An Addiction to Magical Thinking
I was very struck by Lawrence's post, which seemed to stake out an entirely novel critical response--damning by lavish praise. It was as if his admiration for Andrei's narrative gifts were in inverse proportion to his regard for Andrei's intellectual acumen. I, too, have some reservations about the value of post-war Europe as an analogy to our current situation, but I have to admit that I have never heard what Lawrence describes as an old saw: good history saves you from plausible analogies. I would have thought that good history saves you from facile analogies.
But I want to talk about this whole question of specious analogizing, because I think that this administration, whose foreign policy ranks have been staffed by some quite erudite people, has suffered from rampant, and grisly errorneous, historical thinking. Condoleezza Rice, if I may go back to my favorite hobby horse, famously told Brent Scowcroft that the Middle East was primed for democratic transformation just as Eastern Europe had been at the end of the Cold War. Scowcroft was nonplussed. And yet this parallel was much present in the minds of many of those to whom our addled President listened. In The Case For Democracy, a book which Bush read in the months before delivering his second inaugural, and apparently experienced as revelation, Natan Sharansky treats the analogy as a matter beyond dispute. (Sharansky is also said to have influenced the 2002 speech in which Bush promised to support Palestinian statehood if only the Palestinians would cast out their own leadership.)
An administration addicted to magical thinking sought analogies which would demonstrate that highly improbable outcomes--say, a democratic tsunami in the Middle East--required only that we play our cards right. Perhaps this was the real neocon formula: Wishful thinking based on selective history. We admire the realists today, by contrast, because they understood that the world is not very tractable to our wishes, and that one thus needs a fine-grained understanding in order to get things right. That, among other things, is why works of history like The Candy Bombers have such contemporary value.
"I have to admit that I have never heard what Lawrence describes as an old saw: good history saves you from plausible analogies. I would have thought that good history saves you from facile analogies."
"Good history" *should* save you from analogies, plausible or otherwise, as a comparative historian learns that historical events and contexts are rarely sufficiently similar to render plausibly analogous.
Take the American founding, in which the constitutional convention proposed that it was creating "a Republic," roughly analogous to the mixed governments of Europe. Fair enough-- they studied history and government and sought to model one therefrom.
But the contemporary historian can't really propose that the constitutional convention is plausibly analogous with the emergence of, say, the Roman "republic." Doing so mostly buries complex local histories under a hand selected rhetorical conceit.
What is "democratization" alleged to mean these days anyway?
June 4, 2008 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am puzzled at this lavishing of praise on those who influenced foreign policy during this administration. Not only were they wrong, they continue to get it wrong, yet, never were so many pretty compliments paid to those few who created so much misery for so many people.
These men will be forever second rate intellects, confined to foundations and think tanks, through the patronage of one of the most corrupt administrations in our history, trotted out only to provide a veneer over a rotting imperial court where the fool has become the king.
"Erudite people", indeed.
June 4, 2008 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
One of my favorite quotes (from book "Demon Under the Microscope):
"It is easier to destroy thousands of human lives than to save a single one"
This was written by Gerhard Domagk, Nobel Prize for Medicine, from in a Gestapo prison in Germany 1939.
It is a simple fact, that on the simple accounting of lives saved versus those destroyed, most policies can be judged. I am not yet aware of one life that has been unequivocally saved in the GWOT.
June 4, 2008 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent quote. How can these people be so wrong for so long and still have praise heaped upon them by their peers?
June 4, 2008 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Partisan politics is so much the rule now that Republicans will never concede that the Bush administration was anything but somewhat unsuccessful. I have yet to hear a Republican acknowledge the depth of criminality, of ignorance, of veniality of this administration and all of its merry men.
June 5, 2008 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
And they never will, hoppy.
June 5, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have this dream that as the Bush administration fades into history with their institutional powers gone, and as the country gradually recovers its sanity, and as more and more incriminating memoirs come out, then the whole gamut of Bush domestic and international crimes - illegal wars, illegal detentions, illegal use of prosecutorial power, illegal disclosure of the identities of intelligence agents, domestic disinformation campaigns, unconstitutional usurpations of legislative branch powers, state-sponsored torture, etc. - will begin to be seen for what they are by all and sundry. Bush may end up being hunted down like Pinochet, and finally brought before the bar of international justice, and even US justice. I have hopes that then the vast majority of Republicans, if not all, will have recovered from their temporary dalliance with authoritarianism, and will look back and say, "Wow, that guy was really bad news."
June 5, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I, too, have some reservations about the value of post-war Europe as an analogy to our current situation ... [so] I want to talk about this whole question of specious analogizing, because I think that this administration ...
nice segue.
because cherny could have, perhaps should have rephrased accordingly: absent eurocentrism, i am nothing. absent triumphalism, i offer nothing. ibid. alter, tomasky et al.
the french thought they learned from algeria, until they learned otherwise at dien bien phu.
americans thought we learned from vietnam; when all we wanted was another chance, e.g., fallujah.
cherny, paraphrased: love our airlift, love our candy bombs. because 60 years from now, hearts and minds will follow. see tempelhof. ergo, love our occupation, love our cluster bombs. because 60 years from now, hearts and minds will follow. see iraq.
cue santayana.
however, iraq non obst., america did apparently learn something worthwhile from vietnam evidence a 2002 pew survey on global attitudes that reported:
71% of vietnamese now had a favorable opinion of the united states with 27% unfavorable
vs.
61% of germans who had the same with 35% unfavorable.
contra cherny, 78% of berliners couldn't be bothered to save the "airlift airport" while only 61% of marhall-planned candy-bombed heirs favored the united states, pre-iraq, which further declined to 41% in 2005.
how so?
did a marshall plan fall in a vietnamese forest when nobody was around?
did we airlift friendlies into hanoi to work their magic on hostile hearts and minds?
or,
did we (more or less) reconcile our defeat, move on without retaliation or imposition, let the vietnamese self-govern, allow need (trade, mine removal, mia reconcilation) to determine mutualisms that stimulated acculturation which led to normalization and today, increased cooperation on several fronts, including national security?
June 5, 2008 1:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone that thinks that the conservative ideology and those that adhere to it aren't surrounded by a bubble of "magical thinking" just hasn't been paying attention.
Less taxes means more money in treasury and less debt.
Invade a country, we'll be welcomed with flowers.
Ignore certain countries (NK comes to mind) and they'll fall into line.
Deregulate industry and they will just get better and safer.
So it only makes sense that they would apply this "magic" to their view of history. How could it be otherwise when that is how they live their lives?
June 5, 2008 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink