Cross-posted at
Political Moneyball
Speaking before the American Legion's meeting in Salt Lake City yesterday, President Bush again trumpeted his plan for the Middle East as both necessary and in America's best interest. In what was - in my opinion - a darn good speech, the president invoked Thomas Jefferson, alluded to the tyranny America successfully fought in WWII and the Cold War, and uttered the word "victory" 14 times. Despite the compelling argument and plainspoken prose - no extended metaphors or flowery imagery here - the president once again failed to grasp the reality of the situation. The speech, in short, was more of the same: Stay the course, Fight them over there, Unified Islamic worldview, etc. It was a speech we've all heard before.
If you follow me over the fold, I'll explain why Bush's idealism is hurting the left.
What makes this speech most frustrating, for me a least, is that the President's rhetoric continues to ignore the basic premises of American Realism, opting instead for idealistic and hopeful goals that have no basis in reality. The shift from the cold, detached, practical Realism of Kissinger, to the hijacked Idealism of the Bush Administration can be attributed to a shift in thinking about message and image, something this White House is obsessed with controlling.
It seems to me that foreign policy should not be based on hopes and dreams. And for many years, it wasn't. As The Nation chronicles in its August 14th issue, Realism - that of Walter Lippmann, Kissinger, and Iraq War critic Brent Scowcroft - is practical. It "stresses the limits of power and the danger of launching open-ended crusades to rid the world of evil." The article goes on to cite Ronald Steele (the biographer of Walter Lippmann) to suggest that Lippmann believed foreign policy, "was a question of geopolitics and a cold calculation of national interest."
Bush's foreign policy? Anything but "cold" and practical. Open-ended conflicts? Sure! Rid the world of evil? One regime, one end of the axis of evil at a time!
Why the change?
Realism sucks. The American people, especially after 9/11, don't want to hear about geo-political alliances, right and wrong, and stability. Even more than the public, the media care only about making money - and war sells newspapers (or, in the world of 24 hour news channels and the internet, war keeps people watching commercials for Viagra and closing popup ads for Orbitz).
What the American people wanted (and Rumsfeld and Cheney were happy to give), was decisive action. Practicality be damned, we needed to stick it to the terrorists. The president effectively hijacked the idealism usually associated with liberalism ("nation-building") and called it necessary. It was the perfect response to 9/11: they had a reason, they had a message, and they thought they could control the image.
The article in the Nation points out that it was liberals - not realists - who thought intervening in Bosnia and Rwanda was necessary for moral reasons. For realists, a foreign policy based on morals is anathema. This is an important distinction: the war to establish Iraqi freedom was posed as necessary not simply for promoting stability in the region, but as the morally right thing to do. The Iraqi people were suffering under the iron thumb of a cruel dictator. The president, more likely his advisors, capitalized on the soft side of Americans: Saddam was a genocidal maniac.
If this was the motivation, or the driving force, behind the war, then the liberal ideology of "making the world a better place" would rightly come under scrutiny. But this war was fought using idealism as an excuse, as a shield. Whatever the neo-con's agenda, they were turning their backs on Realist foreign policy and making the very mistakes the Realists warned against.
Politically, this hijacking makes great sense for two reasons. First, at least initially, the White House got exactly what they wanted: a war (and thus a guaranteed victory in the '04 election), assertion of American power (how's that working out for you Rummy?), and regime change (and thus more control over oil). Second, from now on, the interventionist (and thus idealist) attitude will be decried by both the left and the right as a failed policy.
I think this is why (as the article in The Nation points out) so many thinkers on the left are finding common ground with Realists like Scowcroft. But the left needs to be careful. The notion of intervening to prevent or stop genocide - look at Darfur - cannot be associated with the Iraq War debacle. The problem with Iraq isn't the ideology, it's the execution.