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LIBERTY AND POWER GROUP ESSAYS ON FOREIGN POLICY
These foreign policy essays appeared on the History News Network's Liberty and Power Group Blog
By Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Dick Cheneys Words of Wisdom, Circa 1992 (27 December 2003)
Flames and Oxygen (27
December 2003)
Consequences: Intended and Unintended (11 April 2004)
Drugs and Terror (15
April 2004)
Academic
Curricula: At War with Radical Thinking (2 June 2004)
The Birth of a Narcostate
(13 June 2004)
US-Saudi
Chickens Coming Home to Roost (1 July 2004)
Weighing in on a Foreign
Policy Debate, Again
(29 July 2004)
Education
and Nation-Building in Iraq (15 August 2004)
Unintended Consequences Not
Unforeseeable
(12 September 2004)
Freedom and 'Islamofascism' (6 October 2004)
Fascism: Clarifying a
Political Concept (8 October 2004)
America First (10 October
2004)
Peter Schwartz and the Abandonment of Rand's Radical
Legacy (December 2004)
DICK CHENEY'S WORDS OF WISDOM, CIRCA 1992
(23
December 2003)
Vice President Cheney is in the news today. First,
Paul Krugman, in Patriots
and Profits, mentions Cheney in connection with Halliburton and crony
capitalism. No surprises there. Even the liberal Krugman admits that"worries
about profiteering aren't a left-right issue. Conservatives have long warned
that regulatory agencies tend to be 'captured' by the industries they regulate;
the same must be true of agencies that hand out contracts." I talked about this
phenomenon in"Mixed
Economy 101."
But the best Cheney reference today, by far,
is this one, in Todd S. Purdum's NY Times article,"After
12 Years, Sweet Victory: The Bushes' Pursuit of Hussein." Purdum
writes:
There were ample reasons
for the first President Bush not to go after Mr. Hussein. The current vice
president and then the secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, outlined some of them
in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1992, when he
said:"If we'd gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein --- assuming we
could have found him --- we'd have had to put a lot of forces in and run him to
ground someplace. He would not have been easy to capture. Then you've got to put
a new government in his place, and then you're faced with the question of what
kind of government are you going to establish in Iraq?"
"Is it going to be a
Kurdish government, or a Shia government or a Sunni government?" Mr. Cheney
continued."How many forces are you going to have to leave there to keep it
propped up, how many casualties are you going to take through the course of this
operation?"
Purdum adds:"Most of those
questions remain as relevant today as they were a decade ago..."
Amen.
I say "largely" because I know, deep down, that, in
terms of the fundamentals of Ayn Rand's framework, both Arthur and I are
certainly in sync with "Objectivism," the name that Rand chose for her
philosophy. It is an integrated system of thought---of realism, egoism,
individualism, and capitalism---and it irks me that those of us who embrace it
may end up forfeiting the"Objectivist" label to those who undermine its
essential radicalism. Given the fact that I've been calling myself a
"dialectical libertarian" now for about ten years, I suppose I forfeited that
label some time ago.
But it is hard to disguise one's disenchantment with
what has become of "Objectivism" in an era of increasing US government
intervention at home and abroad. Too many of its most visible spokespeople have
become apologists for neoconservatism, at war with Rand's radical legacy, which
I discuss above.
Rand herself was a bit uncomfortable with those who
would have called themselves "Randians" or"Randists"; she wrote that she was
"much too conceited to allow such a use of [her] name." On this point, she
expressed "sympathy for Karl Marx who, on being told about some outrageous
statements made by some Marxists, answered: 'But I am not a Marxist.'" So, she
cautioned: "If you agree with some tenets of Objectivism, but disagree with
others, do not call yourself an Objectivist; give proper authorship credit for
the parts you agree with---and then indulge in any flights of fancy you wish, on
your own."
With that advice in mind, I once entertained writing
an article entitled "Why I No Longer Consider Myself an Objectivist." I long
suspected that if I'd authored such a piece, my critics would have simply
retorted:"Whoever said that you ever were an Objectivist?" Indeed, given my
self-conscious absorption of lessons from Aristotle, Carl Menger, Herbert
Spencer, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F. A. Hayek, Karl Marx, and Bertell
Ollman, among others, I've long been accused of engaging in eclectic "flights of
fancy" by the official, orthodox "guardians" of "Objectivism." But since these
guardians themselves have become veritable performance artists in their
selective re-creation of Rand's philosophy, bracketing out anything of any
lasting radical political value that Rand ever uttered, I'd say "Objectivism" is
dead. Long dead. We are all Randians now... even if I'm still convinced, on some
level, that some of us are better "Objectivists" than others.
Paraphrasing Ayn Rand's conclusion from her essay,"For
the New Intellectual," we might say: "There is an ancient slogan that applies to
our present position: 'The king is dead---long live the king!' We can say, with
the same dedication to the future: 'The Objectivists are dead---long live the
Objectivists!'---and then proceed to fulfill the responsibility which that
honorable title had once implied."
Reading Arthur's post reminds me of the heavy burden
of such a responsibility, especially in an era when human authenticity, dignity,
and freedom are at stake, demanding the integrated, radical response that Ayn
Rand pioneered.
(27 December 2003)
My debate on Atlantis
II continues. I'd like to reproduce here some points of interest.
Does anyone honestly believe that World War II
would have happened anyway without World War I and the events that
transpired in its aftermath? Ayn Rand often said that World War I --- the war
"to make the world safe for democracy" --- led to the birth of Fascist Italy,
Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia, and that World War II led to the surrender of
three-quarters of a billion people into communist slavery. These were"unintended
consequences" writ large, on a scale that was previously unimaginable.
With Rand, I would agree that ideas, especially
philosophical ideas, are the driving force of history. If human beings accept a
virulent strain of philosophy, it is no less lethal than being exposed to a
deadly strain of virus. But there are all sorts of inoculations and vaccines
that one can take to prevent a virus. And there are all sorts of things that one
can do, once a virus has hit, to shorten its course, making certain, for
instance, that it doesn't spread.
Thus, if one looks strictly and only at
the philosophy of Nazism, outside of any historical context, one could
certainly conclude that this was a militant, racist, anti-Semitic creed that had to
lead, by its very nature, to death and destruction. But just because the logical
implementation of an idea can lead to death and destruction does not mean
that it must. When Rand endorsed the view that ideas have efficacy, she
didn't endorse the view of philosophic determinism: that ideas must result
in certain outcomes, regardless of context or circumstance. There is
nothing inevitable or inexorable about it. Nazism, the flame, needed oxygen to
flourish. The loss of Germany in World War I, the Treaty of Versailles, and the
Great Depression were all its sources of oxygen. [...]
Everything about Islamic fundamentalism reeks of
death and destruction. But there is nothing inexorable about this. Such
ideas do not exist or flourish in a historical vacuum. They can only become
lethal in the context of a certain constellation of historical conditions. That
is why Rand emphasized the political conditions of tribalism's rebirth (which I
mentioned in an earlier
post). That is why I've emphasized that so much of what is happening
today is a product of the collision of fundamentalism with a particularly
short-sighted, "pragmatic," interventionist US foreign policy, which created the
conditions for the empowerment of autocrats, despots, and fundamentalists. You
cannot abstract virulent ideologies from the conditions that allow them
to rear their ugly heads. If such things are deadly flames, past US foreign
interventions have been their oxygen. (And, furthermore, you cannot abstract US
foreign policies from the system of interventionism that Rand
characterized as the"New Fascism," since such policies emerge from, and
perpetuate, that system.)
So too, we can't abstract the current situation
from the history of US foreign policy: from US enrichment of the Saudis --- who
export fanatical Wahhabism to the rest of the world; from US involvement with
the Shah of Iran --- which led to the rise of the Khomeini theocracy; from US
encouragement of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war --- which bolstered the Hussein
regime; from US encouragement of the mujahideen in Afghanistan --- which
empowered the Taliban.
Granted: We can play the game of "what if" forever.
So, let me play that game, briefly, by quoting from Thomas Fleming's book The
Illusion of Victory: America in World War I (Basic Books, 2003). Fleming is
worth quoting at length:
If the United States had
refused to intervene in 1917, would a German victory in 1918 have been a better
historical alternative? The answer is debatable. By 1918, the Germans,
exasperated by the Allied refusal to settle for anything less than a knockout
blow, were contemplating peace terms as harsh and vindictive as those the French
and British imposed, with Wilson's weary consent, in the Treaty of Versailles.
There is another
possibility in this newly popular game of what-if. What would have happened if
Wilson had taken William Jennings Bryan's advice and practiced real rather than
sham neutrality? Without the backing of American weaponry, munitions, and loans,
the Allies would have been forced to abandon their goal of the knockout blow.
The war might have ended in 1916 with a negotiated peace based on the mutual
admission that the conflict had become a stalemate. As a genuine neutral, Wilson
might even have persuaded both sides to let him be a mediator. Lloyd George's
argument --- that unless the United States intervened, Wilson would have no
place at the peace table --- was specious at best. Both sides would have needed
America's wealth and industrial resources to rebuild their shattered economies.
Germany's aims before the
war began were relatively modest. Basically, Berlin sought an acknowledgment
that it was Europe's dominant power. It wanted an independent Poland and
nationhood for the Baltic states to keep Russia a safe distance from its eastern
border. Also on the wish list was a free trade zone in which German goods could
circulate without crippling tariffs in France, Italy, Scandinavia and
Austria-Hungary. It is not terribly different from the role Germany plays today
in the European Economic Union. But the British Tories could not tolerate such a
commercial rival in 1914 and chose war.
Some people whose minds
still vibrate to the historic echoes of Wellington House's propaganda argue that
by defeating Germany in 1918, the United States saved itself from imminent
conquest by the Hun. The idea grows more fatuous with every passing decade. A
nation that had suffered more than 5 million casualties, including almost 2
million dead, was not likely to attack the strongest nation on the globe without
pausing for perhaps a half century to rethink its policies. One can just as
easily argue that the awful cost of the war would have enabled Germany's
liberals to seize control of the country from the conservatives and force the
kaiser to become a constitutional monarch like his English cousin.
A victorious Germany would
have had no need of political adventurers such as Adolf Hitler. Nor would this
counterfactual Germany have inserted the Bolsheviks into Russia and supported
them with secret-service money. Lenin and Trotsky might have agitated in a
political vacuum in Switzerland unto a crabbed old age. Or ventured a revolution
in their homeland that would have come to a swift and violent end. On the eve of
the war, Russia had the fastest-growing economy in Europe. The country was being
transformed by the dynamics of capitalism into a free society. The war created
the collapse that gave Bolshevism its seventy-year reign of blood and terror.
Let me conclude by
reiterating a Hayekian point: All human action --- by its nature --- leads to
unintended consequences. But war especially leads to far-reaching
unintended consequences, and most of these are negative. The reason for this is
that it creates a dynamic that feeds on destruction: destruction of life,
liberty, and property. It creates a host of institutions geared toward such
destruction, and these institutions --- no matter how important they might be to
a relatively free society's defense of life, liberty, and property --- have had
long-lasting effects on their diminution over time. That's because the
institutions left in place after the war are almost always consolidated
in the peace, and used to further erode the very values that they were put in
place to"defend."
If war is necessary against
those who have attacked innocent American lives, then it is all the more
necessary to pay careful attention to the kinds of strategies and institutions
that are created to forge this battle. The Iraq war was unnecessary, in my view,
to the defense of American security --- but it has now extended the dynamics of
unintended consequences in ways that we have yet to understand fully. We have
not learned the lesson of the complications that result from"pragmatic" US
intervention abroad. We don't wish to concern ourselves with the new oxygen that
we may be providing for future flames --- that will consume more American cities
and lives.
Karl Marx said it best when
he declared that history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce.
And the joke, I fear, is on
us.
CONSEQUENCES: INTENDED AND UNINTENDED
(11 April 2004)
There is a very good
article, written by James Traub, with accompanying decorative illustrations by
Peter Max, in today's NY
Times. Traub's "Making Sense of the Mission" raises some very
important questions --- even if I don't agree with many of his answers --- about
the nature and complexity of nation-building in Iraq. Pointing to the failures
of nation-building in such places as Haiti, Traub argues that the task is not
impossible, but it "is very hard, and ... it demands a great deal of both
patience and modesty --- qualities that do not come naturally to American
policymakers or, for that matter, to Americans."
It is ironic, of course, that "[d]uring the
2000 Presidential debates, George W. Bush mocked the idea of nation-building as
a dangerous Democratic folly. The function of the American military, he often
repeated, was 'to fight and win wars.' Bush gave the impression that
nation-building was something Bill Clinton and his team of woolly-headed
multilateralists had dreamed up. But the truth is that while the term is new,
the endeavor is not ..."
Traub discusses a bit of the history of
nation-building. He writes that Maj. Gen. William Nash, who first commanded the
American division in Bosnia, had discovered that he couldn't separate
peacekeeping from nation-building. "'The first rule of nation-building is that
everything is related to everything,' Nash said, 'and it's all political.'
Everything, that is, impinges on somebody's power, and in order to establish
stable democratic institutions you have to deal with, and often confront, the
political structures that provoked the conflict in the first place."
Ah, yes, that ol' dialectical insight, that in any
given context, everything is related to everything. The problem is, of
course, that we don't exactly know how things relate in any social order,
and, in fact, much of what constitutes social relations is tacit and habitual,
having never been formally articulated or even understood by the social actors
themselves. A fundamental epistemological weakness of central planning, as F. A.
Hayek has shown, is that planners cannot grasp the tacit dimension, which
relates to knowledge possessed by individual actors who pursue their own
purposes while situated in a particular time and place.
The same principle is just as relevant when
considering foreign intervention into a country in which the locals have their
own customs and habits. Unintended consequences, which are a normal part of what
it means to live in society, are a particularly insidious effect of such
intervention. (What we're seeing in Iraq, of course, was not necessarily
intended, but many of us have been predicting the chaos for over a year.
"Unintended" does not mean "unpredictable".)
There is no greater or more forceful form of
political intervention than military action. Indeed, "war," observed the 19th
century military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, "is the continuation of
politics by other means." And like all forms of political intervention, it too
generates unintended consequences. In the aftermath of the Iraq war, those who
remain to keep the peace are now arguing that there is a need for "about 20
soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants to stabilize an unsettled population.'' This
could translate, in Iraq, "to almost half a million troops. And yet," says
Traub, "this overwhelming military force must be coupled with a nuanced
awareness of local conditions. 'These places tend to be chaotic, dynamic,' said
Frederick Barton, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International
Studies and a veteran of many peacekeeping operations. 'Our own institutions
tend to be static. You have to head things in the right direction rather than
controlling them.' One cannot easily find a peacekeeping mission that
exemplifies this peculiar mix of characteristics."
While candidate Bush argued that "nation-building
represented the triumph of the nanny state on an international scale," it's
pretty clear that the neocon nannies have exerted a strong influence on the
stated policy-making goals of his administration, which now aims to foster
"political transformation, first in Iraq, then throughout the Middle East. This
is, of course, a call to the most ambitious kind of nation-building." It is a
call, in other words, to a formal knowledge of conditions of a complex foreign
society that central planners of whatever sort will never fully possess.
And so let's not be too
surprised by the unintended ripple effects that are now on display in the wake
of such folly.
It's reported by the NY
Times that the"Islamic terrorists responsible for the Madrid train bombings
financed their plot with sales of hashish and Ecstasy ..." This article,
by Dale Fuchs, tells us that the terrorists used"traffickers as intermediaries,"
swapping"the drugs for the 440 pounds of dynamite used in the blasts ... Money
from the drug trafficking paid for an apartment hide-out, a car and the
cellphones used to detonate the bombs, an Interior Ministry spokesman said."
There is also this article about
Afghanistan's opium poppy crop, which is skyrocketing to levels"twice as large
as last year's near-record crop." The country is responsible for three-quarters
of the world's opium production. The US has talked routinely about"eradication"
of the crop, because the profits are used to prop up"an undemocratic narco
terrorist-controlled state," benefiting warlords and a resurgent Taliban. But it
is under the US watch that opium production has become the chief means to
stabilize the hand-picked"Northern Alliance" regime. That profits from the sale
of narcotics are now making their way into Al Qaeda coffers is therefore no
surprise.
Remember those anti-drug
commercials that drew a direct connection between drugs and terror,
laying the blame for the funding of terrorism squarely on the plate of drug
users? Those commercials told users: Stop using! Terrorism is your fault
(driving many of them to drink, no doubt)!
Of course, few are suggesting that the criminalization
of drug use has created a world-wide network of illicit drug producers,
whose profits are derived from the very fact of government drug
prohibitionism. The original Mafia itself was born in the days of alcohol
prohibition. Why should current developments be any surprise?
Instead of decriminalization, we are offered, year
after year, a new front in the"war on drugs," which only continues to destroy
civil liberties at home, while doing nothing to diminish the profits abroad that
are funneled to terrorists. Indeed, Attorney
General John Ashcroft was so obsessed with prioritizing the drug war
(and various" civil rights" issues) in the first seven months of his tenure,
that terrorism barely registered on his radar. Now, of course, with the powers
bestowed on him through the Patriot
Act, he gets to use his office to eradicate drugs and civil
rights all in one fell swoop.
As Nebraska attorney Don
Fiedler, former director of NORML, the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws, has put it:"This fanning the flames of narco-terrorism
is something that has some merit. ... Narcotics are one of the tools that
terrorists use to fund their operations, but the other question that should come
out of it, other than increasing the penalties for use, is to go and re-examine
the policies in the first place."
Amen. Perhaps drug legalization should be proposed as
a means of combatting terrorism, taking the profits out of the industries
that fund terrorists. But this would require an extraordinary act of mental
integration: Politicians would have to start thinking about the interconnections
among the various aspects of a system that they continue to support. Terrorists
emerge from the context of US intervention overseas; they are recruited en masse
because of increasing intervention overseas; they get funding from various
current (and former) US allies and from industries whose profits are derived
partially from prohibitionist controls. The whole system of interventionism,
from top to bottom, domestically and abroad, is reinforcing cause and effect.
Boy, it is very difficult to be a political radical.
Radicals, by their nature, seek to go to the root of social problems; they trace
the connections among social problems, and think in terms of fundamentals and
principles. The system that they oppose is one that has been built
piecemeal, brick by brick, over decades of political machinations. But the
system itself blocks comprehensive reform; it promotes political tinkering as
surely as it promotes atomistic thinking.
It is time to start thinking
comprehensively, dialectically, as I would say; it is time to start
thinking about all the things that must be done to change this system fundamentally.
ACADEMIC CURRICULA: AT WAR WITH RADICAL THINKING
A provocative article entitled "Colleges Must Reconstruct the Unity of Knowledge," written by
Vartan Gregorian, appears in the June 5 edition of The
Chronicle of Higher Education. In this essay, Gregorian gives
voice to problems of compartmentalization and fragmentation in the academy that
I have long emphasized.
Gregorian is president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and a former
president of Brown University and the New York Public Library.
He writes:
Today's students fulfill general-education requirements, take specialized
courses in their majors, and fill out their schedule with some electives, but
while college catalogs euphemistically describe this as a" curriculum," it is
rarely more than a collection of courses, devoid of planning, context, and
coherence. In fact, mass higher education is heading toward what I call the Home
Depot approach to education, where there is no differentiation between
consumption and digestion, or between information and learning, and no
guidance—or even questioning—about what it means to be an educated and cultured
person. Colleges are becoming academic superstores, vast collections of courses,
stacked up like sinks and lumber for do-it-yourselfers to try to assemble on
their own into a meaningful whole.
The fundamental problem underlying the disjointed curriculum is the
fragmentation of knowledge itself. Higher education has atomized knowledge by
dividing it into disciplines, subdisciplines, and sub-subdisciplines—breaking it
up into smaller and smaller unconnected fragments of academic specialization,
even as the world looks to colleges for help in integrating and synthesizing the
exponential increases in information brought about by technological advances.
The trend has serious ramifications. Understanding the nature of knowledge, its
unity, its varieties, its limitations, and its uses and abuses is necessary for
the success of our democracy. ...
We must reform higher education to reconstruct the unity and value of
knowledge. While that may sound esoteric, especially to some outside the
academy, it is really just shorthand for saying that the complexity of the world
requires us to have a better understanding of the relationships and connections
between all fields that intersect and overlap—economics and sociology, law and
psychology, business and history, physics and medicine, anthropology and
political science.
Gregorian is particularly concerned about the tendency toward "simplistic
solutions" for complex problems, because each problem is often constituted by a
cluster of problems, and"none ... can be tackled using linear or sequential
methods." He goes on:
Yet such systemic thinking has been slow to catch on, even though the
pitfalls of specialization have long been acknowledged and discussed. One reason
is that, although the process of both growth and fragmentation of knowledge has
been under way since the 17th century, it has snowballed in the last century.
The scope and the intensity of specialization are such that scholars and
scientists have great difficulty in keeping up with the important yet
overwhelming amount of scholarly literature related to their subspecialties, not
to mention their general disciplines. The triumph of the "monograph" or
"scientific investigation" over synthesis has fractured the commonwealth of
learning and undermined our sense of commitment to general understanding and
integration of knowledge.
None of this is meant to disparage specialization; but specialization without
"synthesis and systemic thinking" is a prescription for disaster."
Information—of all varieties, all levels of priority, and all without much
context—is bombarding us from all directions all the time," Gregorian states.
Indeed, those of us familiar with the liberal tradition have long appreciated F.
A. Hayek's insight that the increasing complexity of society leads to an
ever-increasing dispersal of information and knowledge; this knowledge is essentially dispersed,
and reflected in the division and specialization of labor. But, as Gregorian
insists,"the same information technologies that have been the driving force
behind the explosion of information and its fragmentation also present us with
profoundly integrative tools." We can see these tools at work in artificial
intelligence, automated information-management systems, and electronic
communications networks. Nevertheless, our computers will help us to integrate
the data, but they are only as good as their human programmers. Gregorian quotes
author and media critic Neil Postman: "The computer cannot provide an organizing
moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking."
This is one of the important tasks of higher education, according to Gregorian.
To not guide students toward synthesizing the disparate bits of knowledge is a
colossal failure, "for history shows that humanity has a craving for wholeness."
It's actually far more than a simple craving, however; "wholeness" or
integration is a requirement of human cognition. And it is, in my view, a
virtual requirement for radical social theorizing. More on that in a
moment.
The lack of coherence and integration, claims Gregorian, leads some students to
"esoteric ideas, cults, and extremist programs," which seem to provide the
systematization that such students lack. This is rule not only by the
collective, but also by the "expert," who becomes the leader. In a world of
specialized knowledge, too many students defer to such "experts" and "abdicate
judgment in favor of others' opinions. Unless we help our students acquire their
own identity," Gregorian warns, "they will end up at the mercy of experts—or
worse, at the mercy of charlatans posing as experts." Is it any wonder that some
will be attracted to militant leaders, who adopt militant ideologies and
theologies?
Gregorian urges educators to develop" coherence and integrity in our curricula,"
and the re-affirmation of a "liberal education ... to integrate learning and
provide balance..." He urges multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary learning,
where the "interconnectedness" of disciplines is stressed. He suggests the
development of teacher training and "the joint appointment of faculty members to
several departments." He emphasizes also the connections between "learning" and
"doing"—between thought and action: the importance of field study; the
integration of theory, application, and experience; the exploration of topics or
problems"over a sustained period of time, using multiple approaches to explore
and develop responses..."
In recognizing the division and specialization of labor and knowledge as central
to the advancement of "the cause of civilization," Gregorian stresses "the
creation of a balance between specialists and generalists." Such generalists,
"trained in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences ... can help create a
common discourse, a common vocabulary among the various disciplines."
Ironically,"[s]ince our society respects specialists and suspects generalists,"
Gregorian cautions, "perhaps the way to solve the shortage of generalists is by
creating a new specialty in synthesis and systems." Gregorian cites the words of
noted philosopher and essayist José Ortega y Gasset:
The need to create sound synthesis and systemization of knowledge ... will
call out a kind of scientific genius which hitherto has existed only as an
aberration: the genius of integration. Of necessity, this means specialization,
as all creative effort does, but this time, the [person] will be specializing in
the construction of the whole.
Gregorian also reminds us of T.S. Eliot's comments on Dante's Inferno,
where he suggests "that hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing."
That is precisely the kind of hell that the modern curriculum is creating. In
the end,
we need to understand where we were, where we are, and where we are going.
The challenge for higher education, then, is not the choice between pure
research and practical application but, rather, the integration and synthesis of
compartmentalized knowledge. On our campuses, we must create an intellectual
climate that encourages faculty members and students to make connections among
seemingly disparate disciplines, discoveries, events, and trends—and to build
bridges among them that benefit the understanding of us all.
What lessons can we draw from Gregorian's essay? Well, it's a lesson I've been
teaching for more than twenty years and it is one that speaks to the essence of radical thinking.
It has long been said that to be radical is to grasp things by the root. And
yet, those who are characterized as political radicals have been criticized by
some for raising "serious questions about basic purpose and meaning in society,"
as political theorist Harlan Wilson puts it, that seem to lend themselves to
"relatively simplistic and highly controlled" answers. For Wilson, those who
attempt to go to the "root" assume there are roots and that it is
possible to clearly identify "malignant" and "vicious" fundamentals that gloss
over "interdependence and overlapping pluralities."
But an appreciation of social complexity must be fundamental to radical social
theorizing. To be radical is not to offer canned solutions for
context-less problems. It is the ability to examine the roots of social problems
from different perspectives and on different levels of generality. It is the
ability to situate each social problem within a larger system, across time. In
seeking to change a society, we can never do one thing; we need to attack
that society's problems across several dimensions. This "art of
context-keeping," which is the essence of what I have called "dialectical
thinking," is indispensable to radical analysis. As I write in Total
Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism:
A new radicalism is first and foremost a new way of
thinking. It demands that we explore the integrated principles, meaning,
and promise of liberty. It demands that we ask, and answer, crucial questions
about the context of liberty—those complex forces that generate, sustain, and
nourish human freedom.
Some of my critics have argued that I've trivialized the
nature of dialectics by identifying it with good, critical thinking. But
Gregorian's article suggests that the modern curriculum militates against such
"good, critical thinking," insofar as "good critical thinking" requires an
awareness of context, of systematization and integration. When people are
not trained to think systematically—worse: when they are trained to
dis-integrate, to fragment, to atomize—they will not be apt to think of problems
in their interconnections.
This has implications especially for a political process that institutionalizes ad
hoc policy-making. Every piece of legislation is crafted by ad hoc
considerations of pork-barreling privilege and interest-group pressure. It is as
prevalent in the construction of foreign policy as it is in domestic policy. It
is even etched into illusory dreams of "democratic nation-building," which focus
on the external imposition of institutions or procedural rules without any
appreciation of the complex personal and cultural forces that nourish and
sustain them.
Let us be clear: The need for comprehensiveness in political thinking, just like
the need for integration in the curriculum, is not a call for that equally
illusory "synoptic" perspective that Hayek criticized as a vestige of
rationalism. None of us stands like Archimedes from a synoptic vantage point to
reconstruct the world in toto. All the more reason to investigate every problem
from as many different perspectives and levels of generality as is humanly
possible. That is the nature of radical thinking. Human survival depends
on it.
comments:
This lengthy meditation on specialization and integration in today's Groves of
Academe is essentially a clarion call by Gregorian and Sciabarra for more of the
later. And it's hard to disagree with this -- enough already with this
"deconstructionism" and "literary theory" crap of the past 40 years! Indeed,
Chris's piece reminds me of Rand and her observation that humans intellectually
and spiritually desperately need philosophy in their life because it gives them
a comprehensive and integrated view of the universe and their existence -- and
thus of how best to live. Personally, I agree with all of this.
The above monograph also
provides an interesting gloss on Chris's specialty: his dialectic approach to
truth-seeking, and guide to comprehensive, integrated, fully-contextual
knowledge.
My own reading of history tells
me that during the first Age Of Reason (especially from Socrates/Democritus to
Epicurus/Zeno-the-Stoic) the ancient Greeks tended to regard all of knowledge as
one (i.e. as "the word" or logos): they thought each piece led to and flowed
into the next. Interestingly, they also regarded all virtues as essentially one
-- as also leading and flowing into each other. Hence, anything which was
"right" in their language [and ours] (anything true or virtuous) very quickly
suggested and implied, and directed one toward, everything else which was
"right" (factually correct or morally good).
Aristotle's whole university --
like his whole quietly stunning approach to knowledge -- was a marvel of
integration and dialectic balance, in my judgment (Am I right here, folks?). The
worlds's first Age of Reason was truly impressive.
So was the second. The
Renaissance Man was almost by definition comprehensive and well-integrated in
his approach to, and possession of, knowledge. He was well-rounded and
fully-educated. Even more so was the Enlightenment liberal with his
"encyclopedic" approach to knowledge and education. The aristocrats and
well-educated elite of 1700s England, Holland, France, and America put today's
over-specialized, out-of-context academics to shame. They even put today's
fragmented over-Randized Objectivists and over-Austrianized libertarians to
shame(!).
It seems clear to me that the
world of the future will feature many rational philosophies and related,
derivative rational cultures -- not just the one highly-familiar belief-system
which was so fully developed by Ayn Rand. The world of the future will be led by
many and diverse well-educated, well-integrated Western liberal thinkers -- not
just or primarily Objectivists. It will very much resemble the highly mature and
Reasonist societies of Greece in the 200s BC, Rome in the 00s BC, and Western
Europe in the 1700s. These near-future folks will have a comprehensive,
systematic, balanced, well-integrated, fully-contextual approach to education
i.e. to gaining and using (rational) knowledge. The result will be an
intensely-rational but diverse collection of educational approaches, individual
life-styles, and collective world mini-cultures.
I've
discussed the role of Drugs
and Terror and the fact that even with the best of intentions, a US
invasion of Afghanistan (which I supported) can lead to unintended consequences
of monumental significance. In the aftermath of that invasion, Taliban elements
still exist, Bin Laden is still at large, and Afghanistan itself is inching ever
closer to becoming a major Middle East Narcostate.
This
morning, on "Meet
the Press", Tim Russert interviewed Afghanistan President Karzai on
the reality of opium production in that country. Russert quotes from the US
General Accounting Office.
MR. RUSSERT: "Opium
production threatened stability. The illicit international trade in Afghan
opiates threatened Afghan's stability during fiscal years 2002-2003. The drug
trade provided income for terrorists and warlords fueling the factions that
worked against stability and national unity. In 2002, Afghan farmers produced
3,442 metric tons of opium, providing $2.5 billion in trafficking revenue. In
2003 opium production in the country increased to 3,600 metric tons, the second
largest harvest in the country's history. Further, heroin laboratories have
proliferated in Afghanistan in recent years. As a result of the increased poppy
production and in-country heroin production, greater resources were available to
Afghan criminal networks and others at odds with the central government. The
International Monetary Fund and Afghanistan's minister of Finance have stated
that the potential exists for Afghanistan to become a 'narcostate' in which all
legitimate institutions are infiltrated by the power and wealth of drug
traffickers.'"
PRES. KARZAI: That is
quite possible. We have a serious problem because of drugs on our hands. We
began to work against drug production three years ago, as soon as we came into
government, but the first year of passing the government, we made the mistake.
The mistake was that we went and paid farmers in return for destruction. This
encouraged everybody else to grow poppies, thinking that if they grow poppies,
we will go to destroy it and pay them for it. And if we don't go to destroy it,
they will have the poppies. So we made that mistake. And last year we recognized
it, and we began to destroy poppies. This year, again, we have gone and
destroyed poppies.
But this is not a
simple problem. We are talking of a country in which there was 30 years of war,
in which there were six years of horrible drought. When I moved into Afghanistan
three years ago, I saw with my own eyes an orchard of pomegranates that was
turned into poppy fields; that's how serious the problem is. But we recognize
and so do the Afghan people that this is a problem that can cause Afghanistan to
go into serious danger. This production of poppies supports terrorism. It
trivializes the economy. It undermines institution building in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan will have to destroy it for the sake of the Afghan people and, also,
because of the world.
But we cannot do this
alone. We will destroy the poppies, but next year they will come again;
therefore there has to be a plan together with the international community to
provide alternative livelihood, alternative economy and better reconstruction in
Afghanistan on a sustainable manner so that we over time get rid of the problem.
The Afghan people don't want it. They know it is illegitimate. Our clergy, our
religious community, our tribal chiefs, the government, the institutions are
working against it on a daily basis, and we will succeed because we have to
succeed.
MR. RUSSERT: But if
80 percent of the 27 million people in Afghanistan live in poverty and the
warlords want to maintain their power, why won't the warlords allow opium to be
raised because it provides money to the farmers and keeps them in power?
PRES. KARZAI: We
began two and a half years ago where there was no government. The institutions
were completely destroyed. In two and a half years' time, we have had the bond
process. We've had the grand council, the Loya Jirga, to elect a government.
We've had the grand council to create a constitution, which we did. We are now
going to the next stage, which is elections. This country is moving forward. But
this country has problems, too, to overcome, and we will continue to have many,
many problems as we keep building ourselves.
Drugs is one of the
most serious problems that occur in Afghanistan. Warlordism, as you said, is
another serious problem that we have in Afghanistan. We, the Afghan people, want
to get rid of them. The common Afghan man and woman that come to see me every
day in my office, they ask me to get rid of these difficulties for them,
especially the drugs and warlordism. And I hope the international community will
stand stronger with us on both these problems.
MR. RUSSERT: But with
the warlords and the drug traffickers, but for the United States' government,
could you possibly stay in power?
PRES. KARZAI: Without
the presence of the United States forces in Afghanistan, without the presence of
the international community in Afghanistan, without the presence of the ISAF in
Afghanistan, Afghanistan will not be in good shape. That is why the Afghan
people keep asking for more of the International Security Assistance Forces in
Afghanistan. That is why the Afghan people are asking for the deployment of NATO
coalitions. That's why the Afghan people have embraced the arrival of the United
States of America in Afghanistan for its liberation, because they know that we
need international assistance in order to build our institutions over time, in
order to build a national army, in order to build a national police. And before
Afghanistan can stand on its own feet, it will be many years from now.
Whatever the validity of taking out
the Taliban, because of its ties to Al Qaeda, it is clear that no thought was
given to the long-term consequences of US intervention. The complicity of the US
in the emergence of a warlord-dominated Narcostate in Afghanistan to "stabilize"
that regime is a sobering lesson. The lessons yet to come from "nation building"
in Iraq might make the Afghanistan experience pale in comparison.
Also,
I think that we need to take claims that all of this new opium money is
supporting Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and terrorism in general with a large dose of
salt. Before 9-11 it was areas controled by the Northen Alliance where the
poppies were grown. The Taliban cracked down on the trade in the areas they
controled. Why all of a sudden would the money be going to them?
Classic, classic Long. LOL Just classic.
And you're right, Sheldon...
exactly what I said in my "Drugs and Terror" post---nothing could do more damage
to Narcostates, the world over, than to decriminalize drugs across the board.
No
doubt about it, it's time for some aggressive action against the Afghani poppy
growers: full decriminalization of all drugs in the United States.
The
Birth of Anarcho-State? Sounds like a contradiction to me. We always knew where
this dialectical stuff would lead ....
As
the winds of change batter the regimes of the Middle East, from Iraq to Iran
--- Saddam Hussein himself being arraigned today on charges for "crimes against
humanity" --- fundamental questions are being raised about the state of Arab
culture and politics. Fareed
Zakaria has written a thought-provoking article, "Islam, Democracy,
and Constitutional Liberalism," in the Spring
2004 issue of Political
Science Quarterly. (Zakaria, who initially favored the war in
Iraq, has been doing a lot of interesting writing of late; see especially his
essay, "Reach
Out to the Insurgents," which Justin Raimondo discusses here.)
In the PSQ essay, Zakaria is still wedded to the
unfortunate idea that the US has a role to play in the folly that he dubs "a
serious long-term project of nation building" in Iraq. But Zakaria puts his
finger on the significant obstacles to this project. He writes:
The Arab rulers of the Middle East are autocratic,
corrupt, and heavy-handed. But they are still more liberal, tolerant, and
pluralistic than those who would likely replace them. Elections in many Arab
countries would produce politicians who espouse views that are closer to those
of Osama bin Laden than those of Jordan's liberal monarch, King Abdullah. Last
year, the emir of Kuwait, with American encouragement, proposed giving women the
vote. But the democratically elected Kuwaiti parliament --- filled with Islamic
fundamentalists --- roundly rejected the initiative. Saudi crown prince Abdullah
tried something much less dramatic when he proposed that women in Saudi Arabia
be allowed to drive. (They are currently forbidden to do so, which means that
Saudi Arabia has had to import half a million chauffeurs from places like India
and the Philippines.) But the religious conservatives mobilized popular
opposition and forced him to back down.
These tendencies, says Zakaria, illustrate the fact that
[t]he Arab world today is trapped between autocratic
states and illiberal societies, neither of them fertile ground for liberal
democracy. The dangerous dynamic between these two forces has produced a
political climate filled with religious extremism and violence. As the state
becomes more repressive, opposition within society grows more pernicious,
goading the state into further repression. It is the reverse of the historical
process in the Western world, where liberalism produced democracy and democracy
fueled liberalism. The Arab path has instead produced dictatorship, which has
bred terrorism. But terrorism is only the most noted manifestation of this
dysfunction, social stagnation, and intellectual bankruptcy.
One could certainly take issue with Zakaria's maxim,
especially the belief that"democracy fueled liberalism" --- unless one
identifies"liberalism" with today's corrupt version of interest-group politics,
rather than with yesteryear's classical, laissez-faire ideal. But Zakaria asks a
legitimate question: "Why is [the Middle East] region the political basket case
of the world?" Railing against those who would use "Islamic," "Middle Eastern,"
and "Arab" interchangeably, Zakaria argues that the "Arab social structure is
deeply authoritarian" across religious, political, social, economic, and even
educational-pedagogical spheres. Politically, many regimes in the Arab world
embraced a "coarser ideology of military republicanism, state socialism, and
Arab nationalism." Zakaria rejects unequivocally the view that poverty breeds
terrorism, since too many terrorists emerge from such wealthy oil-rich countries
as Saudi Arabia, "the world's largest petroleum exporter." Bin Laden himself
"was born into a family worth more than $5 billion."
If anything, the problem is not poverty, but wealth,
specifically wealth achieved by what Franz Oppenheimer used to call the "political
means." It is wealth achieved by coercive, statist, monopolistic
control, in this instance, of "natural
resources," whereby the regimes that exercise control over them "tend
never to develop, modernize, or gain legitimacy," as Zakaria puts it." Easy
money means little economic or political modernization," observes Zakaria. With
"no real political parties, no free press and few pathways for dissent,"
authoritarian Arab societies have fomented the development of dissident Islamic
fundamentalist movements, spearheaded by thinkers such as Sayyid
Qutb, who used religion as "the language of opposition ... This
combination of religion and politics has proven to be combustible." (Not only in
the Middle East, I might add, but in the USA as well; I discuss this combustible
American constellation in my forthcoming Free
Radical essay,"Caught up in the Rapture," which I'll excerpt here
in due course.)
The fundamentalists got their biggest break when the
Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the pro-US regime of the Shah of Iran. But the most
"dangerous game," says Zakaria, is being played by the Saudis. For those of us
who have never been fond of the House
of Sa'ud, Zakaria reminds us that "the likely alternative to the
regime is not Jeffersonian democracy but a Taliban-style theocracy." He
explains:
The Saudi regime ... has tried to deflect attention away
from its spotty economic and political record by allowing free reign to its most
extreme clerics, hoping to gain legitimacy by association. Saudi Arabia's
educational system is run by medieval-minded religious bureaucrats. Over the
past three decades, the Saudis --- mostly through private trusts --- have funded
religious schools (madrasas) and centers that spread Wahhabism (a rigid,
desert variant Islam that is the template for most Islamic fundamentalists)
around the world. Saudi-funded madrasas have churned out tens of
thousands of half-educated, fanatical Muslims who view the modern world and
non-Muslims with great suspicion. America in this world-view is almost always
uniquely evil. This exported fundamentalism has infected not just other Arab
societies but countries outside the Arab world.
In this sense, the Saudis have emboldened the very forces
that are now clamoring to undermine their power. Their "financiers and
functionaries" were responsible for bolstering fundamentalist forces in
Afghanistan and Pakistan. Indeed,"[w]ithout Saudi money and men, the Taliban
would not have existed, nor would Pakistan have become the hotbed of
fundamentalism that it is today." Until or unless the Saudis "do more to end ...
governmental and nongovernmental support for extreme Islam, which is now the
kingdom's second largest export to the rest of the world," this situation is not
likely to change.
Thus, ideological corruptions are mirrored by economic
corruptions. Indeed, the Saudi business elites owe their "positions to oil or to
connections to the ruling families." Their wealth is derived from "feudalism,
not capitalism," and the "political effects remain feudal as well." Zakaria
argues persuasively that "[a] genuinely entrepreneurial business class would be
the single most important force for change in the Middle East." This is the kind
of social institution that is, thankfully, not foreign to Arab culture, which
has, "for thousands of years ... been full of traders, merchants, and
businessmen." Indeed, observes Zakaria, "[t]he bazaar is probably the oldest
institution in the Middle East."
Unfortunately, the Saudi's quasi-feudal, neo-mercantilist
regime has been fully encouraged, sanctioned, and legitimated by US
foreign policy. Whatever the specific connections between the Bush
family and the Saudis --- and Michael
Moore, Craig
Unger, and Kevin
Phillips have had a field day speculating about these connections ---
the truth remains that the United States has had an incestuous relationship with
the House of Sa'ud for nearly sixty years. As I wrote in my essay, "A
Question of Loyalty":
US corporations engage in joint business ventures with
the Saudi government --- from petroleum to arms deals --- utilizing a whole
panoply of statist mechanisms, including the Export-Import Bank. The US is Saudi
Arabia's largest investor and trading partner. Historically, the House of
Sa'ud's alliance with --- and exportation of --- intolerant, fanatical Wahhabism
has been strengthened by the US-Saudi
government partnership with Western oil companies, especially the
Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO), a merger of Esso, Texaco, and Mobil. This
is precisely the kind of"pull-peddling" that [Ayn] Rand condemned as "the New
Fascism" --- a US-Saudi-Big
Oil Unholy Trinity that sustains the undemocratic Saudi
regime. ...
[That] regime ... depends upon a barbaric network of
secret police and sub-human prisons, using the kinds of torture tactics that
would have made Saddam proud: routine floggings, rotisserie hangings,
amputations, penis blocking, and anal molestations. Such is the "pragmatic"
nature of official US government policy, which goes to war for "human rights" in
Iraq, while tacitly sanctioning their eradication in Saudi Arabia.
It's this kind of pragmatism that has been the midwife to anti-American
terrorism --- from US support of the Shah of Iran that led to the establishment
of an anti-American Islamic theocracy to US support of the Afghani mujahideen
that led to the establishment of an anti-American Taliban.
Eric Margolis extends
these points further in his recent discussion of the inner machinery of the
US-Saudi relationship. He writes:
Saudi Arabia is a feudal monarchy owned and run by
6,000-7,000 royal princes. ... Saudi Arabia has been a U.S.
oil protectorate since the late 1940s under the following
arrangement: The royal family supplies cheap oil to the U.S. and its allies
Europe and Japan. The billions earned by the Saudis are recycled into U.S. and
western financial institutions and commercial projects, or spent on huge amounts
of advanced weapons ($9 billion in recent years) the Saudis cannot operate.
Saudi arms purchases are used to support friendly American and European
politicians in politically sensitive states or regions.
In return, the U.S. supplies the royal family with protection against
its own increasingly restive people and covetous neighbours, like Iraq. The
small Saudi Army is denied ammunition to prevent it staging the kind of coup
that overthrew Iraq's British-run puppet monarch in 1958. A parallel "White
Army," composed of loyal Bedouin tribesmen led by U.S. "advisers," watches the
army. ... [F]ar from being an enemy of the U.S., Saudi Arabia is almost an
overseas American state. One-third of the population of 24 million is foreign.
Saudi defences, internal security, finance and the oil industry are still run by
some 70,000 U.S. and British expatriates. Some eight million Asian workers do
the middle management and donkey work. The royal family is intimately linked to
Washington's political and money power elite through a network of business and
personal connections. The Bush family, and its entourage of Republican
military-industrial complex deal makers, has been joined at the hip for two
decades with Saudi power princes and their financial frontmen.
Margolis maintains correctly, however, that the Saudi
state, as such, "did not finance or abet Osama bin Laden --- it tried repeatedly
to kill him. Bin Laden's modest funds came from donations by individual Saudis,
wealthy and poor alike, who supported his jihad against western domination."
What Margolis does not recognize, however, is that the fundamentalist ideology
that the House of Sa'ud has long funded and exported is now undermining
its very rule. While the failure of the Saudi state at this point in time would
be an utter catastrophe, those who would take power --- the fanatical
fundamentalists among them ---are, to borrow a Randian phrase, "the distilled
essence of the [Saudi] Establishment's culture ... the embodiment of its soul"
and its "personified ideal."
I
have long argued that radical social change in the United States depends upon
the uprooting of both the politico-economic system and the ideas that nourish it
and sustain it. This dynamic is global in its implications, and no less
operative in the context of the Saudi monarchy, one of the United States' prime
"allies" in the Middle East. Fundamental change is not likely to come through
further military intervention, which will only destabilize the region and
further empower the fanatics. Ultimately, this is a philosophical and cultural war
that must be fought at home and abroad.
I've been following the debate over
libertarianism and foreign policy and applaud the many points made by my
colleagues here.
I was struck particularly by this
exchange between Matt Hill and Gene Healy. Matt agrees with the
principles that Gene enunciates, but asks: "what do you say to the argument that
the government is taking the money anyway, so it is just a question of how it is
allocated --- and perhaps, one could argue, allocating it to wars in defense of
other people's rights is a more worthy use of the money than funneling it into
subsidies or some other government bureaucracy. This argument would seem to hold
as long as taxes aren't raised to cover the cost of war."
Gene responds: "It's not like the deal
on offer is 'we'll abolish HUD if you let us use the proceeds to fund wars of
liberation.' If that was the deal, I'd still oppose it, for a number of reasons,
not least of which is at least HUD doesn't kill thousands upon thousands of
people (at least not directly)."
But this speaks to a fundamental
problem with too much libertarian analysis. That analysis becomes an almost
thoroughly detached rationalistic discussion of floating abstractions with no
bearing on the concrete context within which we live. This is a context that can
only be understood as a system of state interventionism, one that Ayn
Rand and others have called"the New Fascism." This is a system that has
evolved over time; I have discussed the implications of that system over and
over again, in essays here and here and
in countless L&P posts.
What Gene says about HUD is precisely
the point, therefore. And what the pro-Iraq war libertarians seem to sidestep
completely is this: There is an "organic link" between "HUD," between the forms
of domestic interventionism and the forms of foreign interventionism.
That is: these forms of intervention are all part of one system of
interventionism, where the "domestic" and the "foreign" policies become
reciprocal reflections and mutual implications of one another.
And if one traces the ways in which
domestic and foreign interventions have been conjoined throughout the history of
the United States, one begins to understand why war can never be taken
lightly. Indeed, it becomes "politics" by other means ---nay, politics
incarnate, if one understands that modern politics is founded, as such,
on initiatory violence.
I and many others have continued to
point out how the history of US policy in the Middle East has provided, at least
partially, the context for the current problems with Islamic terrorists. That
is not a justification for Islamic terrorism against innocent American
civilians; but it does provide, at least partially, an understanding of
the context within which such terrorism has taken root and flourished. There is
a difference between explanation and justification.
I say "partially" because the vast
array of problems in that region cannot simply be reduced to a pure product of
US intervention. There are tribal, ethnic, and religious conflicts fomenting in
the Middle East, which long predate US intervention ---and which have now become
deeply intertwined with the US presence. The US has stepped into a minefield of
historical complexities, which can only generate explosive unintended
consequences over the long-term.
Of course, we don't live in a perfect
libertarian world. Waiting for everything to change radically before one
can do anything to combat threats to life, liberty, and property is a
lethal prescription for disaster... for national suicide.
Given that interventionist states are
the only game in town, therefore, I can understand why such political units must
be used ---in this context, under the current conditions that exist --- to
defeat imminent threats (or even "grave and gathering threats" as President Bush
once claimed) to the rights of the citizens who reside within a state's
territorial boundaries. This puts aside, for the moment, the fact that most
states, even within "minarchist" Nozickian guidelines, are illegitimate. But it
does require that one carefully weigh the costs and benefits of acting in
response to, or in preemption of, clear threats. And because this often entails
an epistemic issue, the problem of having sufficient knowledge, it is essential
to acquire accurate intelligence, something I've addressed here
and here.
I opposed the war in Iraq because I
didn't believe that the Hussein regime was that kind of threat. That doesn't
mean that I saw Hussein as a benevolent despot; he was a murderous thug, one
whom the United States once emboldened in the Iran-Iraq war. And while I didn't
believe the US or any nation should have taken any of his denials on faith,
concerning the possession of WMDs, I did believe that it was possible to contain
his actions by threat of the use of overwhelming military force. Be that as it
may: the US is in Iraq and debating the same points over and over again is, I
think, counterproductive at this juncture. Those who wanted the war, got it.
Those who didn't are saddled with its unintended consequences, whether we like
it or not.
By contrast, however, I was for
"taking out" the Taliban in Afghanistan because Al Qaeda was clearly in bed with
that regime ("collaborative operational relationship" indeed), and it was
responsible for the devastation of 9/11. But I could have easily predicted how
poorly the US would have functioned even in that sphere, and I did, in fact,
foresee many, if not most, of the problems that US military intervention would
generate by extending itself into Iraq. Note, I'm not talking about the purely
"military" campaign, which was a" cakewalk" --- considering that neither
Afghanistan nor Iraq was militarily formidable. I'm talking more about the
course of events thereafter, and the overall problems inherent in democratic
"nation-building." I'm talking about the fact that my own analysis was
conditioned by my understanding of the system within which we are all
embedded.
All the more reason for
right-thinking, principled libertarians to advocate ruthlessly delimited
military actions that focus on destroying specific terrorist targets, while
crushing financial and other networks of terrorist support.
In
the long run, in my view, a substantially redefined US role in the Middle East
will be necessary --- but I sincerely doubt that this will happen in any
fundamental way, until or unless we achieve a substantially redefined role for
the US government at home. At base, the 9/11 commission is correct:
this is an
ideological and cultural war. And it can only be won, ultimately, by
ideological and cultural means. It is a victory that must come both at home,
within our borders, and abroad --- within the borders, hearts, and minds of
those who live in the Islamic world.
Jason... my heart is all a flutter. I
don't think it's palpitations... just... shock. :)
Thanks for your
comments, as always.
I'm surprised there has yet to be a
response to this post (in this comments section). Chris' summary of his position
is superlative in scope, balance, and above all, respect for context. In regard
to the last, Sciabarra shows respect for both absolute principles and temporal
contextual constraints. It's a masterful synthesis.
While commentators continue to wonder if there
is any hope of
avoiding catastrophe in Iraq, others, such as Christina Asquith,
focus on the important story of trying to rebuild education in that war-torn
country. Asquith's essay, "With Little More Than Hope, Iraqi Colleges Try to
Rebuild," which appears in last week's edition of The
Chronicle of Higher Education, focuses on the fact that"after 35
years of Saddam, educators contend with too much violence and too little money
from the U.S. and its allies." The first issue for the universities, indeed, for
all of Iraq, is the issue of security."University presidents, who already have
personal bodyguards, were concerned about radical Islamic groups, looters, death
threats, and angry students," writes Asquith."After a tumultuous academic year
under U.S. guidance, the true test of whether Iraqi universities will emerge
from 35 years of dictatorship and war as an independent and free-thinking system
is about to begin."
The effort has been spearheaded by
John Argesto, who, as leader of the American team, advised Iraqi higher
education authorities, leaving them"structures for a self-governing system,
including a democratic procedure for hiring and firing administrators, and a
'declaration of academic freedom and responsibilities' that forbids religious
and political intimidation. Those steps were hailed as major changes after 35
years of centralized control and intimidation by Mr. Hussein's Baath Party."
But with little money forthcoming, and
the omnipresence of violence, many higher educators live under a cloud of fear.
In fact, Asquith observes,
dozens of
intellectuals --- including the former president of Baghdad University; the
deputy dean of the Medical College at Basra University; and Abdul Latif
al-Mayah, a political-science professor at Al-Mustansiriya University ---have
been assassinated by unknown assailants. Student demonstrations and Islamic
militias have shut down campuses. The university presidents voted to postpone
student elections in the spring, the first open voting scheduled on campuses in
three decades, out of fear of student-on-student violence. In this climate of
terror, few feel safe to speak freely. ...
All Iraqi
universities and colleges reopened after the war, but attempting to carry on has
often seemed to students and staff members like an exercise in futility. Some
students and professors lost theses, lectures, and years of research in the
looting. Heavy traffic, bomb threats, and U.S. roadblocks have made attendance
spotty on campuses in Baghdad. With no electricity, students had no fans,
air-conditioning, or lights to study at night. They were often asked to phone
their professors the night before an exam to see if it was still scheduled.
Professors, many of whom have received anonymous death threats and seen their
colleagues assassinated, were sometimes reluctant to show up for work. Protests
by students and staff members against the U.S. attack on Falluja shut down most
universities in April. The University of Karbala was taken over by supporters of
Moktada al-Sadr, a radical Islamic cleric, in the same month, and not even Mr.
al-Bakaa, the minister, is certain of its current status. Westerners and some
Iraqis traveling on highways outside Baghdad have been kidnapped or ambushed. As
a result information about life on campuses in Karbala, Mosul, or Basra is hard
to obtain."It was a very difficult school year," says Hussain Ali, who graduated
in June from the College of Engineering at the University of Baghdad."The
university was closed three times for more than a week. Many of us couldn't get
to college because of the traffic. Professors were killed by students. The
students say, 'If you don't pass me, I'll kill you.'" Worst of all, professors
and students say, is that after 35 years of intellectual repression and 14 years
of U.N. sanctions, the intellectual renaissance that Iraqi academics had hoped
would follow Mr. Hussein's fall has not come about.
Worse still, even those American
professors who have attempted to help stabilize the situation have maintained
that
the issue of safety
has discouraged them from pursuing projects in Iraq. ..."The security situation
deteriorated so quickly it was difficult to get people's attention --- and it
seemed there were more pressing needs than exchanges," says Richard Couto, a
professor of leadership and change at Antioch University. He visited Baghdad
twice last year and proposed taking Iraqi professors to the United States for
training in the latest research techniques. But over time he lost motivation, he
says: "I also despaired of the hopeless mess that we seem to have made in Iraq
and that there was any solid ground on which to stand and work for change."
There are goals: marketizing the
structure of the universities, wiring them for the Internet, encouraging debate
and inquiry. But there is still no money to bring these goals to fruition.
Of Iraq's two dozen
ministries, the one for higher education was the last to receive funds, and it
got the least. The Ministry of Education, which runs the country's elementary
and secondary schools, has benefited from a $65-million contract won from the
U.S. government by an American company for rebuilding efforts, as well as
$103-million from the World Bank and $100-million expected from other donor
nations. The Ministry of Higher Education, however, received less than
$20-million in benefits from contracts between the United States and American
universities early on, along with about $20-million from donor nations, and so
far nothing from the World Bank.
Crony corporate arrangements aside,
the fact is that
Iraqi higher
education was in a shambles after the war. An estimated 80 percent of the
country's 22 universities and 43 vocational colleges had been damaged, some
beyond repair. One campus of Iraq's third-largest institution, Basra University,
was a collection of empty hulks and piles of rubble. The higher-education
ministry estimated a nationwide rebuilding cost of $1.2-billion."We're not
talking about libraries and labs; we need chairs," Salman D. Salman, Basra's
president, said in December as he stood in a classroom with no windows or door.
"We need 15,000 chairs."
Agresto had hoped to create a
decentralized university system "free from religious influences," while the new
Iraqi Minister of Higher Education, Ziad Abdel Razzaq Aswad, "a member of a
radical Sunni Islamist group," has fought for greater centralization of the
universities. "He expected professors to ask the government for permission to
travel, as they had under Mr. Hussein's regime. He wanted the ministry to again
control the hiring and firing of deans."
One thing Argesto aimed for was the
bolstering of liberal arts to assist in the building of a democracy. But Argesto
is frank: "I worry about a country where history and heritage and literature
aren't prized, where philosophy and political philosophy and normative studies
aren't basic parts of the curriculum. For a country to produce leaders, it has
to be a country where people can think clearly and write persuasively and
understand more than just their specialty."
Indeed, compartmentalization and a
lack of integration are not characteristics only of American
universities. Nation-building of the kind sought by the Bush
administration requires the building of an integrated understanding of the free
society (something the neocons know nothing of), as well as the nourishment of
democratic "know-how," precisely the kind of tacit traditions and customs that
Iraq has never really had.
Still, as "professors and students are
struggling with a new academic discipline: democracy," they introduce such
courses as "Human Rights and Public Liberties" and even Ph.D. programs on
"Democracy and Human Rights," neither of which were possible under the Hussein
regime. These courses are the ideological replacements for the "Baath Party
indoctrination course" that was so prevalent under Hussein." In most cases,
however, students say they have been presented with no new books or ideas; they
just share photocopies of lecture notes by professors who haven't left Iraq in
decades."
Other troubling cultural changes are
underway, however. Whereas Iraq was among the most"secular" of states in the
Islamic Middle East, now, the power of radical Islam is being felt like never
before.
Changing the
curriculum depends first on maintaining security on the campuses and persuading
students not to turn to radical Islamic groups for stability. ... Some students
say the slowness of reform efforts allows fundamentalist religious groups to
gain a foothold at the universities and misrepresent democracy to students who
have little understanding of it. Students on many campuses say the groups have
been pressuring young women to wear the Islamic head scarf and breaking up
boy-girl couples strolling on the campus. Some students believe that the
religious groups are behind the assassinations of professors.
"The uncertainty is fatal to freedom
of speech," Asquith writes."In April members of Mr. al-Sadr's militia descended
on dozens of campuses in black clothing and armbands, holding rallies and
threatening students. Even administrators were hesitant to oppose them. Many
women covered their heads just to be safe." As one ministry official puts it:
"Every student who has an idea thinks he also must have a machine gun. They
think this is democracy. We must show them what democracy is and how to respect
it."
Liberal democratic ideas and machine guns are opposites. The former cannot be
instituted by the latter. But it can be readily destroyed by the latter. A free
society can only flourish upon a delicate cultural latticework that will take
generations to weave. What were the neocon nation-builders thinking when they
embarked on this crusade?
While the Kerry and Bush campaigns
trade charges of who is the ultimate
flip-flopper, one thing these two gents agree on is to stay the
course in Iraq. Today, James Dao in the NY Times asks: "How
Many Deaths Are Too Many?." Dao recalls:
In the fall of 1965,
the death toll for American troops in Vietnam quietly passed 1,000. The
escalation in the number of American forces was just underway, the antiwar
movement was still in its infancy and the word"quagmire" was not yet in common
usage. At the time, the Gallup Poll found that just one in four Americans
thought sending troops to southeast Asia had been a mistake. It would be three
years before public opinion turned decisively, and permanently, against the war.
Four decades later,
the passing of the 1,000-death benchmark in another war against insurgents has
been accompanied by considerably more public unease. Polls registered a steady
increase in the number of Americans who believe the war in Iraq was not worth
it, peaking at over 50 percent in June. Americans, it seems, are more skeptical
about this conflict than about Vietnam at roughly the same moment, as measured
in body counts.
The difference, historians and experts
agree, is that the"stark experience of Sept.
11 and the belief among many Americans that the fighting in Iraq is
part of a global conflict against terrorism have made this war seem much more
crucial to the nation's security than Vietnam ..." Death and destruction on
continental American soil, coupled with the fact that there is no military
conscription, have made Americans much more patient with the Iraq situation.
There are other differences too. Dao writes:
In 1965, President
Lyndon B. Johnson began a huge escalation of the Vietnam War that eventually
brought American troop levels to over half a million. By 1968, the weekly death
toll was over 500. No such escalation is envisioned in Iraq, where the deadliest
month was last April, when 134 troops were killed. And though the 1,000-dead
milestone was reached faster in Iraq, it seems unlikely the toll will keep pace
with Vietnam, where it exploded after 1965, reaching over 58,000 by the war's
end.
But the death tolls don't tell us the
whole story. As I was reminded by the McLaughlin
Report and other Sunday morning talk shows today, in addition to the
1000+ Americans killed in Iraq, and the 20,000+ US medical evacuations from that
country, the possibilities for civil war are real. Tikrit, Fallujah, Karbala,
Ramadi, and Najaf are effectively under the control of insurgent forces. Kurds
in the North, who have had de facto "self-rule" since the 1990s, are now
battling for control of oil-rich Kirkuk, outside Kurdish territory. The Shi'ite
majority, which suffered under the Sunnis during the reign of Saddam Hussein,
will not stand by if the Sunnis try to reassert power. The Sunnis, however,
remain the predominating influence in the central and northwestern regions of
the country. Baghdad, of course, is in a class by itself.
A civil war in Iraq could be a
devastating blow to US "nation-building" efforts. (On the various scenarios of
"Iraq in Transition," see this
periodical put out by Chatham House, formerly the Royal Institute of
International Affairs.) It is for this reason that presidential historian Robert
Dallek suggests, "the crucial point" in Iraq will come when the US "feels it is
not going to achieve its goals." But pursuit of those goals does not take place
in a historical vacuum; this is a post-Vietnam generation, after all. Should the
feeling become widespread that the situation is unwinnable,
leading to less patience among the American electorate, and fewer military
re-enlistments, a dramatic shift in the US approach will be forthcoming.
Dao reminds us, however, that
there has been
significant public opposition to virtually every war America has waged, except
World War II. One-third of the nation did not back the American Revolution,
historians say. Congress chastised President James Polk in 1848 for starting
an"unnecessary and unconstitutional" war with Mexico. New Yorkers rioted against
the draft during the Civil War. The Socialist Eugene Debs went to prison, and
ran for president while there, for opposing the draft in World War I. A
plurality of Americans thought the Korean War was a mistake during much of that
conflict. But in virtually all those cases, dissent did relatively little to
prevent bloodshed. Only in Vietnam, which caused the nation's largest and most
sustained protests, can it be argued that an antiwar movement hastened the end
of a war.
This has had an effect on both sides
of the divide:
The government has
sought to sustain public support for war by encouraging positive coverage of
American soldiers while prohibiting photographs of returning caskets. And
antiwar groups have treated returning soldiers with immense dignity - hoping to
avoid the kinds of reports about abusive demonstrators that once embittered
Vietnam veterans. But one lesson neither side could have gleaned from Vietnam
was the impact of 24-hour cable television and the Internet, which have brought
death in Iraq closer to home than network television did in Vietnam. In the
process, they have amplified the horrors of war and, perhaps, speeded up
reaction to it ...
All this points to the issue of those
pesky "unintended consequences" that I alluded to here.
But "unintended consequences" are not always unforeseeable ones. Many of us on
the antiwar side of the divide warned of these very real effects for months
prior to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. For me, at least, it was never
a question of Hussein's moral legitimacy. His regime, which had benefited from
US support and sanction back in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, was immoral.
But as the winds of war were
gathering strength in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq, I thought then, as
I do now, that it would have been possible to contain any Hussein terrorist or
weapons threat. That the threat was not as "grave" as the administration
proclaimed makes containment, in my view, all the more preferable.
But
that is now a moot point. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq now threatens
to unleash unruly antidemocratic cultural and political forces that might yet
make the Hussein regime a picnic by comparison.
John Arthur Shaffer writes: "Does
anyone really argue that these states can be transformed without a major
reformation in Islam? The separation of church and state is a necessary
condition for freedom and pluralism. This will take centuries to occur. The war
in Iraq has been a huge recruiting tool for radical Islam."
I agree that
there will need to be a major reformation in Islam (though it is clear that more
"secular" variants are possible among Islamic-inspired states). It took centuries
to secularize the Western mind, and I can't imagine it not taking a very
long time for this process to take hold in the Islamic world.
But in the
age of WMDs, humankind doesn't have time to wait centuries for this process to
occur. The best that can be done is to neutralize any "direct," "imminent" or
"grave and gathering" threats to US security, and to seek ways to increase
points of cultural exchange in the long-run. Today's technology should
facilitate this process to a certain degree, but it's no substitute for
short-run strikes against known Al Qaeda operatives seeking to inflict further
harm on US targets.
I've also maintained, however, that the US will have
to affect a major shift in its political and military involvement in the Middle
East; alas, that is not likely to occur any time soon for a variety of reasons,
not the least of which is economic. See here for
further thoughts on this subject.
Does anyone really argue that these
states can be transformed without a major reformation in Islam? The separation
of church and state is a necessary condition for freedom and pluralism.
This will take centuries to occur. The war in Iraq has been a huge recruiting
tool for radical Islam.
I think that the essential point here
is correct; this is a long-term cultural and political trend, but I don't think
it is inexorable, and I do believe that there are potentially powerful movements
afoot that could act as an internal bulwark against those trends. The young
generation's turn against the mullahs in Iran is
a case in point. It remains to be seen if that internally generated movement
bears fruit.
To answer Andre: I don't know of anybody here who advocated
doing nothing in response to the terrorist attack on 9/11. I advocated military
action in Afghanistan, even if I've been less enthused by the ways in which
warlordism has returned, along with a re-empowered Taliban and a Narcostate.
The Iraq invasion and occupation, in my view, has emboldened the very
fundamentalist elements that Jonathan points to above.
The point,
however, is that from the very beginning, the Bush administration acted on the
neoconservative premise that the cultures in the Middle East had to be changed
if the US was to affect a permanent alteration in the terrorist dynamic. Now,
superficially, that's true. But as Jason suggests above, there is an arrogant
self-centeredness, a potentially fatal hubris, at work: Cultural transformation
is not something that can be imposed from without. Politics can influence
culture, but new political institutions cannot simply be grafted onto indigenous
cultures.
I fear that the chickens being hatched in Iraq will eventually
come home to roost in ways that will significantly affect "the timing and form
of the Islamist problem."
You are right in your characterization
of Iraq. However, the "secular socialist" nature of the state hides the
underlying cultural reality. It is in these "secular socialist" states that
Islamism grows unseen. Often, Islam is the only institution that is exempt from
total repression. The Mosque becomes an organizing point against the
dictatorship. On the surface it seems like the dictator has the country under
control but he is feeding the Islamist beast. Let's remember how this movement
started in "secular socialist" Egypt. Let's also remember that even a dictator
like Saddam had to start paying lip-service to Islam.
Let me make sure
my point isn't missed. Islamism is an indigenous movement that arises from
internal forces and it is growing regardless of what we do or don't do. Let's
shed our arrogant self-centered analysis and realized that we are not the
subject matter here. We are a scapegoat necessitated by internal cultural
developments that will exist and continue to exist.
I'll grant you that
our involvement affects the timing and form of the Islamist problem. A detailed
analysis will show the effects on which particular fraction advances, how the
Islamists rally their core base, and other logistics. But the long-term trend is
not altered by how we divert the cultural gusher.
This suggests a policy
of avoiding futile nation-building --- but not because of our importance and the
potent effect of our actions (intended or unintended) --- just the opposite.
Mr. Zantonavitch,
I'd be more
inclined to take the rest of your comments seriously if you hadn't grossly
mischaracterized Iraq as an 'islamic' state on a par with Afghanistan. For its
myriad other flaws, Iraq was a socialist despotism, not an Islamic one, with
some of the commensurate social differences (like the legal sale of alcohol,
practice of diverse religions and, oh yes, relatively social equality for women,
not to mention a unity which transcended tribal and sectarian identities), but
that is indeed the direction in which Iraq is now heading. Shall we invade
again?
I might also add that because of the
two wars, and our forced enrollment at The School Of Hard Knocks -- closely
affiliated with Whatssammatta U! ;-) -- libertarian and Objectivist thinkers
have also been ~galvanized.~ Mankind is advancing theoretically and this is
paving the way toward a terrific future which will now probably come about
~sooner~.
At times, in the game of life, the
simple and obvious answer is actually the ~correct~ answer. Over-analysis of a
situtation or problem can lead to vast and even ~hopeless~ confusion. If we
spend weeks on end discussing whether or not cirles are round, grass is green,
and fire is hot, at the end of those (almost certainly wasted) days we may
seriously ~not know~ the answer(!). As Aristotle said repeatedly: "Don't seek
more certainty than the subject itself admits of."
Radical islamic vermin
did something terrible on 9/11 and most "moderate" islamic vermin openly or
quietly cheered. America ~had~ to do something in response. And it did -- in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the evil ones have more respect for us, we have more
respect for ourselves, and the world is in much better cosmic balance.
The unintended consequences of ~not~ taking down those two dirtbag islamic
states (that richly deserved it, and about which no-one is seriously
complaining) would have probably been ~much~ worse. America and the West would
have looked weak and scared, with freedom-fighters and civilization-lovers
everywhere losing vast hope -- both in the current situation and in mankind in
general.
Ultimately those two fairly easy, low-cost wars (and hopefully
two or so ~more~) taught the West a great deal -- knowledge not obtainable any
other way (certainly not via lame conservo-progressive theorizing). The fact
that the Western liberal states today are VERY far from pure liberalism (as I
define it) and ~hilariously~ inept at freedom-fighting is actually a trivial
fairly point. We're learning about ~everything~ -- and the ~next~ time there's
need for a war, we'll do much better. This includes a better post-victory plan,
less looting, less toleration for insurection, quicker elections, less drug
tyranny possibly, etc.
However ham-handed the Forces Of Good and freedom
in the current "war on terrorism" the West and America -- on net balance -- have
done fairly good. Our seemingly-hopeless, pathetic, moronic, sleezeball
conservative and progressive friends in America and the West are ~learning~.
Because of the war, Western liberalism is ~ascending~.
Columnist Zev Chafets has been a
strong supporter of the war in Iraq, but in a recent NY Daily Newscolumn,
he argued that President Bush is suffering from delusions if he sincerely
believes that freedom can grow in Iraqi soil."W's
Wrong," Chafets asserts.
During [last]
Thursday's presidential debate, President Bush told the American people his goal
in Iraq is to spread liberty and freedom. The President believes the majority of
Iraqis yearn for democracy and will express this by taking part in free
elections and defending a representative government. This idea is Bush's main
justification for the invasion of Iraq. It is the heart of his broader Middle
Eastern policy. And regrettably, it is entirely wrong.
Chafets argues persuasively that, in
general, "Arab civic culture ... is authoritarian, repressive and rooted in
Islam." The member states of the Arab League understand that Islam is "more than
just a religion; it is the focal point of Arab society, for Muslims and
non-Muslims alike, permeating [Arab] culture at every level --- political,
social and economic." As such, Islam "instructs its followers 'in all fields of
life, whether they be social, economic or political,' and 'provides the Muslim
with all he or she needs to know to live a good and pious life.'"
Key to this Muslim instruction is the
unquestionable acceptance of authority."Islam, after all," explains Chafets,
means "submission."
Father knows best. Tribal loyalty is prized. God's laws (and those who interpret
them) must be honored. Blasphemy is a life-threatening offense. In this
conformist world, democracy is both unknown and unnatural. Individual choice
offends the divine order of society. Gender equality is an invitation to moral
madness. Infidels are obviously inferior to believers. Locating ultimate
sovereignty in"the people" instead of the Koran is a mockery of God.
The Bush administration presupposes
that the Iraqi electorate's march to the polls will signify "a love of liberty
or Iraqi democracy. On the contrary," Chafets observes,"they will vote to
further the fortunes of their own narrow tribes and sects." (Alas, there is more
similarity here between Iraqi tribalism and America's "democratic"
interest-group liberalism than Chafets realizes.) For Chafets, the "national
security" goal should simply be to implant "pro-American rulers." Considering
the US track record of empowering such authoritarian "pro-American rulers" in
the past (e.g., the Shah of Iran, the mujihadeen in Afghanistan, the Hussein
regime itself in its war with post-Shah Iran), I'm not as confident as Chafets
of the long-term wisdom of this approach. It is responsible, at least partially,
for the growth of anti-American fervor in the Middle East.
Chafets is right when he suggests that
not one of the member states of the Arab League is"remotely democratic." He's
not quite correct, however, to keep using the preferred neoconservative phrase "Islamofascism"
to describe the Arab world. (Victor Hanson uses this word regularly; see here,
for example.) On one level, the very use of the word "fascism" to describe
societies that draw their inspiration from pre-enlightenment patriarchal
caliphate ideology is an anachronism. But there are other usage problems here.
Let me explain.
An argument can be made that US
political economy is a kind of neofascism or neomercantilism or "liberal
corporatism" (take your pick) insofar as it embraces the same kind of
symbiotic relationship between government and business that one has always found
in historically fascist systems. I argue here,
for example, that Ayn Rand and other libertarians have been correct to
characterize the current US politico-economic context as the "new fascism," with
broad statist implications for domestic and foreign policy. I have explained
further that the economic essence of fascism is the union of
business and government. Clearly, however, I am careful to draw a distinction
between the old "fascism" and the "New Fascism":
What unites them is
the business-government "partnership." What distinguishes them is that the first
is authoritarian, while the second is more akin to "liberal corporatism." It
retains liberal institutions and democratic procedures, while keeping much of
the business-government politico-economic alliance outside the sphere of
democratic control. The whole panoply of regulatory agencies, central bank
manipulations, and pressure group pork-barreling has been the result of an
incremental process over many years, creating a whole complex structure of
privilege that cannot be altered by simply changing the political party in
power. The "New Fascism" may or may not entail nationalism and extreme
regimentation, though in war time (both world wars come to mind), the U.S. fully
embraced "War
Collectivism" in the regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, as
well as the suppression of civil liberties. All the more reason to take very
seriously the consequences of a long-term policy of perpetual war.
Fascism does not entail broad
economy-wide central planning, like state socialism. But cartelized banking is a
key component in the nexus of "ultimate
decision-making."
The system has
varying degrees of centralization in different sectors and industries, but this
is usually the product of ad hoc, patchwork regulation that, over time, blocks
market entry and creates various monopolistic rigidities. I'm certainly open to
using a different label for what I'm seeking to describe, given how "loaded" the
term fascism actually is. But whether we call it the "new fascism" or
"neofascism" or "liberal corporatism" or "corporate welfare statism," the result
is the same: a politico-economic structure that has evolved to benefit certain
groups at the expense of others.
Now, what of the Arab world? It is
authoritarian. But it is a mongrel mixture of theocratic fundamentalism,
quasi-socialist command economies dominated by state-monopoly control of key
resources (such as oil), and hereditary monarchy. It's simply wrong to
characterize this mongrel mixture in toto as "Islamofascism." Call it
theocratic statism or theocratic authoritarianism or, for its more "secular"
forms, monarchical-military dictatorship, but please don't call it "fascism."
Not unless you mean something historically specific, as in the "guild
socialist" arrangements of Benito
Mussolini.
It must be emphasized that
historically specific fascism does not necessarily entail institutionalized
racism and anti-Semitism as in Hitler's Germany, but it certainly entails
collectivism, tribal or otherwise. (I sometimes wonder if right-wing writers shy
away from using the word"theocratic" to describe the fundamentalist Arab states
because the word hits a
little too close to home for some of them.)
Either way, every way, no matter which
way you characterize it ... I think the essential argument that Chafets makes is
unimpeachable, in my view:
What is too much is
to expect an ancient society to embrace values and practices it neither
understands nor approves of. If success in Iraq means enticing people to
renounce a civic culture that flows from their deepest Islamic beliefs, then
failure is guaranteed.
I actually address just this issue in
a new essay, "Fascism: Clarifying a Political Concept," but I'm having some
difficulties posting to HNN... something having to do with the links. Trying to
fix it... and hope to post soon.
Much of the ideology of radical
Islamic groups comes from the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn developed its
ideology under the influence of the "fascist" movements of the 1930s. So, while
I originally objected to the term for reasons similar to Chris's, now that I
know more about the Brotherhood, I think the term is largely apt.
Chris,
Adding " theocratic" to " Islamofascism" would be redundant as
Islam is a religion and simply saying "theocratic fascism" is generic, removing
the Islamic context - though that term probably applies well enough to Iran,
dominated as it is by the Expediency and Guardian councils, the Pasdaran and
Ansar Hezbollah thugs.
Fascist economies varied.
Nazi Germany
retained private property in theory but in addition to the state taking a
leading role in planning ( for rearmament purposes)agricultural land could not
be alienated for debt, strict currency and specie controls were enacted and
Hjalmar Schacht's trade policies were based on barter agreements to preserve
gold reserves and further the Nazi quest for autarky. And of course the property
rights of Jews were violated systematically In Imperial Japan the zaibatsu were
state were actually under relatively less overt government control than postwar
Japanese kereitsu.
I really like Chris's post, but
suggest an additional perspective. The Christian West was once a pretty poor
place for the emergence of liberal, or even particularly decent, values. The 30
Years War was in part - large part - based on religious rivalries within the
Christian community, and resulted in a vast and debilitating slaughter.
It also helped turn a lot of people off to theocratic claims of superiority on
the part of clerics. Toleration slowly arose not because of the Biblical
reinterpretation, but because of mutual exhaustion. Reinterpretation came later.
The Enlightenment's hostility to religious authority was also rooted in this
conflict. Stephen Toulmin's Cosmopolis is an excellent study of this and other
fascinating related issues.
My point in bringing this up is that even
sacred scriptures can be interpretetd and reinterpreted in many different ways.
Some interpretations make them safe for free societies, and these dominate today
in the West (except for Fundamentalists). The same can happen with the Koran.
Iran is ruled by theocrats, and by all I have read, their corruption,
arrogance, and ignorance is doing a good job inoculating many Iranians to the
claims that religious leaders should rule. As they lose legitimacy they
undermine their longevity in power. We do not know when, but as with the Soviets
and the Christian West , loss of legitimacy leads in time to loss of power. At
that point Iran will be amenable to liberal insights. Islam will be
reinterpreted, as the Bible was.
I suspect the best way to eliminate
theocratic fantasies from the Arab world is to allow them to have theocracies in
power if that is what a majority wants or is willing to accept - and best, by
election. That legitimates the idea that the people should decide, and while
they will initially decide poorly, the misrule thugs like that will institute
will in time wither the ferocity of their theology and their commitment to
mindless interpretations of scripture.
From a Hayekian perspective, I am
saying we should allow cultural learning, and then stay out of the way while the
people of that culture work out their own response to their problems.
Yes, of course, there are Muslims who
live in democracies and there are even a few democracies with predominantly
Muslim populations, outside the Arab League, and you are right to note that
we're talking about a specifically Arab civic culture.
I do
think, however, that there is something about the way in which Islam has been
integrated with Arab culture that speaks to its current incarnations in the
Middle East. In other words, in philosophical parlance, there is a kind of
"internal relation" here between Islamic ideology and Arab cultural formations,
wherein each is partially constituted by its relationship to the other. So,
while authoritarian civic culture may not be inextricably intertwined with
Islam, solely, its current incarnation does seem to be a function of the ways in
which Islam and Arab cultural formations have coalesced in this particular
historical moment and in this particular geopolitical context.
I
suspect, therefore, that there is influence coming from both sides of that
equation.
And this is not unusual; certain ideological strands when
transplanted to entirely different ethnic and geopolitical contexts are distinct
in both their preconditions and effects. That is precisely why I believe the use
of a word like "fascism" requires a lot more historical specificity, that is, a
lot more attention paid to context.
Thanks for the comments,
Jonathan!
As much as I appreciate your analysis,
there's a shorter route to critiquing this argument. He is conflating "Arab"
with "Islam", a very common but nonetheless profound error. There are Muslims
who live in democracies, even Muslim-majority democracies.
The civic
culture he is talking about is Arab, but it is pre-Islamic in origin and not
inextricably entwined with Islam, even in its more radical forms.
In light of my recent post on Islamofascism,
which has generated some good comments, I thought it important enough to discuss
this topic in much greater detail.
Ironically, I've just discovered this
morning an Adrian Lyttleton essay appearing in the October 21 issue of the NY
Review of Books. Lyttleton's review of Robert O. Paxton's new book, The
Anatomy of Fascism, asks the question "What
Was Fascism?"
For years, the left asserted that
fascism was simply capitalism with the gloves off. It was Leon
Trotsky who first argued that fascism was a degenerative form of capitalism.
Likewise, Nicos Poulantzas claimed that it was an authoritarian response to the
contradictions of capitalism, when democratic institutions are no longer capable
of patching up the"broken barrel" that is the free market.
But the free market, as such, has
never existed in countries that fully embraced the fascist model of political
economy. In Nazi Germany, for example, there was a Bismarkian history of heavy
state involvement in the market. Far behind in the capitalist competitive
"race," Bismark attempted to usher in modernity with policies of subsidization
and tariff protectionism that benefited quasi-feudal landowners and
industrialists. These trends continued through the first world war and led to
glaring dislocations in the structure of production. In the post-World War I
era, following an almost classic Hayekian "road to serfdom," the Weimar Republic
responded to escalating chaos by embracing more stringent tariff and tax
policies, public works, and rigid restrictions on foreign exchange. The "free
market" was never the means by which German industry attempted to recoup.
Instead, German industrialists embraced the statist policies of the Nazis, who
merely cashed-in on the long Prussian tradition of political interventionism.
The suppression of a competitive price
structure was achieved by the Nazis through laws that blocked market entry,
setting up cartel arrangements based on compulsory prices that thwarted
deflationary tendencies and froze the status quo of the corporate elite. (The
Nazis, of course, also used the state to freeze out Jewish businessmen and
landowners, who were simultaneously blamed for the decadence of both capitalism
and Bolshevism.) Economic control became a technique of mass domination as a
quasi-dictatorship of industrialists laid bare the class bias of fascist
"corporatism." This "compulsory order" guaranteed profits, socialized losses and
enriched capital-intensive industry.
Such production controls veil and
dissemble economic facts, and the capital structure is mangled in the process.
Moreover, state control over banks enabled the Nazis to embark on a huge
military build-up, which funneled monetary expansion into a growing
military-industrial complex. An autarkic philosophy of economics, as Franz
Neumann called it, led to the collapse of German purchasing power, the crowding
out of capital investment for consumer goods production and a dwindling domestic
market for the very bourgeoisie that gave Hitler his mass support. Workers'
wages plummeted, labor unions were crushed, and German business became a
parasitic class. A similar process ensued in Mussolini's Italy.
Lyttleton emphasizes correctly, in the
Paxton book review,"[t]hat fascists believed in the primacy of politics and had
only an instrumental interest in economics."
Hitler put it
succinctly: economics was there to serve the Volk, not the other way
around. Fascist regimes were not afraid to use political methods and propaganda
to achieve economic results. They announced clear targets and made their
successes highly visible through intensive propaganda, framed in the language of
struggle. ... [A]t a time when orthodox laissez-faire economics seemed to have
no solutions to offer, the activism of the fascist regimes had great appeal. It
is understandable that a number of the architects of the New Deal were
impressed.
Of course, laissez-faire economics had
both a solution and an explanation: it was government intervention that
engendered the boom-bust cycle, and it was only government intervention that
could make that cycle worse. But Lyttleton is absolutely correct to claim that
"it was just this emphasis" on the politico-economic aims of fascism that
makes it possible to
speak of a distinctive fascist political economy, which can best be summarized
as the creation of a wartime economy in peacetime. Many of fascism's
institutions were direct recreations of the ad hoc structures created to manage
the economy during World War I, such as the committees or consortia run by
businessmen, but sanctioned by the state, which allocated raw materials and
foreign exchange. This was the reality behind the pompous facade of Mussolini's
corporate state. The "consortialist state" would be a more accurate name for it.
The ideal of autarky or economic self-sufficiency was distinctly fascist, and
plainly linked to the creation of a war economy. But it was also a logical
choice for fascist ideology.
These very same dynamics, it should be
noted, were at work in the American political context. Murray Rothbard and
others have written well of "War Collectivism in World War I" (see the essay by
that name in the Radosh-Rothbard collection, A New History of Leviathan).
I've written about these dynamics in an early
article on the railroads during the first world war, but these same patterns
were repeated in virtually every major industry in the United States. It is
utterly fitting that the Wilsonian crusade to"make the world safe for democracy"
entailed, necessarily, interventionism abroad and interventionism at home. That
reality is no different today, when neoconservatives embrace the same Wilsonian
mission in the hopes of transforming the Middle East. It is in the march toward
war that the organic unity of the warfare state and the welfare state is built,
with each aspect mutually reinforcing the other. And it is in this constituted
nexus, as Lyttleton suggests, that fascism overturns the essence of economic
freedom:
Fascist
"anti-capitalism" was not just pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric, or a nostalgic
vision of a pre-industrial craft and rural economy. Fascism expressed a
consistent preference for "national production" over international finance, and
for an organized and politically mobilized economy over the free market. ... In
the developed fascist economy, industrialists lost much of their freedom to make
decisions, although ... they were not too unhappy about this, since they kept
their profits and were assured of a docile labor force whose wages stayed low.
Only the small businessmen who had been conspicuous among fascism's early
supporters were radically disappointed. The hierarchical organization of cartels
and producers' associations under state supervision tended to favor larger
firms.
This disappointment of bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois was interesting, sociologically. Barrington Moore once asked
about the Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, the title of his
famous book. And John Weiss in his book, The Fascist Tradition, agreed
fundamentally with Moore, that classical fascism was fueled by the peculiarly
twentieth-century mass response of middle-class conservative groups "threatened
by rapid liberalization of the social system in which they enjoyed a privileged
place." Paradoxically, these middle-class groups provided the mass support
necessary for the creation of fascist states, while ceding much control to the
industrialists who benefited most from fascist political economy. Moore argued
further that fascism has not developed in its classical form in traditionally
democratic societies because these societies were able to affect a more complete
break with the feudal past and its social order of static mediocrity.
Lyttleton's review discusses some of
these issues as well. Fascist movements were very much shaped by the countries
in which they emerged. Different manifestations were often a by-product of a
different mix of leader, party, bureaucracy, traditional institutions, and
cultural heritage. In almost all cases, however, fascists "acknowledged no
theoretical limits to the invasion of private life." (Lyttleton warns that,
actually, "[t]he increasing intrusion of fascism into private life threatened to
undermine the consensus in favor of fascism among the middle classes.") This
private-public fusion is, perhaps, one reason why some commentators talk in
terms of "Islamofascism," which seeks an equally comprehensive public absorption
of private life. As I write here,
with regard to one of fundamentalist Islam's founding fathers, Sayyid Qutb:
Pining for a
theocratic Islamic caliphate, Qutb's influential "theological criticism of
modern life" lamented the dualistic "schizophrenia" of the secular and the
sacred, science and religion. But as is typical with religious monists, Qutb
sought to collapse secular life into religion. His "deepest quarrel was
not with America's failure to uphold its principles," [Paul] Berman explains.
"His quarrel was with the principles. He opposed the United States because it
was a liberal society" (emphasis added). The most "dangerous element" of that
society was, in Qutb's view, the "separation of church and state." His version
of liberation entailed an adherence to strict Islamic law ("Shariah") in defense
of "freedom of conscience." But such liberation "meant freedom from false
doctrines that failed to recognize God, freedom from the modern schizophrenia."
It is no great leap to realize the dictatorial implications of this utopian
vision, whose enforcement would echo the totalitarian projects of fascism,
Nazism, and communism.
But, clearly, whatever totalitarian
echoes one sees in the Qutbian vision, there are distinctions that disqualify
the usage of the word "Islamofascism" to describe it, or to describe Islamic
fundamentalism in general. This takes a bit more explanation, and Lyttleton's
article helps.
As Lyttleton observes, "fascism was
something else, something new and disquieting in its ability to mobilize
positive enthusiasm and dedication, a form of modern mass politics." One of the
keys to understanding fascism is its identification as "national socialism," or
"national syndicalism," or more precisely, "nationalist socialism." And
therein lies some of the parallels, not with theocratic Islamic fundamentalist
dictatorships, but with quasi-fascist military dictatorships in the Arab world.
There is a key difference between these military dictatorships and the regimes
that neocons criticize typically as "Islamofascist." The military dictatorships
in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq took power in comparatively "secular" Arab countries.
The whole Pan-Arab nationalist-socialist movement was opposed to the
fundamentalists; in fact, as a member of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood,
Qutb himself was executed in 1966, under the Egyptian dictatorship of Gamal
Abdel Nasser.
As Lyttleton points out, "[a] degree
of secularization would ... seem to be a prerequisite for the emergence of
fascist movements, which may appeal to religious values but use them in the
service of nationalist or racist political goals." Lyttleton continues:
In the Middle East, perhaps because Italy and Germany were seen as natural and influential allies against Britain and France, the dominant imperial powers, sympathy with historic fascism seems to have been particularly widespread. Nor can one put this down exclusively to the influence of anti-Semitism on Arab Muslims; one can find an interest in the fascist model among both the Christian Lebanese Phalange and the Israeli extreme right. [Lyttleton cites Heller's essay, "The Failure of Fascism in Jewish Palestine, 1925-1948" from Larsen's book, Fascism Outside Europe.] ... A more sinister long-term significance can be found in the ideological affiliations of the Baath Party of Syria and Iraq. Its founding father, Michel Aflaq, echoed fascist denunciations of "materialism" and soulless democracy. ... The two-front battle which the Baath fought against communism and movements based on the Shia majority is somewhat reminiscent of the situation in which the historic fascist movements found themselves. The Baath party-state was made possible by the secular nature of Iraqi society and by the growth of an urban middle class, financed by oil revenues. There seem to be few reasons not to call Saddam Hussein's regime, "fascist."
As Fitzgerald once pointed out (in a
John Waterbury edited collection, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The
Political Economy of Two Regimes), in Latin America, as in Egypt,
quasi-fascism was enhanced through the creation of industrial oligopolies that
depended "upon privileges and concessions obtained by access to government so
that a 'proprietary' rather than 'entrepreneurial' business ethos obtains based
on control over a limited market and exclusive licenses instead of mass sales
and price competition."
But all of these developments in the
Middle East were a quite distinct phenomenon from "Islamofascism." Additionally,
these developments demonstrate the fact that the Muslim-Arab world is not a
monolith, but a cauldron of shifting tribes. And none of the tribes --- be they
Pan-Arabist or fundamentalist, be they led by military dictators, monarchs, or
warlords --- will accept the Western imposition of the "rule of law" (which law?
Shariah?) without the cultural, philosophical, or socio-psychological
preconditions upon which such a Western conception can be built and nourished.
In many ways, this situation embodies
what Ayn Rand once said about World War II Europe, which was consumed by the
struggles of competing forms of collectivism and statism. As the evil character
Ellsworth Toohey states in The Fountainhead:
Watch the pincer
movement. If you're sick of one version, we push you into the other. We get you
coming and going. We've closed the doors. We've fixed the coin. Heads ---
collectivism, and tails --- collectivism. Fight the doctrine which slaughters
the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual. Give up your
soul to a council --- or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it up,
give it up. ... Offer poison as food and poison as antidote. Go fancy on the
trimmings, but hang on to the main objective. Give the fools a choice, let them
have their fun --- but don't forget the only purpose you have to accomplish.
Kill the individual. Kill man's soul. The rest will follow automatically.
There is an underlying
socio-psychological dynamic at work in the universe of collectivist statism.
Collectivism of any sort has a deadening effect on the individual's freedom to
order his own conduct, and on the sense of self-responsibility that such freedom
entails. Hayek warned of this effect back in the 1940s, when he examined the
"socialist roots" of Nazism and fascism:
Responsibility, not
to a superior, but to one's conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by
compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be
sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one's own decision, are
the very essence of any morals which deserve the name. That in this sphere of
individual conduct the effect of collectivism has been almost entirely
destructive is both inevitable and undeniable. A movement whose main promise is
the relief from responsibility cannot but be antimoral in its effects, however
lofty the ideals to which it owes its birth.
The root of this "revolt against
self-responsibility in action," as psychologist Nathaniel Branden once said, "is
the revolt against self-direction in thought." When a social system emerges that
is inimical to this self-direction --- a system that forbids individuals the
capacity to function as rational, independent beings --- "psychological and
physical disaster is the result."
It is thus no coincidence that the
triumph of fascism in Germany and Italy was so dependent on the molding of
youthful minds. Lyttleton writes:
The cult of youth was
one of fascism's most successful forms of propaganda; fascist supporters were
distinguished from those of other parties more by their age than their class.
But the cult of youth was not just useful to the Fascists. It was a logical
consequence of fascism's martial ethic and ideology of permanent struggle. It
was by the molding of the new generations through the youth movement that the
creation of the "new man" [the similarities to "New Communist Man" are not
coincidental either --- CS] devoted to the Leader and the Movement and free from
all social attachments was to be finally achieved.
If we are to draw any positive
signs anywhere in the Middle East for a veritable freedom revolution, it is
this: Emerging youth movements in Iran may very well become a bulwark
against the theocratic authoritarianism that the mullahs represent in that
country. Potentially, this internally generated movement in Iran would be far
more effective in the long run in establishing indigenous democratic cultural
patterns, than any externally generated U.S. molding of Iraq. On this, I am in
agreement with Gus
diZerega and have written extensively about the Iranian
context.
I also agree fundamentally with Gus
that
the best way to
eliminate theocratic fantasies from the Arab world is to allow them to have
theocracies in power if that is what a majority wants or is willing to accept
--- and best, by election. That legitimates the idea that the people should
decide, and while they will initially decide poorly, the misrule thugs like that
will institute will in time wither the ferocity of their theology and their
commitment to mindless interpretations of scripture.
In clarifying a political concept such
as fascism, we can only be strengthened; understanding what the threat is, and
what the threat is not, we can redouble our efforts against those forces
at home and abroad that would undermine our liberty.
A very interesting article by Franklin Foer
appears in today's NY Times: "Once
Again, America First." Foer talks about how conservatives, with their
typical distrust of government power, have begun to turn against the Bush
administration's neo-Wilsonian desires to"democratize the Middle East." The
critics include George Will, Patrick Buchanan,"the libertarian Cato Institute
and the traditionalist Chronicles magazine," as well as congressman Henry Hyde
and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. More importantly, Foer rediscovers
the almost-forgotten anti-interventionist tradition of the Old Right, and he
includes a number of modern-day heroes of contemporary libertarianism:
One of conservatism's
early and now largely forgotten folk heroes was Albert Jay Nock, the flamboyant
author of ''Memoirs of a Superfluous Man,'' who wore a cape and celebrated
Belgium as his ideal society. In 1933, Nock wrote about ''the Remnant,''
borrowing the term from Matthew Arnold and the Book of Isaiah. By the Remnant he
meant an enlightened elite that rejected the phoniness of mass society. A few
historians have used Remnant as a synonym for the pre-National Review right -- a
group that included the economic journalists Garet Garrett and Frank Chodorov,
Ayn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane (Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter) and, to an extent,
H. L. Mencken. Nock's allusion to Isaiah works nicely for these polemicists, who
issued thunderous, Old Testament-like warnings about American decline. Finding
themselves at the forefront of opposition to World War II, they turned to the
America First movement. Their hatred for war followed from their radical
individualism. As the essayist Randolph Bourne (not a conservative) famously put
it about World War I, ''War is the health of the state.'' Since these writers
disliked the state, they came to dislike war, too. ...
Conservatism emerged
out of the McCarthyite moment with a new enemy: that small band of conservatives
who continued clinging to isolationism. National Review, for one, didn't have
any place for them in its pages. ... Upon the death of the libertarian
isolationist Murray Rothbard in 1995, Buckley quipped, ''We extend condolences
to his family, but not to the movement he inspired.'' ... Without a home in the
conservative movement, the isolationists had no choice but to search for allies
in unlikely quarters. During the late 60's, they often teamed up with the New
Left, becoming stalwarts of the antiwar movement. ... And a few on the New Left
returned the favor, heartily embracing the apostates. In 1975, the historian
Ronald Radosh (then a man of the left) published ''Prophets on the Right,'' a
book championing the prescience of Robert A. Taft and other ''conservative
critics of American globalism.'' ...
Buchananite foreign
policy has an intellectual wing, paleoconservatism. Long before French
protesters and liberal bloggers had even heard of the neoconservatives, the
paleoconservatives were locked in mortal combat with them. Paleocons fought
neocons over whom Ronald Reagan should appoint to head the National Endowment
for the Humanities, angrily denouncing them as closet liberals -- or worse,
crypto-Trotskyists. Even their self-selected name, paleocon, suggests disdain
for the neocons and their muscular interventionism. ... The paleocons explicitly
hark back to Garrett, Nock and the Remnant, what they lovingly call the ''Old
Right.'' ...
George W. Bush
entered office implicitly promising agnosticism in the long-running debate
between neocons and paleocons. On the 2000 campaign trail, he promised a
''distinctly American internationalism'' that would provide ''idealism, without
illusions; confidence, without conceit; realism, in the service of American
ideals.'' Of course, after 9/11, Bush dispensed with this doctrinal neutrality.
And in adopting a neocon foreign policy, he rallied most conservatives behind
his ambitious agenda, a dramatic turnabout in opinion from the 90's.
Will this consensus
hold? Already, many conservative writers seem primed to abandon it. Even when
they haven't gone as far as Will or Carlson in their criticisms of the war, they
have flashed their discomfort with Bush's goal of planting democracy in Iraq.
National Review has called this policy ''largely, if not entirely, a Wilsonian
mistake.'' With these signs of restlessness, it's easy to imagine that a Bush
loss in November, coupled with further failures in Iraq, could trigger a
large-scale revolt against neoconservative foreign policy within the Republican
Party. A Bush victory, on the other hand, will be interpreted by many
Republicans as a vindication of the current course, and that could spur a revolt
too. If the party tilts farther toward an activist foreign policy, antiwar
conservatives might begin searching for a new political home.
I recommend the whole article to your attention.
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