Ideology Or Incompetence?
Peter Scoblic's US vs. Them is heck of a good read. I say that based on a single chapter -- I am working my way through the book while I post. It will be interesting to see how reader feedback shapes my reactions to future chapters.
After chapter one, I am excited about where Peter is heading. He tackles something of a cliche that is ubiquitous at Washington cocktail parties. Many of my Republican friends, when asked to defend one or another foreign policy blunder, will disown the Bush Administration with the claim that the policies pursued by the 43rd President are dramatically at odds with those of the 41, The Gipper, Tricky Dick and, above all, Ike.
Now these are normally social circumstances, so one can't really pursue the argument with too much vigor -- that would be ugly.
Besides, Republicans tend to have better Scotch and one wants to be invited back. While saying "Dubya is different" it is a deft social maneuver, it is also more than that and it deserves the book length treatment that Peter provides.
The best analogy to the "Dubya is different" school I know comes from Marxists who ascribe the failures of Chairman Mao to his heresies, rather than his Marxism-Lennism. It's not a very flattering comparison, I admit, but that's what comes to mind. And, just as blaming Mao allows one to skip over the uglier aspects of Marxist-Lennist thought in China, blaming Dubya lets conservatism off the hook for what I think historians will regard as a pretty lousy 8 years.
"Dubya is different" implies that we needn't worry about getting more of the same from future Republican Presidents (ahem, yes, Senator McCain, I am talking about you). Instead, we will return to some idllyic past were GOP President's were pale pink standard bearers of a bipartisan, centrist consensus that emphasized a strong defense, close alliances and above all the maintenance of stability while pursuing a more just and peaceful world order.
Peter's hunch is that view is misguided and that my friends should shift their party id -- that this colossal failure is the natural evolution of modern conservatism, not some weird perversion.
Peter starts with Bill Buckley, but I think the argument can go much further back than that. Francis Fitzgerald in the early chapters of her book, Way Out There in the Blue, finds the roots of "Star Wars" missile defenses and other Reagan-era schemes in the debates that pre-date World War I. Fitzgerald notes that the Republicans have long been interested in naval (and later air) power, as well as South America and Asia, while Democrats tend to favor ground forces and Europe. In the early part of the century, that argument played out over whether to fight the big one in Europe, or muck around the Panama Canal and the Philippines.
The argument really struck me at a time when Donald Rumsfeld and his aides were talking about reducing our presence in Europe, especially peacekeeping in the Balkans, in favor a new emphasis on long-range strike and Asia. It was an announcement that fit Fitzgerald's template perfectly. Of course, it wasn't too surprising -- for all the talk of discontinuity between Bush 43 and its Republican predecessors, most of the staff earned their spurs in the now romanticized Reagan-Bush years.
That continuity though, raises a challenge for Peter's thesis. How do we separate mistakes that arise from a deeply flawed ideology from those that are run of the mill incompetence? A friend of mine once said that there was nothing about his being a neo-con that would suggest not planning for the post-war phase in Iraq. I mumbled something about Nozick and Rawls and whether free market zeal might have blinded some in the Administration to the need for good government. This was before Hurricane Katrina, but I would have thrown that in the mix, too.
Still, I didn't quite convince myself -- or my friend. So, as I go through the next few chapters, I am going to keep in mind the alternative hypothesis that this this just a case of a woefully incompetent administration, beset with infighting, vanity and all the other human factors that make for good novels and bad policy.
If so, then one has to ask what the crucial differences are between now and the 1989-1992, since so many of the players are the same. Indeed, a review of the memoirs suggests that the senior officials from Bush 41 were no more cohesive and came up with quite a few dumb ideas, as well as some good ones. One can argue that Colin Powell wasn't as powerful as Jim Baker, or that Condi Rice was not as savvy Brent Scowcroft. But the obvious candidate, of course, is the Decider himself. So, for me, that's the question -- is this a failure of ideology or executive competence?
Comments (16)
A question that has always intrigued me and for which I have no answer is who's ever really in charge. Is it the swaggering, cruel, childishly petulant Bush II, or Cheney who seems to react or act from malice and nothing else, or the neocons, or some anonymous plutocrats bleeding the treasury to fill their own pockets while not necessarily acting in unison.
Or is it nobody, a collective, an amorphous sort of giant blob - an eyeless, earless, mindless creation that nobody created, nobody controls. It just gets up every day, goes to bed every night and gets fed inbetween.
April 28, 2008 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
phelicity,
its all of the above.
April 28, 2008 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
You mention two reasons why the Bush administration might have failed to do adequate post-war planning: (i) an ideological commitment to the idea that the free market would take care of rebuilding Iraq all by itself, once the Baathist-socialist fetters were taken off the Iraqi economy, and (ii) simple incompetence. But maybe there is a third reason.
I seem to recall a lot of Republicans, especially of Rumsfeld's sort, expressing a lot of skepticism about the very idea of US postwar nation-building of any kind, not because they thought the free market could handle nation-building without any help from government planners, but simply because they thought that nation-building wasn't very important, and we had no real interest in rebuilding the states we smashed. Getting smashed was what those states deserved, in the Republican book, so let them rebuild their own damn nations.
Liberals would say we need to rebuild these smashed states both for humanitarian reasons, and because smashed states are breeding grounds for terrorism and other international pathologies that can come back to bite us. Conservatives didn't buy the idea that terrorism has any sort of root causes in corrupt or failed states, destitute economies or anything of that sort. They were committed to the "state sponsorship" idea. Terrorists are just outlaw, evildoer bad guys, and there are some in every bunch. The Rumsfeldians were convinced that the only reason some bad guys, like Al Qaeda, had a successful "global reach" is that they had state backing. Thus, if you crushed the state in question and bombed it back into the stone age, you eliminated that state's ability to support terrorism, and you punished the state for having supported it in the first place. If we rebuild a state after bombing and invading it, however, then the war is not sufficiently punitive to send the right message. It might even turn out to be a long terms benefit to that state! "Screw that" conservatives say. Let the state suffer the consequences of its actions, and go stone age for a few years. (This is just an application of standard conservative positions on retributive justice vs. rehabilitation in the criminal justice system to the case of punitive wars.)
Part of the Republican criticism of Democrats was that the US was taking demeaning hits around the world from a bunch of uppity young punks, because we had failed to remind people from time to time what mean and ruthless SOB's we could be, and needed to "throw some little country up against the wall." So who needs postwar nation building? The US defense department isn't some kind of charity operation. Just shock 'em, awe 'em, kill 'em, and leave them to pick up the rubble on their own. That'll show the bastards.
April 28, 2008 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
good points, but perhaps "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."
Sure, creating anarchy is a morally bankrupt idea, but why does that mean it's not the Amdinistration's true rationale? It is at least what Bush, Rice, and others have claimed. It's one of the only arguments that matches actions:
--there is no need for reconstruction or postwar planning when a war is not intended to end.
--overthrowing Saddam was to provide a new government to support, just as he was supported by the US earlier. This could have pulled Iran into the violence there and re-created the scenario from the 1980's that occupied both nations by focusing them on each other.
--It was important for the Administration to argue that Al Qaeda was already present in Iraq (the conflation with 9/11), because this strategy relied on bringing them in.
--It made no sense to either withdraw or increase troop sizes, as that change may have reduced the levels of violence & chaos.
--It is simply not believable that Bush would suddenly endorse nation-building with no change in his basic ideology.
--If chaos is the goal, then we are "winning."
In other words, it really is incompetence. But the incompetence is caused by ideology.
April 29, 2008 4:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I vote for incompetence and arrogance. Remember, the State Department had plans for reconstruction, but Rumsfeld somehow thought they were unnecessary and expensive and not needed, the first two reasons being the incompetent, the last was arrogance.
April 28, 2008 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
The mistake of Gulf War I led to Gulf War II, so 41 wasn't so cool after all. But we have a free Kuwait so it's worth it all.
April 28, 2008 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
DonBacon,
AH, but did Kuwait ever get those incubators back?
April 29, 2008 8:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Both Republicans and the Democrats took a hardline during the Cold War and after. Democrats Walt Rostow and LBJ got the US further involved in Vietnam and refused any kind of an agreement that would led to an neutral South Vietnam. Also Scoop Jackson, a Democratic senator from Washington, was instrumental in ending Detente in the seventies. Some Republican leaders displayed some sense of pragmatism as when Nixon met with the Chinese and Soviets or Reagan talking with Gorbachev. Although I believe that Gorbachev and not Reagan was responsible for ending the Cold War, Reagan did take an important step by talking to him.
April 28, 2008 9:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lewis wrote
This is a foolish straw man. Could you please name one "Marxist" that has said any such thing in the last 20 years. Most left wing, serious historical analysts, that have worked on the Mao era in China (ca 1950-1980) see his ideology as an imposition of western Marxism-Leninism upon traditional Chinese politics where the western ideas never were all that relevant to what was happening on the ground. The one spectacular failure, that of the peasant communes, was the one thing he imported whole from Russia -- that was never considered a heresy and after wards universally accepted as a colossal mistake. In its aftermath China reverted to traditional peasant institutions.
April 28, 2008 10:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have seen his pics on a celeb dating site named ‘M a r r y M i l l i o n a i r e . C o m’. I don’t understand what he do on that site.Does he want to date with some girls?
April 29, 2008 1:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've still got the comment I just placed at Steve Clemons article on Obama a little ways down at TPM CAFE on my copy&opaste funtion and it's relevant here too. Read it and tell me, do you feel pounded yet? I have not yet begun to pound this point.
As I said before
s usual, I come late to the party, worn out by a work schedule w. two jobs, and thoroughly mashed tonite by the contradictory directives and the double-binds of the bosses at one of America's largest supermarkets. C'est la Vie.
Nevertheless. The problem is, there is no one really speaking for the necessary position: America the democratic nation needs to NOT have an imperialist foreign policy.
Unfortunately, by winning World War II our grandfathers were put in an untenable Imperial position, and they slid and slided and postured as best they could with it, but somehow for the last few decades the Imperial Imperative on not upsetting America's imperial position has become the norm; or not just the norm, the ring that must be kissed in every "official" discussion of the situation, such as on TV by anyone or by any political candidate anywhere.
And it's killing us and killing the planet. All of our efforts to maintain the empire grow more frantic with less success. We spend more money THAN ALL OTHER NATIONS ON EARTH COMBINED on "defense" and "security" and "intelligence," yet we are noticeably MORE afraid of attack, MORE insecure and MORE stupid than other nations. (Please, please, repeat this in thousands of letters to AP-associated newpapers.)
The comments on the blogs show it: there is a minority, maybe ten million of us, maybe just five or three million of American citizens and residents, who understand: America the democratic nation needs to NOT have an imperialist foreign policy.
(Certainly both Clinton and Obama are deeply flawed and deficient in this respect, for those of us who understand. However, in my prev. posts on TPM I explain why I will swim with the Obama tide as I'm one of the few who still have the chance to vote against Hillary.)
There is no political organization that speaks for us, and the zeitgeist of the culture militates AGAINST serious people giving serious, organized, attention to the problem of American imperialism ... indeed the culture as whole, including all the anti-authoritarian people who OUGHT TO be on "our" side, seems to be going straight to ignorant hell in an SUV at high speed.
Global Exchange and Code Pink come the closest to speaking to our concerns, but certainly GE and probably as far as I understand CP also are organized as 501(c)3's, in other words legally barred from endorsing candidates and overt political lobbying.
The millions of American citizens and residents who understand that America the democratic nation needs to NOT have an imperialist foreign policy deserve to have a FRANKLY POLITICAL organization that reflects their views. If people with even greater activist reputations and expertise do not do so first, I will re-organize my life to accomplish this much-needed goal ... and to reprise the ancient junior high joke that was used against me plenty ... that's BOTH a threat and a promise. (Oh, and by the way, I have a solid reputation for organizing small-d democratic activist organizations.)
See my previous TPM posts on this subject, going back at least a year, for further ramifications of this basic postulate of the need for an activist POLITICAL organization focused on lobbying and educating AGAINST American imperialism in all its manifestations. Just before I got my vacation near the end of Feb., another TPM reader put up a gmail box for communications toward this organization -- did he, or will he, ever receive any email ?
April 29, 2008 4:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
For disaster capitalism to work, one needs disasters. It turns out that the Bush Administration, and to a lesser extent, previous Republican administrations, are very good at creating disasters and feeding off the resultant corpse(s).
April 29, 2008 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's money to be made rebuilding things.
What better policy than blowing things up (also using extremely, extremely expensive weaponry in the process) so we can rebuild them?
And for the 'rebuilding' process we can essentially do nothing but charge $250 for a roll of toilet paper and pay mercenaries $500+ a day to drive around the streets of Baghdad throwing water bottles at civilian's heads and shooting at them should the fancy strike.
April 29, 2008 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're never going to be able to understand the failure of the Bush Administration in terms of either executive incompetence or ideological failure--because it's executive incompetence DRIVEN by ideological failure.
People at this level aren't stupid enough to screw up so spectacularly without also making bad ideological decisions. The way I think of the NeoCons is as really bad riders, primarily because they are deeply convinced that it's necessary to sit on the horse facing backward.
It's really important to consider that most of the NeoCons spent their formative years during the Vietnam War. And one characteristic of the NeoCons is that, almost to a man, they lacked both the courage to oppose the war and the honor to serve in it. Ain't no comin' back from that.
I kind of think that most of what has happened since has been a matter of overcompensation. This is a group of cynical, cowardly, wrong-headed characters who developed a whole ideology to cover up their flaws by proclaiming that their flaws were actually virtues. (They glommed onto Leo Strauss for convenient intellectual cover.)
Remember the story of the king with the bad leg who invented the mambo? There ya go. Except that this particular mambo involved the conceit that the NeoCons could run the world via the America-as-sole-superpower plan at the end of the cold war.
It was a both a bad AND ideologically bankrupt idea. But if you were a cynical, cowardly, ideologicallly bankrupt person, it would make a lot of sense.
Why Americans let this gang get away with it is beyond me.
April 29, 2008 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
"executive incompetence DRIVEN by ideological failure"
exactly. well said.
April 29, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ideology breeds incompetence, insofar as it renders empiricism worthless and submits all facts to the test of doctrinal consistency. Bush himself, it seems to me, was without any substantive political identity, until 9/11 when he saw the potential for a redemptive and world-historical presidency, and has since taken on the task of the [neo]conservative agenda with glee, insofar as it lends itself to grand, Manichean struggles for the future of the world.
April 29, 2008 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink