New at Reason

January 31, 2007

Michael Young communes with two foreign policy wonks who want everyone to know how much they've changed.

Comments

|1.31.07 @ 1:16PM|#

Interesting stuff. Left unasked is the question as to whether the political/cultural status of the Middle East is really any of our business. Any foreign policy beyond direct defense of the U.S. amounts to some form of imperialism, for which the U.S. is not temperamentally well-suited.

tros|1.31.07 @ 1:46PM|#

We can not assume that every culture in the world will naturally progress toward the liberal ideal that we strive for in the west. Bush's policy of "spreading democracy in the Middle East", even if that wasn't blatant doublespeak, would STILL be detrimental to the security of the United States.

For example, Pakistan's government has nuclear weapons. We don't want their masses to have control over them. This is a case where we can probably all agree that it is better to have a fascist dictatorship than a democratic government.

|1.31.07 @ 1:48PM|#

Best conversion book ever: "The God that Failed."

|1.31.07 @ 1:48PM|#

"How is it, [Berman] wonders, that someone who put his career on the line by approving of military intervention in Bosnia after the Srebrenica massacre could oppose a war to terminate Saddam Hussein's murderous terror state in Iraq? "[Iraq] was studded with Srebrenicas," Berman writes."

How many "Srebrenicas are there today?

"How is it that Fischer, who took on the pacifists in his Green Party with the declaration "No more Auschwitz," never seemed to conjure up a true picture of Iraq's dictatorship, with its genocidal Anfal campaigns against the Kurds in the 1980s and its colossal massacres of Shiites after the 1991 Gulf War?" How many neighborhoods in Baghdad look like Auschwitz today?

"At a conference in Munich in 2004, Fischer admitted that the status quo in the Middle East was no longer acceptable. He "advocated a subtle and complicated fight against the new totalitarianism-a program to bring about some fairly big changes in the Middle Eastern political atmosphere, to transform what had now become intolerable." That sounded strangely like what George W. Bush was saying at the time. It sounded no less strangely like what the neocons said Iraq was about. But Fischer wanted to work lightly, "to tiptoe carefully" and avoid awakening memories of imperialism past. Here he echoed the nervous tropes of a European approach to the region that wants to have it both ways-speaking softly and carrying a big carrot while imagining glorious change."

Anyone care to argue that Fischer's concern was misplaced?

|1.31.07 @ 1:52PM|#

"Force alone won't change them for the better, but unless the U.S. pushes them to open up in fundamental ways, all its chips will be placed on failing states that bigoted Islamists are most likely to inherit."

Sounds a lot like Fischer, Mr. Young. Hadn't you noticed?

tros|1.31.07 @ 1:53PM|#

The term "Islamo-klansmen" is a very good term that could help a lot of ignorant people understand the difference between the fundamentalist insurgency and the fascist governments currently being supported by the CIA.

|1.31.07 @ 2:07PM|#

I would, joe. Memories of "imperialism past" is not the problem in Iraq, unless by that one means Shiite memories of Sunni domination, and subsequent Sunni revanchism, which was always going to be the central conflict if the Tikrit thugocracy were to ever fail. Unless one wants to make the case that Tikriti/Baathist domination of Iraq for several more decades, most likely without a functioning sanctions regime, was the preferred outcome, then a civil war in Iraq was the only forsseable outcome.

I have no issue with those who said the Iraq invasion was likely to result in a terrible mess. I do have issue with those who lack the honesty to acknowledge how bad the status quo ante was, and how it was likely to become worse. Usually this sort of fantastic thinking leans on Friedman-like bromides which advocate Congress passing laws in favor of energy independence, and other such nonsense.

|1.31.07 @ 3:17PM|#

"How is it, [Berman] wonders, that someone who put his career on the line by approving of military intervention in Bosnia after the Srebrenica massacre could oppose a war to terminate Saddam Hussein's murderous terror state in Iraq? "[

I don't think the US should have intervened in either case. But, what a stupid question to ask! Was Saddam actively massacring his people right before the US intervened? The answer is no, and that is the difference.

|1.31.07 @ 3:25PM|#

"Anyone care to argue that Fischer's concern was misplaced?"

Yes. The status quo in the Middle East was entirely acceptable--at least from my perspective--and the rest of Fischer's statement is a bunch of 'soft power' claptrap that's no better or worse than the Bush Administration's delirious belief in spreading American Democracy at the point of a gun.

|1.31.07 @ 3:59PM|#

ChrisO, is it really your belief that paying tribute to Islamic despots in the Persian Gulf for several more decades, in return for access to oil, is/was a manageable state of affairs?

|1.31.07 @ 4:17PM|#

Really, Will? Anti-imperialism and distrust of foreign domination isn't a problem for our occupation strategy? I guess I must have missed all the flower throwing.

For my part, I have a problem with people who make shit up, like saying those of us who saw the disaster coming four years ago didn't think the status quo ante was bad.

|1.31.07 @ 4:49PM|#

"ChrisO, is it really your belief that paying tribute to Islamic despots in the Persian Gulf for several more decades, in return for access to oil, is/was a manageable state of affairs?"

No need for tribute, actually. None of the Gulf states can afford *not* to sell the oil, since that's the basis for approximately 100% of their economies. In any event, paying penny ante bribes to Gulf despots is chicken feed compared to the cost of war and occupation.

|1.31.07 @ 5:11PM|#

Chris, tribute is what has been paid for the past several decades, no matter that they need us as much as we need them. Unfortunately, you assume stasis, that what arrangements were workable in 1955 will remain so in 2025. The world never remains static, which it is so ironic that people who makes this supremely unrealistic assumption so often call themselves "realists".

Yes, the model of oil extraction instituted in the early 20th century, that of paying off Islamic despots who enslave populations while we gain access to oil, works just fine, as long as stable populations, stagnant access to destructive technology, and the nation-state as the only political entity which can effect mass slaughter is assumed. There is not a reason in the world, unfortunately, to believe that those assumptions will hold.

|1.31.07 @ 5:37PM|#

Ah, I see. You're just using the word "tribute" because it sounds more menacing than "payment for goods."

Larry A|1.31.07 @ 5:40PM|#

Berman saw a parallel between totalitarian ideologies: They all put forward an "ideal of submission. It was submission to the kind of authority that liberal civilization had slowly undermined...it was the ideal of the one, instead of the many. The ideal of something godlike. The total state, the total doctrine, the total movement."

Unfortunately under this definition both U.S. political parties are currently totalitarian.

|1.31.07 @ 6:01PM|#

Will, I'm unclear on what you believe the proper alternative to the prior status quo was. "Soft power" wouldn't have dislodged Saddam Hussein, the Iranian mullahs, or the House of Saud, all of whom are/were problematic for the U.S. in various ways. And just look where the application of "hard power" to just one of those states has gotten us.

Do you think that the U.S. should have attempted to invade and occupy the entire region? Now that, my friend, is a whole bunch of good old-fashioned imperialism, right there. From purely a cost/benefit analysis, it makes more sense to buy off Gulf despots than to spend the military cost and lives to replace them. And, as we are seeing in Iraq, the replacement is likely to be simply another despot.

My bottom line is this: I couldn't give two shits about which form of cruel tyranny is ruling the Middle East this week. That region was ruled by cruel tyrants millennia before I was born, and it will almost certainly be ruled by cruel tyrants many years after I am dead. I'm not being "elitist" by saying this. Such "elitism" is born of Fukuyama's belief that western democracy is the end point for every society on Earth. I make no such assumption, and it's really none of my business how other societies organize their affairs.

It only affects me to the extent that affairs in the USA are concerned. And, sadly, I believe the most workable answer to terrorism is be even more of a terrorist in response, and not to go on some of global "democracy jihad."

|1.31.07 @ 6:46PM|#

No, Joe, payment for goods is what happens when the rightful owner of a good sells it to to somebody who wants to buy it. Tribute is paid to political rulers to allow the payer to do be unmolested, in this case to be unmolested while extracting oil. If you want to insist that the mullahs of Iran and the Saudi Royal family are the rightful owners of the mineral wealth they control, well, you just go right ahead. And go ahead with believing that if you advocate that Congress pass a law mandating that Tom Friedman's Lexus run on corn cobs, it means you don't advocate paying despots tribute, allowing them to enslave tens of millions, so as to allow for oil extraction.

No, Chris, you wrongly assume that what exists now in Iraq is as bad as it can get, and you wrongly assume that you can successfully manage the relationship with the Islamic populations in that region while paying off despots who tyrannize those populations, so as to effect oil extraction. Your assumptions are every bit as reactionary as those possessed by American Whigs in the run-up to the American Civil War, that managing the institution of slavery was tenable for several more decades. If you think that what happened in lower Manhattan is the worst thing that can result from a long-running conflcit with the Islamic world, fueled by oil revenues, and in an environment where even poverty cases can obtain massively destructive technology, you simply are mistaken. If you think the American population will be willing to endure an attack even five times as deadly as the one that took place five years ago, without demanding an ocean of blood in return, you don't appreciate the capacity for bloodlust a large democracy has.

I have no idea of whether the people of the Persian Gulf are capable of achieving self-governance in the next couple decades, including governing their own mineral wealth, and no, I'm not advocating invasion of any of them at this time. If they don't achieve self government in a fairly short time frame, however, and choose to interact peaceably and profitably with the rest of the world, they are likely going to be slaughtered in droves. This has almost always been the fate of a militarily and economically weak people who sit atop highly demanded natural resources, while displaying hostility to much more power peoples.

|1.31.07 @ 6:49PM|#

Apologies for the lousy typing skills. "more powerful peoples", of course.

|1.31.07 @ 7:00PM|#

Chris O,

Our soft power worked pretty well when combined with the people-power movement in Lebanon to get the Syrians out. Our hard power worked pretty well when we teamed up with the Northern Alliance.

I think that's the key that neoconservatives don't understand - the people need to be the drivers' seat during democratization, just as they are under democracy.

|1.31.07 @ 7:15PM|#

joe, soft power in Lebanon wouldn't have meant jack if Hussein had still been ruling Iraq. Within Iraq, a Shia-Sunni civil war was inevitable if the Tikrit Baathists ever lost power. Where I parted with some who supported invasion was their belief that such a civil war could be avoided.

|1.31.07 @ 8:16PM|#

Will,

Not to mention, I found a sock that had been lost for, like, months. That totally would never have happened if Saddam Hussein had been in power.

It was under the bed.

|1.31.07 @ 8:39PM|#

Yeah, sure, Joe, events in Lebanon are no more affected by conditions in neighboring countires than the socks under your bed. This thinking is consistent with your belief that you don't favor helping keep millions of people in chains in return or oil, because you urge that Congress pass some laws which helps drive up the cost of totillas in Mexico.

|1.31.07 @ 9:23PM|#

Lebanon doesn't border Iraq.

Saddam Hussein's ouster had nothing to do with a good segment of the people of Lebanon rising up and protesting against the Syrians after Hariri's murder.

|1.31.07 @ 9:24PM|#

Do you actually have any line of thought suggesting a connection, or is this just a post hoc fallacy?

|1.31.07 @ 9:56PM|#

It does when Syria is the defacto ruler of Lebanon. Then there is remark by Walid Jumblat....

"It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq," explains Jumblatt. "I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world."

.....but then, Jumblat is only the most powerful Druze political leader in Lebanon, and not familiar with the socks under your bed, joe, so let's discount anything he says, right?

|1.31.07 @ 10:07PM|#

"It does when Syria is the defacto ruler of Lebanon."

Saddem Hussein didn't rule Syria; in fact, the Syrian government was not only independent of him, but actively hostile, and was one of our coalition partners in 1991.

Jumblatt was sucking up to Bush in the hope of getting him to back his efforts. It worked, and good for him. Still, quoting Mr. Jumblatt's opinion is not an argument, just the airing of an opinion.

Again, I ask you, can you provide a reasonaed explanation why the overthrow of the Iraqi regime caused or was necessary for the so-called "Cedar Revolution."

|1.31.07 @ 10:52PM|#

Yeah, I knew you would discount Jumblat's remarks; his assertion does not adhere to your views, so he must be lying, right? Superb reasoning, joe!!

Listen, when a major political leader within a country says that an event in a neighboring country (and, no, I never asserted that Hussein ruled Syria. I said that when Syria is the defacto ruler of Lebanon, Iraq effectively borders Lebanon as well, and is thus affected by events in Iraq, much as we can say Colorado, as part of the U.S, can be affected by events in Mexico), had some influence on his behavior, that constitutes evidence that the events did just that. Your rejoinder of "Jumblat is lying" does not constitute evidence. Got it?

|1.31.07 @ 10:55PM|#

Of course, you might be arguing that the most powerful Druze political leader in Lebanon has no influence in regards to political developments in Lebanon, which would be another remarkable feat of reason.

|2.1.07 @ 11:25AM|#

How many neighborhoods in Baghdad look like Auschwitz today?

Well, joe, do mean this question architecturally? Then the answer is "none".

By the way, for what I know, there are also no gas chambers, crematoria, railway ramps, watchtowers, and long rows of barracks in Baghdad, so I guess one could call your comparison a bit overblown)

|2.1.07 @ 5:58PM|#

No, Will, let me put this so that even you can understand:

His assertion is an assertion. It is neither evidence, nor an argument.

My momms says Jumblatt is wrong. I guess we're even.

Third time, dipshit: can you provide a line of reasoning to explain why the ouster of Hussein caused, or was necessary for, the anti-Syrian protests?

So far, you haven't even tried. I'm sorry, faith-based Will, but you're not the pope, and this isn't church.

Put up, or shut up.

|2.1.07 @ 6:24PM|#

Apparently, joe, you are illiterate. Jumblat references HIS response to the removal of Hussein, along with the general response in Lebanon. Now, joe, you can either posit that Jumblat is lying about what HIS response was (which implies that you have supernatural mind-reading powers; who knew!!) , or you can posit that how one of the major political leaders in Lebanon responded to the removal of Baathists in Iraq was completely irrelevant to, and completely non-representative of, the general reaction in Lebanon. Much like the socks under your bed, you ol' intellectual titan, you!