Your "Heads, I Win/Tails, You Lose" Moment Of The Day
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Andrew Sullivan | Bush Derangement Syndrome | Foreign Affairs | The Middle East — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
More times than I can count, Andrew Sullivan has argued that any long term conflagration that occurs in the Middle East as a result of the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq is and should be traceable to the decisions that President Bush made in removing Saddam from power. Thus, if the Middle East goes to hell in a handbasket, President Bush is to blame. As just one example of this kind of argument, see this post, where Sullivan argues that thanks to the Bush Administration's decision to remove Saddam, "[w]e have not constructed a democratic model for the Middle East - we have instead destroyed a totalitarian government and a phony country, only to create a permanently unstable, fractious, chaotic failed state, where the mere avoidance of genocide is a cause for celebration. We have, moreover, helped solder a new truth in the Arab mind: that democracy means chaos, anarchy, mass-murder, national disintegration and sectarian warfare." Presumably, this state of affairs will last for quite a while into the future--if not for generations (in any event, the near-permanent nature of this state of affairs is more than implicit in Sullivan's rhetoric)--and if it does, President Bush will be at fault for it.
Today, Sullivan responds to a post by Ross Douthat which states the following (this is Sullivan's excerpt):
Bush's hopes for vindication depend on the Middle East's following a gradual, Fukuyaman track toward free markets, democratic government, and the "end of history." And just as crucially, they depend on American troops' staying in Iraq for as long as it takes for that to happen. If these events come to pass--if the Iraq of 2038 or so is stable, democratic, and at peace with its neighbors, and if American troops have maintained a constant presence in the country--no one should be surprised to hear hawkish liberals as well as conservatives taking up the idea that George W. Bush deserves a great deal of the credit.
Sullivan's response?
It seems to me that if a policy can only be judged from the vantage point of thirty years into the future, the possibility of any sane or rational judgment of it as we decide is impossible. Such time-lines make such decisions close to meaningless, and remove all proximate responsibility for those making them. If Iraq does end up as Ross and I hope, I see no reason to congratulate George W. Bush for botching the start of it.
(Emphasis mine.) So, if things turn out badly, Bush is responsible. If things turn out well in the end, then Bush's decisions are "close to meaningless, and remove all proximate responsibility for those making them."
Just let the nature of this new, intellectually shallow argument--motivated purely by convenience and animus on Sullivan's part--sink in. Doesn't he check his own archives? And isn't he embarrassed by the way in which he blatantly contradicts his own arguments for the sake of animus and animus alone?
Know Hope — Comments (6) »
Your "Heads, I Win/Tails, You Lose" Moment Of The Day 8 Comments (0 topical, 8 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
The Middle East is not Gay Marriage. Gay Marriage is the only topic where you can expect Sullivan to remain consistent. Everything else is just column fodder.
Just how long should the clock run before ANY event can be judged as a success or failure? By that measure why not just round it off to an even thousand years to truly understand the events of the previous millenium?
The fact is that TODAY Americans taxpayers are footing the bill for an unnecessary war to the tune of 12 billion dollars a month and US soldiers are making an even greater sacrifice for this historic mistake.
It does not take two decades to ponder what we all know to be true now: The invasion of Iraq is one of the worst (if not THE worst) strategic military blunders in our 230 year existence.
Just so you could be assigned a remedial 1,500 word essay on the geopolitical fallout from the Spanish-American War. Special hint: take extra care to note why "fallout" nearly resulted in not being used metaphorically.
Write it up, send it in and we'll think about turning your account back on.
Moe
PS: Not In Your Name, phlounder. Not In Your Name.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
.....tenacity, resolve, determination, all attributes that half this nation apparently does not have.
If the United States of 1948 had been inclined in the same manner, half of the City of Berlin, Germany would have been thrown under the bus, there would have been no "I went to Berlin" for JFK, there would have been no "Mr Gorbachov, tear down this wall!" moment for Ronald Reagan, no Lithuanian staredown against the USSR, no Hungarian Revolutions, No Czechoslovak moment, no collapse of the East German government, no Perestroika, no collapse of the old USSR, and a high probability that the lives and works of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin would have a much more prominent place in United States classrooms than they do today. Security and personal comfort are the overiding national goals by a majority of the nation's population.
Some call it 'guts', some intestinal fortitude, whatever it is called, FDR had it, HST had it, JFK had it, but in the last half of the twentieth century, the United States, collectively, has shown a dramatic lack of possession of that trait when it came to pushing the frontiers of Liberty and Democracy. The abdication of that challenge in Vietnam was the low point of this nation's pursuit of freedom and democracy for all and today the desire by at least half this nation to abandon the pursuit of nation building in Iraq and the Middle East adds to that picture. The words "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe.." never rang more hollow than they do today.
Winston Churchill admonished the free world with the statement that "In war; Resolution: In defeat; Defiance:" later adding that any nation that failed to abide by those principles would not have to worry about their freedoms for long, because they were sure to lose it. The United States stands on the verge of validating Sir Winston's prediction.
the existence of 24/7 MSM inhabited by 99% by lefties.
Its not a coincidence that Vietnam was the first U.S. war to involve TV coverage.
I'm not a fan of Sullivan, but I do want to comment on this issue of democratizing the Middle East.
So far, it's been an abject failure. Free elections in the Palestinian Territories led to the HAMAS takeover. Guess what, Bush, the Palestinians really did want to be led by an avowedly Islamist terrorist organization.
You can't draw an analogy with postwar Germany and Japan after 1945 either. First of all, Germany and Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allied forces. The Japanese Emperor had instructed his people to lay down their arms and cooperate peacefully with the Allied occupation force. Which, being loyal to him, they did.
Most importantly, a key part of postwar U.S. occupation policy in Japan was to de-Shintoize the Japanese government. The old style mystic militarism of Bushido had to go.
No such thing has happened in Iraq. We captured many or most of those persons in that "52 card deck." But not one of them, including the Big Cheese, Saddam, was willing to go on TV and tell the Iraqi people to lay down their arms, stop fighting, and build a peaceful society. The Iraqis we supposedly defeated NEVER surrendered. Do Muslims ever surrender in war? Have they ever surrendered, ever? Or do they just sign these hudnas, the classic Mohammedan 10 year truce, subject to being broken by them whenever it is convenient? So unlike Japan and Germany, our occupation forces didn't walk into a country at peace. We walked into a country embroiled in war and civil strife.
Nor has the U.S. done anything about imposing democratic values in Iraq. The Bush Administration was content to allow an Iraqi Constitution which installs the Islamic Law of Sharia as paramount--without even giving 30 seconds of thought to whether Sharia was compatible with the type of democracy that the U.S. hoped to build there.
Nor is the Middle East comparable to Eastern Europe or even Russia. Eastern Europe had a long tradition of civilized government and the rule of civil law. No nation-building was needed there after the Warsaw Pact collapsed, only nation-restoring.
As for Russia, Gorbachev found out the hard way that "Communist democracy" was an oxymoron: One or the other had to go. Bush has still not figured out that "Sharia democracy" in Iraq is just as much of an oxymoron.
Bush didn't have a clue what he was getting into. The Muslim Middle East is NOT like Germany, it's NOT like Japan, it's NOT like Eastern Europe, it's NOT like Russia, and it's CERTAINLY NOT like America. It is unique in being the cradle of jihadist Islam, a region where religious dogma still holds absolute sway over civil society; and in being an area where tribalism never gave way to the rule of civil law in large nation-states with widely respected political boundaries. It is a mess, requiring perhaps centuries more social progress. The notion that a few years, or maybe 10 years, of U.S. occupation can accomplish in Iraq what was accomplished in far more civilized parts of the world is a total fantasy.
A better analogy would be India. When the British Empire arrived in India, the place was a pesthole of murderous Thuggees, "untouchable" castes, disease, and so on. At least it already had a tradition of peaceful democracy, thanks to Hinduism and Buddhism. Nevertheless, it took two centuries of British rule to civilize the place, breaking the power of the Thuggees and introducing Westernism by osmosis. Not 10 years.
We imposed western-style constitutions onto Germany and Japan at the outset. If we couldn't impose a secular constitution onto Iraq (or at least omitted the supremecy of Sharia law), then the rebuilding is not the most efficient use of our resources (lives/money/time) and we should lay off the democracy talk and instead install some type of benevolant shah. Rule of law is a prerequisite for democracy. Post-USSR Russia tried democracy without rule of law and look where it got them. Democracy is a disaster with HAMAS. Lebanon has a democracy, but we are so focused in other places, that we are letting that democracy slide into the abyss.
It would take relatively few resources 2 years ago to preserve and enhance the democracy in Lebanon, yet we did nothing. Lebanon was low hanging fruit, now I am not so sure.
We are in Iraq and Afghanistan and so we need to win. However, I think it is clear that our leadership is unwilling to even identify the enemy. How many different names have been used and disguarded? The DHS recently issued guidelines saying that the word "jihad" should not be used.
I have a spent a lot of time since 9/11 watching as much ME TV and reading as much ME media as possible. Their culture is actively against western-style rule of law. If one doesn't believe in cultural relativism (and its hard to see how conservatives can while still being conservative) then one must admit that cultures are different in meaningful ways.
We need a President who can use the bully-pulpit effectively against governments like Iran and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
--Specifically call them out on their attrocious behavior
--Specifically side with the dissidents and victims
--Give a press conference and use youtube clips to show their duplicity
--Read portions of the Hamas and Hezbollah charters and call on those groups to renounce certain aims
We are doing the opposite of going for the low hanging fruit. We are doing this in the hardest way possible. Still better than not doing it, but damn . . . we could really use some leadership on this.
I've long since given up on expecting any consistent rational argument from Andrew Sullivan. I remember back before the Iraq war started he was a gung ho supporter, and yet turned into a fierce lefty antiwar critic from nearly the moment the war started. Inconsistency of his sort is usually found in schizophrenics or split personality types.
I blame his sleep apnea or maybe it's just his shallow mind, or maybe his conservatism of doubt just means he doesn't trust his own judgment or that we should have doubts about it.
The guy is voting for Obama, after all. conservatism of doubt indeed.