Hailing from a conservative past, I am naturally inclined to look at publications like the New York Sun with a fond eye. Sadly, the NY Sun's recent article, "Neocon Resurgence," was one of the most pathetic exercises in intellectual laziness that has disgraced this nation's broadsheets in some time. For shame, little interventionists.
The gist of the article is that the War in Iraq is justified just as much as was the Spanish-American War, and that, because a Council on Foreign Relations mouthpiece endorses the Iraq expedition, the mission is justified by historians. In fact, it goes so far as to claim that the CFR affiliates in our own Department of State need these wars of convenience to give their negotiations meaning. It also claims erroneously that our own national history proves the effectiveness of interventionism.
First, the Spanish-American War is a terrible example if for no other reason than that the parallels with the War in Iraq (and the rest of the War on Terror, Inc.) are so stark. There was an inciting incident (USS Maine vs. 9/11). The government and the media conspired to lie to the American people about the details in order to get backing for a war against an enemy power (Hearst Newspapers vs. FOX News, USS Maine destroyed because of internal fire vs. unanswered 9/11 mysteries). The original war with one country (Spain vs. Afghanistan) was used for PR inertia to expand our empire in other regions that were completely unrelated (Cuba and the Philippines vs. Iraq).
The only remaining part of the parallel to come true is this: In Cuba, the island suffered for half a century under a succession of tyrants before succumbing to Communism. In the Philippines, we battled Muslims and nationalists until World War 2 forced us out of our colonial role. If the parallels continue, I suppose we are in for a long, tumultuous stay in Iraq. I wonder what kind of monster we will bequeath on our kids there. What a vision of success: a shimmering citysitting athwart a toweringinferno. Surely, this isn't the pipedream of the neocons, or is this their desired legacy?
As if this weren't enough, we are led into the old circular argument rationalizations that are making the rounds of talk radio: If policy nerds who talked us into this mess in the first place tell us that we are doing the right thing, we must be doing the right thing. Let's assume that Foreign Affairs magazine is a disinterested party, which is patently untrue, as it was the CFR, publishers of the magazine, and its members who pushed us to war.
Foreign Affairs and the CFR are not capable of historically justifying this war because it is still "in progress." This would be the equivalent of McNamara doing a historical analysis of Vietnam in 1966 and claiming that it was a huge victory at a minimal cost. According to Hitler in 1939 and 1940, hisreich would be a 1000-year rule, and we all know how that ended. This short-sighted hyperbolic leap to "mission accomplished" are known as "famous last words" in the parlance of our time. It is the signature of hubris on a contract with defeat.
Finally, the Sun gets it dead wrong about our own history. If the 20th century would have taught us anything, we would have realized the futility of colonialism and interventionism, its bloody predecessor. The author not only twists that message into some supernatural anointing on America to turn the world into a global Athenian Agora, he also gets it wrong in the details. Mention is made of Alexander Hamilton, my misguided ancestor, as an interventionist, but, while his idiotic visions included establishing a monarchy in the US and setting up a national reserve bank were wrong, one would be hard-pressed to cast him as an interventionist. Henry Clay is also mentioned, but his claim to fame is that he avoided Civil War for decades by compromising rather than playing partisan when the whole nation was going mad. Kentucky, his home state was invaded by north and south, but it stayed neutral, which is hardly an interventionist strategy. For the interventionists' real history, look to Haiti, Central America, Czarist Russia, Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
In both the details and the "big picture," the neoconservatives are wrong, wrong, wrong. Their poor grasp of their own history is the key to their delusion. They dwell in an echo chamber, building myths, telling them to each other, and misleading the public at large. They inhabit a dimension where war costs nothing in treasure and all lives lost are "worth the cost." In this perpendicular dimension, they are playing a giant video game where issues like human nature, cultural identities, and blowback are just abstract numbers.
They have chosen to inhabit a binary alternate nerd universe while the people they harm live in a stark analog world where decisions have a real impact on the real lives of real people. They can only harm us as long as we allow them to play their fantastic chess games with our nation, treasure, and uniformed services. If we cast them down from the seats of power, we will save ourselves and the suffering innocents around the world. If we commit the moral crime of allowing these fools to stay in power, the blood of our own sons and daughters, as well as those of the world, will be upon our own heads. The choice is ours, but the time for self-delusion, if there ever was one, is long gone.
©2008 Josh Koch, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Friday, August 15, 2008
Last modified: Friday, August 15, 2008
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