The Idiocy of the Imperial Liberals of the U.S. Establishment

The establishment liberals criticize Bush for losing the war, not, however, for starting it. But the only important fact about the war is that is is illegal, immoral and stupid. The charges against the top Nazis in the Nuremberg Trials were the planning and prosecution of aggressive war: attacks on countries that did not threaten the attacker. At least the Neoconservative war mongers have some intellectual consistency. To read the convoluted crap of the establishment liberals, or neoliberals in their organs of the establishment media such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The New Republic, or to listen to the leading politicians in the Democratic Party, is to descend into a thicket of wrong assumptions, assumptions that can only lead to wrong conclusions and disastrous actions.

It’s such a tightly-woven mess that we need to unpack the assumptions by carefully examining passages of their work. Let’s look at an article in this week’s New Yorker by George Packer. It is an account of the internal debates about the justification of the war of a man whose son was killed in Iraq. Packer’s views on the subject are clear, though.

The idea of diminishing the threat from the Middle East by spreading democracy, beginning with Iraq, had occurred to the Bush Administration before W.M.D. turned out not to exist. Some officials had been promoting the notion for years, and the President had made the argument in a speech before the American Enterprise Institute a month before the invasion. But this was hardly the casus belli that the Administration had presented to the American people. When the Administration changes its rationale later on, without ever admitting to the shift, it had every appearance of a bait-and-switch.

Nevertheless, the idea deserved to be taken seriously by the political opposition at home and by America’s allies. A few Democrats, like Biden and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, took up the idea without diluting their criticism of the Administration’s conduct in Iraq. This was a difficult mental balancing act, but it was also important, because what Iraqis and democracy needed most was a thoughtful opposition that could hold the Bush Administration to its own promises. Yet most of the war’s critics, including leaders of the Democratic Party, refused to engage in debate. They turned the subject back to the missing weapons or they scoffed at the Administration’s sincerity, or they muttered about the dangers of utopianism, or they said nothing. As a result, the Administration never felt concerted pressure from the left to insure that Iraq emerged from the war with a viable democracy. (“The Home Front: A Soldier’s Father Wrestles with the Ambiguities of Iraq,” The New Yorker, July 4, 2005, p. 57.)

Where to begin? How about this: “The idea of diminishing the threat from the Middle East by spreading democracy, beginning with Iraq…” Already, before the sentence is even completed, we have two faulty assumptions: One, that there is a “threat” from the Middle East, two, that you can spread “democracy” throughout the region, beginning in Iraq. What is unspoken? That you can spread “democracy” by bombing a country, killing harrassing and poisoning the population, that the “threat” comes from Muslim countries and groups and not from Israel, that there is a unified “we” (“Americans”) that can be “threatened.”

This “idea” of creating democracy in Iraq and spreading it around the Middle East, Packer argues, “deserved to be taken seriously by the political opposition at home and by America’s allies.” It can only be taken seriously by those who don’t know anything about the real situation in the world. It can be used as a propaganda message to manipulate people, but it can’t be taken seriously. According to this establishment liberal (liberals who want a career in the Empire) these ideas can be taken seriously by—and this is a favorite word of these types—“thoughtful” people.

Packer then goes on to name some “good Democrats,” i.e., imperialist Democrats, who limit their criticisms of the war to the lack of effectiveness in prosecuting it and who never question the assumptions behind U.S. foreign policy: the disgusting Senator Joseph Biden and Richard Holbrooke: “A few Democrats, like Biden and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, took up the idea without diluting their criticism of the Administration’s conduct in Iraq.” Actually, there is no way to take up that “idea” without diluting their criticism of the Administration’s conduct in Iraq. Ask John Kerry.

We are then told that what Iraq needed was a “thoughtful” opposition to Bush in the United States:

This was a difficult mental balancing act, but it was also important, because
what Iraqis and democracy needed most was a thoughtful opposition that could
hold the Bush Administration to its own promises.

Not only Iraq but a sort of personified “democracy” needed that as well. What Iraqis more likely needed was clean water, safe streets, food, jobs, a lack of depleted uranium and an absence of foreign infidel troops. But these establishment, imperial liberals need to cling to the illusion that there is a democracy in the United States, that the party out of power needs to provide “thoughtful” opposition, that this is not a struggle between good and evil within the United States political system not between it and other abstractions like “tyranny.” They also cling to the idea that the outcome of the war depend on what happens within the corridors of power in the United States and in the debates of citizens. This they share with the Neocons: the feeling that the natives don’t matter. That the United States lost the Vietnam War not because of the tough and brave struggle of the Vietnamese people but because of a lack of “resolve” in the United States.

Packer finishes the passage with this: “As a result, the Administration never felt concerted pressure from the left to insure that Iraq emerged from the war with a viable democracy.” It’s hard to imagine packing so much wrongness into one sentence. When has the Bush regime felt ANY pressure from the left? And even if they did, how could that have “insured” (man, you used to be able to count on the copy editors of The New Yorker not to let something like that through and to replace it with the correct word: “ensured”) a viable democracy in Iraq.

In whose interest is it for there to be anything like a “viable democracy” in Iraq? Not in Israel’s and Israel was the one pushing this war; the American people never demanded we invade Iraq. Israel wants (and will probably get) a weakened Iraq divided into many warring parts. It was not in the interest of the elite in the United States. They always wanted a united Iraq under the control of a military dictator who aligned himself with the United States. It was always a project of the elite. I’ll never forget when the foreign policy team of the Clinton adminstration addressed a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio in the nineties trying to explain their policy of bombing Iraq and imposing sanctions. They were shocked to see many loud protesters opposing the war. They had never given any thought to what the public might think of the policy.

Packer probably thinks that he just wrote a hard-hitting criticism of Bush, but he takes absolutely at face value all the nonsense about democracy in the Middle East and is completely blind to the real motives behind the invasion. Now let’s let this next passage, a fantasy worthy of Tolkien, wash over us:

In the fall of 2002, it still might have been possible for President Bush to construct and Iraq policy that united both parties and America’s democratic allies in defeating tyranny in Iraq. Such a policy, however, would have required the Administration to operate with flexibility and openness. The evidence on unconventional weapons would have had to be laid out without exaggeration or deception. The work of U.N. inspectors in Iraq would have had to be supported rather than undermined. Testimony to Congress would have had to be candid, not slippery. Administration officials who offered dissenting views or pessimistic forecasts would have had to be treated as grownups, and not, as Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, once suggested, as ten-year-olds.

After the invasion, European allies would have had to be coaxed into joining an effort that desperately needed their help. French, German, and Canadian companies would have had to be invited to bid on reconstruction contracts, not barred by an order signed by Paul Wolfowitz (who once wrote that American leadership required “demonstrating that your friends will be protected and taken care of, that your enemies will be punished and that those who refuse to support you will live to regret having done so”). American contractors close to the Pentagon would have had to be subjected to extraordinary scrutiny, to avoid even the appearance of corruption. The U.N. would have had to be brought into Iraq as an equal partner, not as a tool of American convenience. The top civilian in Iraq might even have had to be a Democrat, or a moderate Republican such as the retired General Anthony Zinni, whom a senior Administration official privately described as the best-qualified person for the job… The occupation authority would have had to favor hiring not political appointees but competent, non-partisan experts. It would have had to put the interests of Iraqi society ahead of the White House agenda.

And when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq the Administration would have had to admit it… Officials and generals who were responsible for scandal and failure would have had to be fired, not praised or promoted. When reporters asked the President to name one mistake he had made in Iraq, he would have had to name five, while assuring the country that they were being corrected. He would have had to summon all his rhetorical skill to explain to the country why, in spite of the failure to find weapons, ending tyranny in Iraq and helping it to become a pioneering democracy in the Middle East was morally correct, important for American security, and worthy of a generational effort. In fact, he would have had to explain this before the war, when the inspectors were turning up no signs of weapons, and thus allow the country to have a real debate about the real reasons for the war, so that when the war came it would not come amid rampant suspicions and surprises, and America would not be alone in Iraq.

The Administration’s early insistence on Iraq’s imminent threat to national security later made it difficult for many Americans to accept broader arguments for democracy. (Ibid., p. 54)

I guess what he means is that in some alternate universe this war can be a success. But if the political leaders were so wise, they would never have seen the need to invade Iraq. All the high-minded democracy rhetoric serves only to cover up the U.S. elites’ naked self-interest as the leaders of world capitalism and/or their subordination to the interests of the state of Israel as defined by the Israeli right-wing. And all that really matters is that this war is one of the great crimes in history.