the DLC plan to get elected. They can't fight a real war so they plan to wage war against the "left" to show how tough they are.
How could we win? Convince all those boring people out in flyover land that you actually want to work to keep their heads above water and improve lives in Iowa, Idaho and Indiana. But that's ever so much more boring than trying to run Iraq, Iran and Israel. Anyway, the Republicans are ahead of us on that score too. They'll be able to pivot to isolationism and protectionism if it suits them because they still have a better ear for small town Kansas than our busy "liberal internationalists".
June 5, 2006 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I did not realize that being a pacificist was a bad thing. Having gone to a Quaker school most of the teachers, the principle and the folks who ran the school were all pacificists. I don't happen to share the view.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 5:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
As your's and CSCS' responses perhap suggest I believe it is a political problem. This is a country that does not have much truck for pacificism.
I also believe there are times, more than people want to admit, when force is needed. Thus pacificism is a danger especially to liberty. However, I do not see anything perjorative in being a pacificist. As I thought about your post Libertine, I thought perhaps you see a problem with pacificism, if only a political one.
Lastly, since Beinart is so definite in referring to liberals I really was curious how finely he was defining a liberal.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Washington could advise against foreign entanglements both because the United States did not have much ability to project force when he spoke and he could count on the British Navy to do much of the heavy lifting. As the war against the Barbary Pirates in the Jefferson Administration demonstrated it is very hard to be a global trading power and stay out of foreign entanglements.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh boy, here's a timely article that further erodes the "but everybody thought Saddam had WMD's" excuse:
"Several other former CIA officials I spoke with said that everything they have heard from colleagues at the agency points to an early decision to go to war. One former official had interesting observations on the administration's repeated claims that it was not only the United States but also our chief European allies who believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, hence the administration's failure on that score was understandable and not the result of cherry-picked intelligence.
“They say everyone else was wrong,” said this former official, “but we conditioned them to be wrong. We spend [tens of billions of dollars per year] on signals intelligence and when we reach a conclusion, the people who spend less than that tend to believe us. They weren't wrong, they chose to believe us. The British, Germans, and Italians don't have all those overhead assets, so they rely on us. Historically they have been well-served, so they believe us when we tell them the earth is round. The French have their own assets—and guess what? They didn't go with us.”
The second source cited regarding the special unit agreed with this assessment. “The allies sort of believed that Iraq had WMDs, but we were feeding them a lot of information,” he said. “The only alternative source of information out there was coming from the United Nations inspectors, and they were not stupid or incompetent. But [the administration] tried to discredit them by creating the idea that they were a bunch of goofballs that couldn't shoot straight"
http://harpers.org/sb-creating-th-1149534425.html
The Israeli contribution to the WMD "intel" isn't mentioned, but as Shlomo Brom pointed out in Nov 2003, it was a major factor in the narrative.
"Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities"
http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/sa/v6n3p3Bro.html
Bottom line. Those who badly wanted to believe the WMD BS found any damn excuse to do so.
Who's to say that in the future under similiar circumstances, the same blinders won't be slapped on again in the service of a seductive ideology?
No thanks.
June 5, 2006 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Artappraiser
I am a bit confused by your post. In theory neither party is an ideological party. However, two things seem true. With the South and some urban ethnics having bolted from the Democratic Party don't you think the Republican Party is the more conservative party and the Democratic Party the more left party?
If you do then I am presuming the Peter Beinart is actually trying to move the Democratic Party back toward the middle. The left covers a broad spectrum. The Democrats elected to the Presidency and even to many lower offices are generally Liberals but many of the activists in the party are further to the left and what a Democratic Party that more resembles a Social Democratic Party like in Europe.
Did I either misunderstand you are do you not think my characterization is correct?
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
After Saigon fell, NONE of the bad things that were supposedly going to happen in terms of the advance of Communism happened.
NONE? Cambodia fell, Laos fell. 2 million dead Cambodians. Half million Vietnamese boat people. Something like 100 - 200,000 South Vietnamese killed in the "integration" effort.
NOT NONE
June 5, 2006 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan
A Marshall Plan for Africa might be a good idea. Many of Africa's health and food problems are as a result of the lack of highways. Building of infrastructure in Africa might be a very productive use of aid.
The Middle East is largely isolated from the rest of the world except for Israel and the selling of oil. It isn't really integrated into the world's institutions. There are many global institutions that could be used to help create civil institutions which will balance both the various governments,and the Mosque as the only alternative to the government and broaden the horizons of young Arabs.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . the Beinarts fell into a kind of mob mentality . . . .
Peter Beinart -- the original Bubble Boy.
June 5, 2006 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gettysburg, this sort of sick crap really is unacceptable. Who the hell are you to lecture us on being Ameerican. That's Beinart's job.
June 5, 2006 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
This Uriah Heep would make his namesake proud ....'umbly, 'umbly proud.
Beinart's Lesson Plan wreaks of "moral complacency" and as we are apparently being introduced or more precisely "re-introduced" to a book that is essentially a composite of themes developed there and in other TRB's atc. another quote should suffice:
Whether Bush took "nation-building seriously" is one thing, but did Peter Beinart? Or did he "figure" it would all be taken care of? "Democractic exceptionalism" spawned shock and awe from the skies and from the barrel of an M1A1 would come freedom and democratic liberalism.
Beinart whined in Lesson Plan that there'd been "a lot of loose liberal talk about the impossibility of imposing democracy by force". There was a great deal of talk which was neither loose nor liberal nor belated. War plans for post-invasion Iraq were in broad outline at least, matters of public record in 2002-2003. Zinni, in fact, asked "Where are these people from - Mars?" Yale economists produced an econometric study estimating war costs at 500 Billion+. Shinseki was fired. The Center for Strategic and International Studies produced two or three "report cards" at the time based entirely on publicly disclosed war planning, reporting which should have raised alarms. which did raise alarms, as Hendrickso and Tucker make plain in their AWC monograph Revisions in Need of Revising
Blinded by democratic exceptionalism and a great, yet greatly misplaced in nation-building, “Policy must know the instrument it is to employ” Clausewitz wrote. Beinart "figured" all would be well. Beinart had a war to sell and word processed hucksterism is the only instrument that he cared to knew. The rest was and remains but the " loose talk of liberals"
June 5, 2006 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those were not the "things that were supposed" to happen. Once Nixon expanded the war there was never any question that IndoChina would all go as S.Vietnam did. Pol Pot and his minions certainly owed their rise to the deliberate destabilization of Sihanouk's regime by the US when he was deemed too nationalist and isufficiently anticommunist. You are deliberately changing the subject or else really did not know the times. What was asserted was that if S.Vietnam went Communist so would Thailand, Burma, and Malaysia, none of which occurred. In terms of your numbers of deaths arising from the integration of South and North could you give us a source? Just so we are on the same page, what is the death total of Iraqis since the American invasion?. I am often suspicious of numbers right wingers love to throw around.
June 5, 2006 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
Speaking of word processed punditry, my bad. Mo betta:
June 5, 2006 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have no issues with pacificism political or otherwise. Daniel it to me seems you have difficulty in differentiating the difference between pacificism and people who oppose unilateral wars of aggression. That is what I have seen here and I also have not seen people advocating pacificism here.
But I see you did a very good job not answering the question if there is a difference in Saddam killing tens of thousands of people and us killing tens of thousands of people in an unprovoked war of aggression...
June 5, 2006 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
What Peter calls "democratic exceptionalism" rests on a number of meta-myths, trenchantly critiques and explored in
June 5, 2006 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
June 5, 2006 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jan Knaus
Tippicanoe and Tyler too
" ...liberals will turn inward, as many did after Vietnam. They will abandon the belief that U.S. power can positively change the Muslim world... "
Show me a quote from a liberal saying that they believe that "US power can positively change the Muslim world." That sounds about as far-right neo-con as I've ever heard, Mr. J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
June 5, 2006 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, if you apply the scientific principle of parsimony to ethics...
June 5, 2006 6:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
I believe there was a Transhumanoid reference to this up thread. If there was a link, I missed it.
Justin Raimondo you are on notice - "This slender, squeaky-voiced ephebe ...." - personal foul, foully personal
I think he's adorable and smart as hell....Sharp looks and a sharp mind, {sigh} but then again, I am not the "average viewer" nor Justin Raimondo
June 5, 2006 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those might be nice definitions, but it bears no resemblence to what modern conservatives stand for. They embrace unfettered capitalism--the greatest source of social, cultural, and ecological change our society knows. They empower the government with secret and uncheckable powers--very inconsistent with their former attitudes of caution and doubt. They rebuild entire nations. Even on social issues they seem reactionary rather than conservative--they want to return to the past rather than conserve the present, even when returning to the past would itself be a radical experiment in social engineering.
The kind of people you call conservatives are today known as moderate Democrats.
Liberalism, otoh, isn't just embracing change, but embracing Rationality--the idea that human society can improve itself and the world by conscious effort. With that definition, a liberal doesn't fear government--they fear a government that is beyond the control of society at large. A government that could censor information (thus destroying rationality) or act in secret (thus being impervious to social choice) or outside the law is, except under the direst of circumstances, unacceptable.
June 5, 2006 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Saddam was responsible for killing millions not thousands. He maintained power by terror and murder. He invaded both Iran and Kuwait. He used posion gas on both the Shites and the Kurds. Saddem left in power would have continued to govern by murdering those who opposed him or of whom he was suspicious. He was also grooming his sons to rule in exactly the same manner.
I do not see how you can be sanguine about sitting idly by while Saddem ruled by killing both his fellow Iraqis and people of neighboring countries because you could live safely and oblivious in the United States. War is a horrific thing but without it our world would not exist as it does.
Also the issue of "unprovoked" is not quite so clear cut. As "Cobra II" argues Saddam was prepared to drop mustard gas on the Shiia in Southern Iraq but opted not to because U.S. forces were there. However, he did use Sarin gas bombs on the Shiia which did not explode. He then used other chemical bombs against both the Shia and the Kurds. U.S. forces were indirectly subject to such weapons. Additionally the U.S. and the British were protecting no fly zones protecting both the Shiia and the Kurds. This was not being done without opposition from the Iraqis.
With the above said I do not deny that Bush lied about Iraq in ways more profound than WMD. He conducted the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq incompetently. He did not need to start the war in Iraq when he did. He could have, as I believe Clinton would have done, waited until Afghanistan was both more stable and we had more allies ready to help and then ousted Saddem. However, sooner or later whoever was the president would have moved to remove Saddem.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
June 5, 2006 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Peter,
I'm enjoying your book--I'm only on p. 50--and my question so far is how you decide when the likely moral benefits of military intervention outweigh the moral costs. I agree with you that sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good, but not always. How you draw the line is an important question, particularly given the compelling and substantially dishonest case that can be made for interventions (in Iraq, for example, involving professing not merely belief, but certainty about WMD, despite substantial IC debate and ambiguity evident in the Oct. 2003 NIE). The real decisons are likely to be at least as fuzzy a lot of the time. I was impressed that you acknowledged theoretical, not just factual error about that decision (even Bush says he was wrong about some things factually, because he was given bad intel, which is a typical case of passing the buck disguised as coming to terms with mistakes). (Also, I might mention your book is written in a lucid, readable style.) As a political and strategic matter, however, every decision to refrain from military action can and likely will be cast by hawks as evidence of wavering and weakness. So elaboration of the criteria and of the theory that should weigh in on these decisions, allowing for the fact that every case is unique, would be helpful.
June 5, 2006 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . I assumed they would devote themselves to it [nation building] . . . Peter Beinart, 12/27/2004
TED KOPPEL
(Off Camera) Well, it's a, I think you'll agree, this is a much bigger project than any that's been talked about. Indeed, I understand that more money is expected to be spent on this than was spent on the entire Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.
ANDREW NATSIOS
No, no. This doesn't even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.
TED KOPPEL
(Off Camera) The Marshall Plan was $97 billion.
ANDREW NATSIOS
This is 1.7 billion.
TED KOPPEL
(Off Camera) All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?
ANDREW NATSIOS
Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it's up and running and there's a new government that's been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They're going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.
Nightline 4/23/2003
What was it about $1.7 billion that Beinart didn't understand?
June 5, 2006 7:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
J. McCutchen "JmacSF"
San Francisco. CA
From Lieven, "Wolfish Wilsonians":
Or Michael Moore films
June 5, 2006 7:56 PM | Reply | Permalink