According to Fred Kagan and Bill Kristol, in the Salah-ad-Din province just north of Baghdad, al Qaeda has been having a tough time of late. Native Sunni tribes have turned against these foreign intruders and their fundamentalist decrees and have begun cooperating with the American Surge to seek the intruders out and eliminate them. Al Qaeda terrorists have responded by mounting a series of dramatic attacks, such as detonating explosives in the minarets of the Askariya shrine in Samarra.
According to Kagan and Kristol, this tactic
is clearly taking a page from the Viet Cong's book. The terrorists have been mounting a slow-motion Tet offensive of spectacular attacks on markets, bridges, and mosques, knowing that the media report each such attack as an American defeat.
Crossposted at ProgressiveHistorians
The Communists in 1968 were counting on Tet to undermine American will to continue the fight. So too, the al Qaeda Terrorists, by means of their high-profile attacks, “are counting on sapping our will…and persuading America to choose to lose a war it could win.”
And win it we can, Kagan and Kristol are convinced. The al Qaeda attacks are causing native Sunnis to turn away from these foreign fundamentalists. Further, native Sunnis in Iraq have no interest in the brand of “international terrorism” that al Qaeda advocates. The “Sunni Arab community” in Iraq has made use of al Qaeda only because it has needed allies against both the US and the Iraqi Shia. But now that the Sunnis in Iraq have recognized that cooperation rather than conflict with the US is more useful to them and that “they will not face an existential threat from the Shia” as long as US troops are readily available to protect them, they will end their resistance and cooperate with the US and the al-Maliki government.
The Surge still faces difficulties of course, and the most pressing danger is that the al Qaeda insurgents will use such events as the Askariya bombing to convince US policy makers and the US public that the war is lost.
But surely our political leaders have enough sense, and enough courage, not to believe enemy propaganda. We believed it once before, in 1968, in circumstances far less dangerous and far less consequential for our well-being than the present.
Though the Evil of Totalitarian Communism was of world-historical proportions, a Communist victory in South Vietnam did not in 1968 portend the disastrous consequences that an al Qaeda victory in Iraq does now. We cannot, therefore, afford to make again the “grave mistake” of allowing our military Will to waver and collapse. We have the Strength to win in Iraq, if the Surge is given the proper opportunity to demonstrate its effectiveness. We must now therefore maintain the Will to see the Surge through to final success and victory.
1. Like Father, Like Son
Fred Kagan has learned the lesson of his father well. In order to influence policy and perception, and in order to maintain one’s own morale, construct a melodrama, in this instance, the struggle of the American Surge against the Evil of al Qaeda. In support of that melodrama bring forward an analogous historical event, in this case the Tet Offensive of 1968 and its aftermath, the collapse of the American Will to wage victorious war against the world-historical threat of Communism.
Kagan and Kristol are confident that when we compare the details of the two events, we will see that their analogy holds, that, in fact, the parallels are almost exact. (In the following I’m elaborating a bit on the analogy that Kagan and Kristol use in their article in order to make it less, uh, simple.)
The US forces in 1968 faced a Communist insurgency in South Vietnam that was composed of a native South Vietnamese force, the Vietcong (Communist), and a foreign force, the North Vietnamese (also Communist). In Iraq we face a Sunni fundamentalist insurgency composed of native Iraqi jihadis aided by a foreign force, al Qaeda (also Sunni fundamentalist).
Just as the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong were failing militarily in 1968, so too al Qaeda and its native Sunni insurgents are failing militarily now. But just as the Communists were able to convince American policy makers and the American public, by means of Tet, that they were prevailing, so too Al Qaeda in Iraq is using spectacular attacks to convince a gullible US public and spineless American policy makers that it is succeeding.
Further, just as the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, by means of Tet and other such spectacles of aggression, sapped the will of the American people, so too al Qaeda, by means of the their own dramatic attacks, is now undermining the will of the American people. And just as the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong were abetted by the media and by the Left, so too al Qaeda is now being given crucial support by the usual suspects.
Finally, just as the Shame and Humiliation of Defeat followed the collapse of American Will in the 70s, so too will the Shame and Humiliation of Defeat follow the collapse of American Will now. We still have, however, the opportunity to avoid such collapse and Humiliation if we hold fast to the initial successes of the Surge and continue steadfastly to build on them.
Kagan and Kristol know full well that the Sunni insurgency is composed of more than those fundamentalist jihadis, foreign (few) and native (many), that they misleadingly subsume under the all-encompassing label “al Qaeda.” And they also know that the difficulty facing the Surge extends beyond the Sunni insurgency to the Shiite factions competing for power in the al-Maliki government.
But Kagan and Kristol seem intent on reducing the complexities of the insurgency to a simple and satisfying narrative, a melodrama in which the forces of Evil, embodied in al Qaeda, confront the forces of Good, embodied in the Surge, in a world-historical conflict for the future of Iraq and ultimately of the world. Such a simple and satisfying narrative will have, they hope, an impact on both policy makers and the public. And what is perhaps even more important, they seem to hope that this narrative will have an impact on their own neocon morale, both now and in the future.
Like his father Don Kagan whose essay “Strength and Will” I have been examining in this series, Fred Kagan espouses an ideology that grounds itself not only in a specific Ideal of America but also in a narrative that documents in detail how that American Ideal has struggled against enemies both internal and external to achieve vindication. That American Ideal has in the past won through to Victory against its anti-Ideal, Totalitarian Communism, and it is now struggling against a new version of its anti-Ideal, Islamic Totalitarian Terrorism. The American Ideal will once again prove victorious, but that victory might be in the distant future. In the meantime America will once again have to struggle steadfastly against those enemies external and internal arrayed against it and once again, perhaps, as it had to do in Vietnam, face the Humiliation of needless Defeat.
The ideology that Kagan and Kristol draw on was formed in the Cold War or, more precisely, in the neocon narrative of the Cold War. Since the collapse of Communism they have drawn on the lessons of that narrative in order to understand our “present dangers.” In our current time of trial, in which “al Qaeda” seems on the verge of sweeping us from Iraq, they are drawing on it again. Of course, the neocon narrative of the Cold War might not accord with the reality of the Cold War, and the lessons they draw from their narrative might therefore not be applicable to the reality confronting us now. Still, the neocons are confident that their Grand Narrative embodies the truth of things, and they are far from exhausting the “lessons” it has to offer them.
2. Stages in the Ongoing Struggle: the Grand Narrative
At present, according to the neocons, America is facing a force, Totalitarian Terrorism, that threatens to destroy and eliminate our whole way of life. Islamic Terrorism is not a miniscule threat nor one that restricts its aggression to some distant part of the world. It is a world-historical threat whose avowed purpose is to destroy our existence as a nation. Islamic Terrorism, that is, faces us as threat that is existentially lethal.
Only extreme measures can effectively deal with such a threat. Diplomacy is useless. Negotiation and appeasement are effective when dealing with opponents who are rational and who can be reasonably appeased. The world-historical threat we now face is neither rational nor appeasable. Islamic Terrorism is a force that is fanatically driven to destroy all opposition and that will not rest until it has subjugated the world. It is, in essence, a Totalitarian force that seeks the universal dominance of its worldview. It can only be dealt with through the application of superior military force.
The neocons are confident that their assessment of Islamic Terrorism is correct because they have been down this road before. After the defeat of the Nazis, the world split into two opposing and mutually negating factions: the Free nations led by the US and the Totalitarian nations led by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union espoused an ideology that sought the elimination of pluralistic democracies and free-market capitalism and the world-wide establishment of Totalitarian Communism. Had the Soviet Union been a small, even middling, power on the world stage, the US might have been able to deal with it through the maneuvers of diplomacy and appeasement. But it was neither small nor middling. The Soviet Union, especially after it developed a nuclear capacity in 1949, was one of the two great military powers on the planet.
Further, the Soviet Union was a resolute expansionist power and had as its goal not peaceful co-existence with the West—détente, as some called it—but the gradual incorporation of every nation on earth into its sphere of Totalitarian Tyranny. Such expansionism could not have been otherwise. The ideology of the Soviet Union was based on a Marxist utopian drive to “liberate” the world from the yoke of capitalist slavery. The Soviet Union could therefore not rest until it had achieved its purpose of world “liberation,” that is, of world domination. Dialogue, diplomacy, appeasement were useless. The Soviet Union, on the one hand, had no need to negotiate since militarily it was our equal, if not our superior. And, on the other, it had no desire to negotiate since its goal was not co-existence but world domination.
Our Great Struggle was complicated by the fact that there were those on the Left who, if they did not actively advocate solidarity with socialist regimes, actively denigrated the virtues of capitalism and espoused utopian ideas of socialism. Or even worse, they espoused postmodern theories of moral relativism that refused to make any moral distinction between the Evil of Totalitarian Communism and the Good of Democratic Capitalism.
These internal enemies actively opposed confrontation with Communist aggression, especially during and after the Vietnam War. Weak of Will, they refused to admit that the world is a dangerous place, reveled in a naïve optimism concerning human nature, believed Evil could easily be appeased through gestures of multicultural understanding, and advocated that most simplistic of geopolitical strategies, military disarmament. They lacked Moral Courage and Steadfastness. They opposed the maintenance of a robust military capability and the use of military force when Evil asserted its Will to Power. At best one could call them naïve, but their naivete led us, after Vietnam, to skulk away from our global responsibilities in Dishonor and Shame and Humiliation.
Ronald Reagan, thankfully, saw what needed to be seen and did what needed to be done. He courageously identified the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire and steadfastly confronted it. And he conclusively demonstrated that only a strategy based on military Strength and the Will to deploy it could bring down such an Empire. His insistence on expanding the military in the 80s and his tactical coup, Star Wars, ultimately proved that not diplomacy but military strength is the only effective means of dealing with Totalitarian forces that seek the elimination of Freedom and the establishment of Tyranny.
This narrative is the neocons’ great positive example of how we must always respond to the world-historical threats that will always confront us. Their great negative example is the one I have been examining in this series: the responses of the US and especially of Britain to Hitler and the Nazis in the 30s. To anyone who had the moral courage to see, according to the neocons, Hitler posed a lethal and unappeasable threat. The British turned away from that threat and refused to commit to the only strategy that could effectively deal with it: the maintenance of military Strength and the Will to use it. Finally, shamed by their previous timidity and cowardice, exemplified by the ignominy of Munich, the British banded together with their allies and defeated Hitler.
But that confrontation was only the Prologue to the Great World-Historical Struggle that followed and that lasted over forty years, the Cold War, or World War III, in the historical narrative that Norman Podhoretz has constructed. We now live in the midst of another Great World-Historical Struggle, World War IV in Podhoretz’s narrative, a struggle against a lethal and unappeasable Totalitarian force, Islamic Terrorism, that will last as long if not longer than World War III.
And we need not confuse ourselves concerning what motivates this struggle nor how we must respond to it. Our current struggle embodies another chapter in the ongoing struggle of Freedom against Tyranny. In order to understand the essential dynamics of this struggle against Totalitarian Terrorism we need only look back on the Glorious Struggles of World Wars II and III. In each instance Freedom was confronted by a Totalitarian force that fanatically sought to eliminate it. So too, in order to understand how we must act against Islamic Terrorism, we need only look back on the Grand Narrative and its Prologue. We must not act by means of diplomacy and appeasement, those craven gestures of weakness and timidity that will only bring us Dishonor, Shame and Defeat. We must act with Strength and Will, courageous if difficult acts of military force that will bring us Honor, Glory and Victory.
The Grand Narrative is the Ideal which forms an essential part of the neocon worldview. Since it embodies the Ideal it cannot fail us when we resort to it for guidance. Thus when we return to the Narrative we see that the Ideal of Freedom was defeated in Vietnam because of a collapse of the American Will to fight. We can learn from that Defeat and avoid it in this instance by maintaining our Will to Struggle against the Islamic Terror, embodied in al Qaeda, that is intent on destroying us.
But even if we do allow our Will to collapse, that is, if we allow our Leftist opponents to undermine our Will to the point of collapse, we need only look to the Grand Narrative for consolation. Vietnam was indeed a failure of Will. But however humiliating, it was only a short-term failure. There were those who kept the faith, visionaries like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz who knew that America and Freedom would prevail. And they were right. The Defeat in Vietnam was finally rectified in the Glorious Victory of Ronald Reagan over Communism. So too, Iraq might prove to be a short-term defeat. But World War IV has a long way to go, and if, like the great neocons before us, we prove steadfast in our adherence to the Ideal, we will once again overcome our enemies, both external and internal, and prove Victorious.
3. Values and Empire
This Grand Narrative has provided the Kagans, both the paterfamilias Donald and his sons Robert and Fred, with a historical template by means of which they can understand the deep dynamics of history. By means of this template they can return to the past, to the fight against Hitler’s fascism, and confidently see in American and British behavior in the 30s Weakness of Will and Moral Cowardice. Having constructed this narrative of Weakness, they can use it as the great negative example of how not to deal with world-historical Evil. More important, by means of this template, they can now look to the present and to our situation in the Middle East, to Iraq and Iran, and see what needs to be seen, namely that Islamic Terrorism, embodied especially in al Qaeda, is a world-historical Totalitarian Evil. They can also refer to the template and see what needs to be done, namely the application of military force to the Evil that threatens us: counterinsurgency in Iraq, bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran.
However, when we look closely at the narratives that they construct, we find that the neocons deliberately erase evidence that renders their simple and satisfying narratives complex and ambiguous. As I have argued in this series, in his narratives of American and British weakness in the 1930s, Donald Kagan has deliberately suppressed evidence, such as the Great Depression and British rearmament, that contradicts his storyline.
The neocons practice this method because they need to construct narratives that are melodramas of Good struggling against Evil. Any bit of evidence that complicates their simple and satisfying narratives, that renders them complex, ambiguous, even tragic, must be suppressed. The Ideal, Freedom, must be demarcated from and set off against the anti-Ideal, Tyranny, so that the narrative can move forward without obstacle to its predetermined conclusion: the Defeat of Tyranny and the final victorious establishment throughout the world of a New American Imperium based on that most basic of human values, Freedom.
The neocon worldview, that is, is based not just on American interests but on American values. The neocons are Idealists, and the motive that drives their political behavior is the establishment of Freedom in the world and the eradication of Tyranny. To spread American values, and especially the fundamental value of Freedom, is the Right and Honorable thing to do. More important, if we do not act to disseminate Freedom, the Terrorists will take advantage of our passivity and indolence. As the example of the Soviet Union during the Cold War demonstrated, Evil inevitably seeks to expand its sphere of influence and control.
The neocons have well learned the lessons of the Cold War. To remain passive and inactive and to allow Totalitarian Terrorism to usurp space in the world that by right belongs to Freedom is dishonorable, shameful, and weak. It is not enough to be vigilant in the defense of our values and our Freedom. We must also be active in their dissemination. It is the fate of America to resist Tyranny and to project and transmit the values of Civilization, and especially the value of Freedom, throughout the world. But other nations need not fear our hegemony and dominance. The New American Imperium will be one in which not our soldiers but our values occupy the world.
The Kagan who has been most active, and most effective, in espousing this neocon Idealism is not Fred. That distinction belongs to his brother Robert, and I’ll begin to examine his neoconservative Idealism in my next series of posts. I will then return to Fred and to his neocon narrative of the Surge, that is, to his narrative of the world-historical struggle between al Qaeda and the Surge.