Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Seeing the Forest for the Bush
Jon Stewart and a former Clinton aide had a fascinating exchange last night on TDS. Check it out in the title link.
Is it legitimate to argue that Bush's guidance of US foreign policy has little or nothing to do with the winds of change that seem to be blowing in the Middle East? I think that's a laughable position, but I've been a vocal and strident supporter of Bush's foreign policy vision since he first announced it. Regarding the notion that this democracy thing is an accident or an afterthought, and that we fought the Afghanistan and Iraq wars strictly over short-term security issues and WMD, that's wrong. At least it's wrong in terms of Bush's on-the-record war sales pitch, which included numerous points. The links to prove that will be forthcoming if that canard appears (well, if that canard appears from anyone other than a certain poster whose position appears impervious to contradictory information).
UPDATE: A good place to start looking for evidence that the promotion of democracy is not some cover story invented after the invasion would be in the President's own words prior to the invasion, during and after.
Here are a couple of instances of support for the notion that US foreign policy, under Bush's guidance, may actually have something to do with what looks like some positive developments in the Middle East. A quote from Walid Jumblatt, who has excellent anti-American credentials, being a longtime leftist politician:
"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." Jumblatt says this spark of democratic revolt is spreading. "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it."
Strong words which I hope are a portent of things to come. If it would help Bush-haters to get behind these budding democratic movements and America's muscular encouragement of them, then perhaps it's not such a bad thing to wipe Bush's fingerprints from the WMD he dropped on the region's autocracies. But I hope that's not necessary, and I think that all but the most virulent Bush-haters will prioritize well their dueling passions.
Here's another quote, from a US-based Syrian opposition honcho named Farid Ghadry:
In my talks with the Syrians inside Syria, they are resisting demonstrating because as one human-rights activist told me: "President Bush has yet to call for freedom for the Syrian people." The Syrians are afraid to march without the international cover and the encouraging words of our president.
- posted by Anonymous @ Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Comments:
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I am with Jon Stewart on this one. There is just t0o much upheaval in the Middle East in the wake of the Iraqi elections for it to be total coincidence. This doesn't take away from my many former criticisms of the Bush administration's tactical failures: if we hadn't bungled the immediate post-Sadaam period I don't think that the Insurgents would have gotten nearly the foot hold that they did, and I think our reputation on the arab street would have been much stronger.
Still, unless the winds change direction again, I think Bush's vision may be proving out. As far as whether spreading democracy was his real intention, I think there can be no doubt. As the war was ramping up I was telling anyone who listened that this was all a neo-con scheme to unleash democracy in the Middle East, and that they needed WMD as cover, primarily for the domestic audience. Sarge probably still has emails clogging his email client from me as proof of this presience on my part. Unfortunately for my ego, those same emails would attest to my belief that those neo-cons were off their nut, and there was no way that it would work.
Dani, you may be technically right that, "To those people Bush really needed to convince, the people to whom he's actually beholden, the president on many occasions mentioned overthrowing a dictator, promoting democracy and sustainable peace." But lets not rewrite history. The American people would have never bought that as the main justification for attacking Iraq, the president knew it and so did his advisors. You make light of the possibility that the neo-cons intentionally covered up their true intention (spreading democracy in the Middle East,) but the fact is that many of the most important players (William Kristol, Wolfowitz and others, are careful students of Leo Strauss who would have had them do just that.
Regardless, I have recently welcomed the rebirth of Real Politick and defended the notion that elites must lead even in democracies, so I guess I have no choice but to give credit where credit is due. But lets make no mistake, the president used anti-democratic methods to achieve all of this democracy spreading, and that is worth some serious Kantian level philisophical hand wringing.
Cyetain and I argued about this over IM the other day. I said that this situation appeared to be playing out similarly to Reagan v USSR: By abandoning the go along to get along strategy that had been in place for 30 years, Reagan probably ran a real risk of inciting nuclear war. But what was the alternative? 30 or 40 more years of go along to get along? How many more chances for a nuclear disaster would that have allowed?
Bush took a huge gamble with Iraq. I think he could have done a much better job of the thing itself, but the fact seems to be that the attractive power of democracy is strong enough to overwhelm even the astounding incompetance of Donald Rumsfeld. The fact is, in his own little myopic dim-witted way, Bush understood this all along, and I think that American liberals fail to understand it almost entirely.
So, Bush had a vision. He appears to have been granted a fair amount of luck, and the vague notion of "freedom" still rings true enough to drive eight million individuals to decide that it was worth the possibility of dying to cast a vote.
Still, unless the winds change direction again, I think Bush's vision may be proving out. As far as whether spreading democracy was his real intention, I think there can be no doubt. As the war was ramping up I was telling anyone who listened that this was all a neo-con scheme to unleash democracy in the Middle East, and that they needed WMD as cover, primarily for the domestic audience. Sarge probably still has emails clogging his email client from me as proof of this presience on my part. Unfortunately for my ego, those same emails would attest to my belief that those neo-cons were off their nut, and there was no way that it would work.
Dani, you may be technically right that, "To those people Bush really needed to convince, the people to whom he's actually beholden, the president on many occasions mentioned overthrowing a dictator, promoting democracy and sustainable peace." But lets not rewrite history. The American people would have never bought that as the main justification for attacking Iraq, the president knew it and so did his advisors. You make light of the possibility that the neo-cons intentionally covered up their true intention (spreading democracy in the Middle East,) but the fact is that many of the most important players (William Kristol, Wolfowitz and others, are careful students of Leo Strauss who would have had them do just that.
Regardless, I have recently welcomed the rebirth of Real Politick and defended the notion that elites must lead even in democracies, so I guess I have no choice but to give credit where credit is due. But lets make no mistake, the president used anti-democratic methods to achieve all of this democracy spreading, and that is worth some serious Kantian level philisophical hand wringing.
Cyetain and I argued about this over IM the other day. I said that this situation appeared to be playing out similarly to Reagan v USSR: By abandoning the go along to get along strategy that had been in place for 30 years, Reagan probably ran a real risk of inciting nuclear war. But what was the alternative? 30 or 40 more years of go along to get along? How many more chances for a nuclear disaster would that have allowed?
Bush took a huge gamble with Iraq. I think he could have done a much better job of the thing itself, but the fact seems to be that the attractive power of democracy is strong enough to overwhelm even the astounding incompetance of Donald Rumsfeld. The fact is, in his own little myopic dim-witted way, Bush understood this all along, and I think that American liberals fail to understand it almost entirely.
So, Bush had a vision. He appears to have been granted a fair amount of luck, and the vague notion of "freedom" still rings true enough to drive eight million individuals to decide that it was worth the possibility of dying to cast a vote.
Cyetain: while you and I may agree on many of the particulars of the Bush administration's approach, I think that your analysis is to reductive. The best a president can hope for is that he sets a broad agenda, identifies and pushes key strategies and tactics, and finds that the winds are blowing his way. Its not fair to blame Bush for everything that goes wrong on his watch while denying him credit for the overall "vision" of spreading democracy as a response to radical islamic terrorism. Does this mean that he has taken all of the right steps towards achieving this goal? Not by a long shot. Have some of his actions probably worked directly against his goal? I would say yes. Still, he and his advisors have kept up a solid drum beat on this issue for four years now, and at the very least, things are shaking loose in the region.
Perhaps all that the arab street needed was the sense that they had America's attention. Perhaps that shriveled old Bernand Lewis was right that the only thing the arabs understand is power.
Daniel: I do not think and never have thought that the Bush team's main focus was WMD, I thought it was democratization all along, as such I think that the focus on WMD instead of spreading democracy was fundementally undemocratic.
What is more, even if many reasonable and "well informed" people thought the threat of WMD was real, the Bush administration, particularly Chenney and Rice, pushed the limits of veracity on a number of occassions.
The continued refusal of the Bush administration to budget for the war, a fact that is being all but completely ignored, is clearly an abrogation of democratic principles.
What links the above issues together, of course, is the fact that a slim majority of the American people apparently approved of the Bush approach in each of these cases, or at the very least didn't bother to inform themselves well enough to be offended. Still, this doesn't make any of those actions less undemocratic.
Finally, and this is probably the most important part, the toll paid involuntarily by the Iraqi people, to the tune of perhaps thousands of innocent deaths, was tremendously undemocratic. That isn't to say that it won't bring about better things for the Iraqi population and even the entire Middle East in the long run, but those who died that it might be so sure as hell didn't have a hand in the decision.
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Perhaps all that the arab street needed was the sense that they had America's attention. Perhaps that shriveled old Bernand Lewis was right that the only thing the arabs understand is power.
Daniel: I do not think and never have thought that the Bush team's main focus was WMD, I thought it was democratization all along, as such I think that the focus on WMD instead of spreading democracy was fundementally undemocratic.
What is more, even if many reasonable and "well informed" people thought the threat of WMD was real, the Bush administration, particularly Chenney and Rice, pushed the limits of veracity on a number of occassions.
The continued refusal of the Bush administration to budget for the war, a fact that is being all but completely ignored, is clearly an abrogation of democratic principles.
What links the above issues together, of course, is the fact that a slim majority of the American people apparently approved of the Bush approach in each of these cases, or at the very least didn't bother to inform themselves well enough to be offended. Still, this doesn't make any of those actions less undemocratic.
Finally, and this is probably the most important part, the toll paid involuntarily by the Iraqi people, to the tune of perhaps thousands of innocent deaths, was tremendously undemocratic. That isn't to say that it won't bring about better things for the Iraqi population and even the entire Middle East in the long run, but those who died that it might be so sure as hell didn't have a hand in the decision.
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