The following article was published in my school newspaper, The Yale Herald. We've had a lot of columns lately from righties whining about how liberals hate America and love Saddam. I thought it was about time someone gave them a what-for...so I did it myself.
Full text below the jump.
For the Right, It's Faction Over Nation
By Daniel A. Munz
Irony is a writer's best friend, but only when it's intentional. In his Feb. 8th editorial in the Yale Daily News ("On Iraq, Liberals Aimed For Spider Hole Of Denial") Jamie Kirchick achieves the other kind. In denouncing the American left, he captures the fetid worldview of the American right.
First, he cites Howard Dean's statement that toppling Saddam did not make America safer. Why is this unreasonable? Iraq posed no material security threat, and was among the least active terror sponsors in the region; now, the CIA concludes, it is a breeding ground for terrorists. Meanwhile, America remains unable to credibly threaten force against other regimes. But a statue fell in Baghdad, so we're safer. Howard, you nut!
Of course, "a statue fell in Baghdad" doesn't tell nearly the whole story. Despite being hampered by radical insurgents and incompetent administrators, Iraqis have moved towards liberal democracy, and we should be proud. As a liberal, I am. But I recognize that taking democratization seriously means committing to deal in hard and unpleasant truths. It means realizing that every mistake and deception, well-intentioned or not, leaves Iraqis in a pine box instead of a ballot box.
The right likes to decry the "blame America first" crowd. The reason I worry about - not blame - America first is because there is evil in the world, and however valiant our struggle, we cannot control that. But we can control our own behavior - if we only embrace, not hide from, the opportunity to acknowledge mistakes and do better. Here, the right fails miserably and consistently. When the left expressed extreme disapproval at the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) declared himself "outraged at the outrage." Somewhere in the world, there is a political prisoner praying - harder, probably, than President Bush ever has - for America to be the force for freedom that our power and promise suggest. To miss an opportunity to realize these prayers for the sake of avoiding hard truths is to take democracy as unseriously as possible.
Kirchick denounces Rev. Fredrick Streets for warning U.S. soldiers against the "religious imperialism" of passing out bibles in Baghdad. Streets had a point: For a people newly free from the raw hell of religious government, America's secular ideals carry real power. Instead of considering this, Kirchick invokes the popular fiction that dissatisfaction with America's conduct in Iraq indicates a preference for Saddam's hellish reign. He adds, glibly, that he's "not sure...what that makes al Qaeda's attempt to resurrect an Islamic caliphate from Andalusia to the Red Sea." Of course this plan is radical and wicked, but to use its evil nature as a shield against political attacks is base philistinism. Juan Cole, an esteemed Iraq scholar, recently wondered why "people can't imagine that you can hate Saddam and also think a unilateral war and long-term occupation of an Arab country are bad ideas." They can imagine it. It just doesn't make a very good ad campaign.
To be sure, some on the left deserve disdain. That Saddam is now confined to history can only be a good thing; to refuse to celebrate this fact - despite legitimate grievances - is also to take democracy unseriously. Some favor peace in any situation; to them, one must ask whether life under tyranny can be peaceful in any meaningful sense. Even Tennyson denounced those who acted "as though to breathe were life."
But the right is not concerned with them. They are concerned with people like Ishaan Tharoor, who wrote in the Yale Daily News that "any instance where oppressed peoples exercise their democratic agency must be applauded." He followed this with a critique of America's poor performance and feckless foreign policy. While his rhetoric shares some bad traits with Kirchick's, his arguments are solid and serious. But to the right, there is no graver offense; to them, democracy's triumphs are political weapons. To them, patriotism means cheerful assent to incompetent leaders, and "judgment" is another word for "political agreement." Sean Hannity's latest book promises to deliver America from "despotism and liberalism." This is the right's worldview: It is not America which must defeat tyranny, but one half of America which must defeat the other.
Of course, it's hard to be sensible when you imagine your every word engraved in marble somewhere on the National Mall. But leaders who are already there teach that leadership means promoting unity. Lincoln mended a union that had rended itself before him. Roosevelt, who appointed several Republicans to his war cabinet, would have found the use of war to marginalize dissent repugnant. But the right rejects these lessons, and marks triumph abroad by deepening divisions at home. It is the rankest sort of loyalty to faction over country, and its adoption by the mainstream right embarrasses those who genuinely treasure democracy.
"Opponents of the war," Kirchick says, "had every right to make the case against President Bush's decision to invade Iraq." Sure - if they wanted to appear in RNC ad campaigns superimposed onto Saddam's body. A leader truly interested in a unified war effort would have declared such tactics anathema. Such a leader might also have praised the liberal Senators who devised the Department of Homeland Security; instead, the American right claimed credit for the idea, and demonized those senators for demanding that the department's workers have basic labor rights. At the State of the Union, Republicans brandished ink-stained fingers to show solidarity with Iraqis. The reason their Democratic colleagues - many of whom voted for the war and praised the elections - engaged in no such gesture: Republicans refused to share their ink. These are not people who want a united America to lead democracy's march. These are people who want to win elections.
No leader has been a stronger ally than Tony Blair. In March 2004, Blair said at a press conference: "[The] alternative judgment [of war opponents] is both entirely rational and arguable...I have never disrespected those who disagreed with the decision...[T]here was a core of sensible people who faced with this decision would have gone the other way, for sensible reasons. Their argument is one I understand totally." It would be inconceivable to hear words of this sense and tone escape the lips of anyone on the right today. Kirchick's own words imply sadness, but his tone is not sad; it is triumphant. It carries the message: "Scorn dissent. We won." If the right has truly embraced America's ideological division this strongly, I think we've actually lost. Of course, I use the pronoun "we" with a different referent than they do. That's the whole point.