Take Aim
Posted on April 1st, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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Indeed, as was apparent today, the latest “conspiracy” is rather mainstream stuff, like supporting Obama’s Af-Pak policy, and it enjoys healthy bipartisan support — just as Clinton’s Balkans wars did, and yes, just as Iraq did initially. Criticizing these policies is fair. But those criticisms should be aimed at a broad swath of the foreign policy establishment, on both sides of the aisle, not just at the neo-cons. ~Christian Brose
It’s a deal. No doubt when critics focus on the failures of the majority of the foreign policy establishment, they will be treated as worthy adversaries in policy debate and not dismissed as unpatriotic and anti-American goons. Isn’t that right? Somehow, I doubt it.
Criticizing Iraq policy became broadly acceptable among the foreign policy establishment once the neocons could be made into the sole villains of the piece, which was useful for deflecting the responsibility of various other hawks and internationalists. In some ways, the latter were more responsible for plunging us into the disaster by creating a respectable and broad consensus in favor of an unjustified, unnecessary war of aggression. That doesn’t mean that neoconservatives weren’t actually responsible for a great deal of harm, for which they still refuse to take responsibility, but it does mean that they became convenient scapegoats for less fanatical, more “pragmatic” types who changed their views on the war in the last four or five years. Neocons take the brunt of criticism because they were the first to call for the war and are among the last to continue to defend the indefensible, but I am more than happy to hold accountable all of the people who have blundered so horribly. There’s no need to wait–I have started doing this already. These people are blundering again in endorsing Obama’s misdirected nation-building scheme in Afghanistan, just as many of them blundered in supporting or later embracing the “surge”* as something other than a delaying tactic that addressed none of the fundamental political problems in Iraq. I fully expect them to be just as wrong this time as they have been wrong in the past. I also fully expect them to hide behind their near-unanimity as a shield against this criticism, because this is what they always do.
* The “surge” failed, and its failure was foreseen from the beginning.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
“It’s a deal. No doubt when critics focus on the failures of the majority of the foreign policy establishment, they will be treated as worthy adversaries in policy debate and not dismissed as unpatriotic and anti-American goons. Isn’t that right?”
Yes, but are they? In particular, so much of the animosity between the “paleolibertarians” and the “neocons” (eg, the 2003 Frum article and for that matter some of the back and forth between the Commentary blog and this one) is the exasperation of the paleolibs wrt their inability to exercise a heckler’s veto over American foreign policy. If one believes (as I do), that the heckler’s veto is illegitimate, in what way exactly are the paleolibs supposed to be worthy adversaries?
By heckler’s veto, I assume you mean that we “paleolibertarians” (where did that come from?) think reckless, destructive and stupid policies should not be adopted, and grow annoyed when those policies, whose flaws we detail at length before they are implemented, blow up in the government’s face. In that case, yes, there is some exasperation.
It is refreshing to hear someone state plainly that he thinks dissent against hegemonism is illegitimate. It saves us all a lot of time.
The “heckler’s veto” is, I think, a fairly common idiom whose meaning isn’t that hard to figure out. If there is any real doubt over it, the emphasis is on veto.
So, to get the answer from the horse’s mouth, what role do paleocons have in American foreign policy debate other than the attempted exercise of the heckler’s veto?
Fwiw, I wrote “paleolibs” and “neocons” to emphasize that I’m using them descriptively and not pejoratively for those who consider them to be pejorative.
what role do paleocons have in American foreign policy debate other than the attempted exercise of the heckler’s veto?
It sounds like you’re saying that having an unpopular opinion, or advocating a policy that is unlikely to become the official policy of the US government, is akin to “heckling”, i.e., engaging in divisive jeering for its own sake. It also sounds like, having equated dissent with “heckling,” your advice is that anyone with an unpopular opinion should just be quiet.
Where have I run off the rails in trying to understand your point?
Actually, you twit, if the objection is to have any force, the emphasis more or less has to be on the basis for the claim of illegitimacy. That is, “heckler.” Perhaps you were unwilling to make that clear because it’s a hard category to shoehorn any but the neocons into. Numerically small but well situated–and oh so happy–to shout down any objecting voices with slurs: neocons and hecklers. AFAICT–I’m not one–the paleos don’t have any representation in the major papers or mags.
It’s not as if there aren’t think tanks and scholars who espouse some form of non-interventionism or realism that we would and do endorse. There are realists at NAF and realists and non-interventionists at Cato who make real contributions, and many of them are contributors and colleagues at this magazine. Whether or not Bacevich would ever call himself by the name paleocon, we agree with his ideas, and he clearly he has a significant and important role in the debate. Quite a few of these scholars have published their arguments in TAC, and TAC is contributing to that debate just as much as the mainstream conservative magazines.
To the extent that our contributors have been getting things right and the people at the other outfits haven’t, I’d say our contribution and our role are more important as a matter of substance. It’s true, we don’t have swank conferences where people who have been wrong about almost everything for the last ten years sit around and fail to learn from their failures.
Do we have much influence on policymakers? Obviously not at present, but at some point in the past neoconservatives had little or no role in foreign policy debate until they created one for themselves. For months and years I have offered both criticism and alternative courses of action on this blog. If I offered nothing more than endless “heckling,” I would think that most people would have lost interest by now. Practically every column I have written for The Week so far has been a proposal for how the government should and should not handle its relations with various other states.
If this doesn’t count as something more than heckling, then it doesn’t mean much to call it a debate when the only people deemed to be real participants agree on almost everything except tactics.
By the way, if the only point is that people with unpopular opinions should not expect to prevail in a democracy, or that people outside the establishment should not expect to prevail over the establishment, then I completely agree.
Also:
If one believes (as I do), that the heckler’s veto is illegitimate, in what way exactly are the paleolibs supposed to be worthy adversaries?
That’s a telling way of putting it, since the implication is that you determine how “worthy” your adversary is based on whether you can defeat, ignore or stigmatize him, rather than by actually evaluating the worth of his position. It fits nicely with ridiculing anyone with a position opposed by the establishment as a “heckler” whose uncouth behavior robs him of his right to a fair hearing.
“Sometimes you have to suck it up and call a number.” – Darrell Royal
This doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of accommodations at one group’s conferences versus another’s. It’s not even a matter of “influence” as that’s usually understood. A person or idea can have (or not have) influence for good reasons or bad.
Instead, between paleocons and mainstream conservatives (or paleocons and the foreign policy establishment for that matter) there’s not enough common purpose or shared understanding of what’s feasible. In particular, mainstream conservatives accept that the Iraq War (and the Civil War) are historical realities instead of hypothetical contingencies that can be undone by fiat, which I think is fair to say comprises most of the “criticism and alternative courses of action on this blog.”
In this context, paleocon participation in the debate is essentially an attempt to deny America some means of self-determination over it’s foreign policy, ie the heckler’s veto. You can’t take the football and go home if it’s not your football in the first place.
I for one don’t think it necessarily has to be this way. But so far the paleocons haven’t been able to manage any other way.
Do you really think that we don’t accept that the Iraq war is a reality? This is just absurd. I was willing to take this question about our role in foreign policy debate seriously, but I see now that there’s no reason to do that when you’re going to respond like this. I answered your question, and it was clearly a waste of time to do that.
“Do you really think that we don’t accept that the Iraq war is a reality?”
No I don’t, in the sense that most of the argumentation here about Middle East issues (eg, the surge) is post hoc special pleading about counterfactuals at the expense of credibility.
I’m also thinking of the last time I checked out vdare.com, where the front page author emphasized that we couldn’t give up the “Lincoln is a bastard” narrative in the more topical context of opposing illegal immigration. To be fair, I don’t know if you believe that or not, but I think it’s fair to say it’s fairly representative of paleocons in general.
(Just to make sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.)
http://www.vdare.com/letters/tl_012409.htm
“That leads me to my point: what does VDARE.COM hope to accomplish, other than divide and discredit our movement by dredging up an old Anglo war?”
“paleocon participation in the debate is essentially an attempt to deny America some means of self-determination over it’s foreign policy”
Are paleocons somehow not part of America? I don’t get it.
“It fits nicely with ridiculing anyone with a position opposed by the establishment as a “heckler†whose uncouth behavior robs him of his right to a fair hearing.”
Remember, the emphasis is on the veto part. The essence on the heckler’s veto is to transform the legitimate right to speak one’s mind into a de facto veto over the community as a whole.
Daniel dear heart…you’re barking up the wrong tree on Afghanistan. Obama gave the military a fraction of what they wanted and left himself some escape exits. Remember this is the net, this stuff is around forever and someone could be replaying some of the “this Vietnam II” stuff in a couple of years time and it wont be redounding to your credit. As for the surge, its success or failure depends on the definition of success/failure. In the narrow sense sending another 30,000 guys and putting the insurgents on the payroll undoubtedly tamped down the violence a bit, well quite a bit actually. I don’t really see how anyone could argue against that proposition. However, did it resolve the underlying issues…. of course not. And we’re still seeing about 200 deaths a month from incidents and we still have 140,000 troops in situ so even tamping down violence is a relative term. It may have dropped the temperature a bit which will create a climate in which compromises can be hammered out but that’s hard to tell. My experience of Iraq is that the Iraqis are great deal makers so we may be surprised. The entire Iraq adventure was misconceived from the start and appallingly executed. The responsibility however rests squarely with the neocons. I don’t seem to remember Holbrooke, Scowcroft, Haas or any other members of what I suppose you could call the traditional US foreign policy establishment thinking this was a good idea. And don’t mention politicians votes, Rove as you well know timed the votes right before the mid terms to put the democrats between a rock and hard place and even then a majority of house members voted against the war resolution and half the Senate caucus. The impetus came from a bunch of doctrinaire conservatives within the administration and their spear carriers without like Kristol, Perle and co. The big question surely is why the hell did they do it. My own belief is oil for obvious reasons and domestic politics. They really thought this would be a Grenada style cakewalk wih huge domestic political dividends. The whole “mission accomplished” stunt said it all. You could say that for a year or two they were right…then it all went pear shaped. But there’s no doubt who is responsible….the culpability of the old foreign policy establishment is really limited to one or two operators like Kissinger who wanted him and his wife to continue receiving invites to WH dinner parties.
Ok, comments are back. Sorry for whatever that glitch was.
Our arguments against the “surge” weren’t made after the fact, and we laid out very clearly why we thought the political reconciliation the “surge” was designed to help bring about would not occur. We argued against escalation and in favor of a gradual withdrawal to neighboring countries in concert with regional diplomacy. That is called an alternative.
After the Awakening reduced violence in Anbar and sectarian cleansing in Baghdad had eliminated many of the mixed neighborhoods targeted by the mass violence of ‘06, the “surge” did not have everything to do with the improving security, but it did accomplish something with respect to security, which is something I have acknowledged for a long time. The question was always whether it was worth risking more lives and digging in deeper in a war that we should never have entered in the first place. We said no, and I think the last two years and what is starting to happen now show that we were more right than wrong. At the beginning, we argued that this was not a “new strategy,” as its supporters ignorantly and repeatedly called it, but a new tactical plan in service to the same failed strategy of propping up a sectarian government in a fissiparous country.
Again, we were more right than wrong in what we said in early 2007 when it mattered. Back then, people like you didn’t want to hear any of this and said things like, “Give it a chance to work!” Well, we have given it a chance, and a lot of Americans have died to give it a chance, and it hasn’t worked. If you want to talk about lack of credibility, look at the supporters of the “surge,” and look especially at those who think that it has succeeded.
In the context of immigration policy debate, I don’t see much point in talking about Lincoln, except perhaps to observe that he exploited immigrants as cannon fodder in his war while also belonging to the political tradition that viewed Catholic immigrants qua Catholic immigrants with contempt. That might cause people to think a bit more about the politics of mass immigration, and might offer a good example of the kind of anti-immigration movement restrictionists should try to avoid being, but on the whole I don’t think it should take up too much time. I don’t think criticism of Lincoln ought to be some kind of reverse litmus test to demonstrate one’s restrictionist bona fides. There has to be some sense of priorities. If someone is writing on an historical topic or a topic more related to matters of war, presidential power or civil liberties, a dissenting perspective on Lincoln can be very valuable. On immigration, I confess that I don’t see the relevance.
I don’t like litmus tests as a general rule, and I try not to insist on them for the most part. For instance, I know a lot of opponents of illegal immigration originally backed the war and many still do. I think they are wrong, but I try not to berate them when we have goals in common that are more directly relevant to our actual national interests. Your generalization about paleos on this point seems pretty unfounded. There are some to whom it may apply, but criticism of Lincoln is not the constant preoccupation of ours that others seem to think it is.
” but I am more than happy to hold accountable all of the people who have blundered so horribly.”…..so who do you have in mind, name names in the trad Democratic foreign policy establishment….I really can’t think of any outside of some politicians who don’t really fit the category. I would also say it was fairly lukewarm on the conservative side, Scowcroft was a well known opponent and Dick Lugar wasn’t exactly falling over to endorse it.
Remember, the emphasis is on the veto part. The essence on the heckler’s veto is to transform the legitimate right to speak one’s mind into a de facto veto over the community as a whole.
I won’t beat the now-dead horse of the rhetorical disingenuousness of your “heckler” dismissal. Trying to imagine the alternative universe in which paleocons have anything approaching the power with which to veto a community consensus, though, was a bit of a fun exercise. The only veto I can see being pursued is the one that comes from overturning the consensus. Or perhaps you’re reacting to the populism? Rallying the population to not concede to the establishment consensus is perhaps a better description of what you have in mind?
” I don’t seem to remember Holbrooke, Scowcroft, Haas or any other members of what I suppose you could call the traditional US foreign policy establishment thinking this was a good idea.”
Well, your memory has some gaps, then. Of those you mentioned, I believe only Scowcroft warned against the war before it started, and for the most part whatever dissenters there were in establishment circles kept their objections to themselves. Holbrooke naturally supported it whole-heartedly; I don’t think he has seen a military intervention in the last 20 years he didn’t embrace. Were neocons a moving, driving force, and probably the most important single faction behind the war? Yes. They took the initiative, but the foreign policy establishment either agreed with them or acquiesced.
I judge the “surge” on the terms the Bush administration laid out. They set out goals and failed to reach them. How else are we supposed to judge plans and policies? Much of the improvement in security came from other factors not directly related to the additional brigades. I am willing to credit U.S. counterinsurgency efforts with the emergence of the Awakening and the apparently temporary benefits that came from that, but this was not part of the “surge” itself.
Nation-building in Afghanistan is a waste of time and resources. I don’t think I’m going to look back in a few years and feel foolish for saying so now. I don’t believe I have ever compared Afghanistan to Vietnam. I know Thomas Ricks has, and that gives me pause, because he tends to know what he’s talking about, but I don’t see it that way. I was intrigued by that op-ed the other day co-authored by Deutch, which was making arguments about the importance of Pakistan and the need to re-orient our policy to focus on Pakistan that were very similar to mine.
Daniel: the “awakening” was putting them on the payroll. Rewards to be paid in cash or kind.
Name names? Okay. In addition to Holbrooke, you have Ivo Daalder, Ken Pollack, O’Hanlon, Fred Hiatt, Thomas Friedman, most of the top editors at The New Republic, almost every Democratic candidate for President in 2004 and 2008 with the exception of Kucinich, Gravel and Obama. Those are the ones that spring to mind immediately.
Every Republican Senator except one voted for the resolution, and every Democrat in the leadership or with aspirations of higher office voted for it as well. The much more interesting thing is to try to track down which prominent Democratic foreign policy figures didn’t vocally support the war, much less oppose it outright. There weren’t many. I didn’t think this was a controversial claim.
Yes, it was putting them on the payroll. When did I say otherwise?
“Holbrooke naturally supported it whole-heartedly”
…..I think you’re wrong there Daniel. I seem to remember him making a few neutral comments but if you can locate some statements where he “wholeheartedly supported” the Iraq invasion I’d be happy to admit I’m wrong. Another voice that was strongly against it was Zbig and I even kept a couple of his critques because they were so well argued as were those from Haas who was neutral to start with because he was on the presidnts foreign policy council but rapidly turned negative. On Afghanistan nation building I agree with your basic premise 100% but you ignore where we are. We can no more just pack up and leave Afghanistan than we can do the same in Iraq. My personal view is Obama has launched a holding operation and has absolutely no intention of signing off on a generation long committment costing several trillion. As I said the other day when we were talking about this I think you’re over hyping what’s actually happening. I also more or less agree with you about the surge, but the situation was deteriorating to such an extent they really had no option but to try and get control of the situation.
“In addition to Holbrooke, you have Ivo Daalder, Ken Pollack, O’Hanlon, Fred Hiatt, Thomas Friedman, most of the top editors at The New Republic,”
…..Well I don’t agree with you about Holbrooke unless you produce some evidence. The rest are a very mixed bag. Daalder, O’Hanlon and Pollack would fit the category but not Hiatt and Friedman who are journalists, and not Walter Lippman type journalists either, and certainly not remotelyThe New Republic which is Marty Peretz and a bunch extreme pro Zionists.
I am reasonably sure Holbrooke not only supported it, but wrote an op-ed in favor of it.
I will try to dig up the op-ed, which I thought was in the Post, but second-hand evidence seems to confirm my recollection. Walt wrote about Holbrooke earlier this year:
Then there is this, which also reminds me of other big Dem luminaries who backed the war to the hilt, namely Dennis Ross and Albright. Even if he did not write an op-ed, I think it is true that he played an important role in getting the Democratic leadership to roll over and follow the administration.
The statement Walt is quoting came from an appearance on MSNBC on Jan. 23, 2003. It may be that he endorsed the war on television and not in print, but the effect is similar.
“I didn’t think this was a controversial claim.”
It’s a very controversial claim. As I recall the Dems in the senate split just about 50/50 and their were several leadership types who voted against. In the house a clear majority of dems voted against. The most noted, or coherent Dem “foreign policy” voice against was Zbig but there were others.
“In the context of immigration policy debate, I don’t see much point in talking about Lincoln,…”
This was exactly my thought when I read that the first time. It’s not a matter of litmus tests, it’s that the autonomy other of people means requires that, independently of whether we agree with them, we have very little if any fiat power over what they care about or put energy into.
Ie, immigration is obviouly a very topical issue in contemporary American political issue, whereas Americans could care less about the paleo narrative wrt Lincoln.
Or in the case of Iraq, most of criticism of the surge, imo, was motivated by need to justify or vindicate the critics’ opposition to the war in the first place.
Therefore, paleocons (or intellectual minorities in general for that matter) have to be willing to put aside their hobbyhorse issues or explicity justify their relevance to engage the mainstream cultural consensus about other things. Otherwise, it’s simply an injustice to the other party’s autonomy: a heckler’s veto.
Btw Daniel quite apart from the political timing involved you’re also forgetting that a lot of people were fed a lot of baloney about Hussein….just as Powell was…..and he was in the administration!…..so It’s a bit hard to beat up on the Hiatts and Zakarias of this world who were only journalists.
“As I recall the Dems in the senate split just about 50/50 and their were several leadership types who voted against. ”
Several? I don’t think so. Perhaps one person out of the entire Democratic leadership opposed it, and I think that was Pelosi, who at that time was Gephardt’s whip. The nays in the Senate vote were a who’s who of safe-seat Democrats with no realistic aspirations of higher office. The Democrats split 29-22 in favor of the war, which is a bit more lopsided than 50-50, and would be even more if I weren’t counting Sanders with the Dems. Think about that: of 50 Senators registered as Democrats, only 21 voted no. Certainly, that’s better than the figures on the other side of the aisle, but hardly a cause for celebration. You can review the House nay votes and tell me if there are any other “leadership types” you can find.
Clearly, Kucinich is to be credited with putting together a decent number of nay votes, and a clear majority of Democrats in the House, and I have always respected Kucinich for his work on this, but the weight of the party leadership and its foreign policy thinkers was always on the other side.
Zakaria–I knew I was forgetting someone! Thanks.
Yes, a lot of people were fed baloney, as you say, but some of us were skeptical enough to understand that governments feed people baloney to get them to go along with their bad policies. Foreign policy experts and editors of major newspapers should have an overdeveloped sense of skepticism and caution in these matters rather than overflowing reserves of credulity. I don’t know why so many were so willing to trust the administration in everything it said, but if they deserve less criticism than people inside the administraton they are still accountable for what they said and wrote in public, because their opinions carried weight and lent credibility to the administration’s case for war.
Saying, “The government misled me” is the “the devil made me do it” of weak excuses for policy mistakes. Of course the government misled them and us; it is the government, and will do what it needs to do to pursue its goals. The frustrating thing is that pretty much everyone in the government believes he is doing right by his country and doing the right thing, but these ideas combined with vast power make for a lousy combination.
As far as the congressional votes were concerned as I said earlier Rove got the Dems against a wall with the timing but a majority of dems voted against it in the house and the notion that it had much to do with Kucinich who is something of a joke is I’m afraid risible. No they just thought it was crazy… as it was. As for he senate I’d say 29/22 is fairly even. I’ll need to check but didn’t Kennedy and Durbin vote against despite the bum info. I’ve thought this was nuts from day one but I’m quite clear who made the decisions and it wasn’t Joe Biden or Richard Holbrooke. Essentially what you’re saying is a Gore admin would have invaded Iraq and I don’t there’s the least likelihood that would have happened. It’s shorthand but this was neocon decision the rest of the folks were essentially bystanders.
Kucinich was the organizer of the antiwar vote on the floor. That’s just the way it happened.
“Essentially what you’re saying is a Gore admin would have invaded Iraq…”
No, that’s not necessarily what I’m saying. A Gore admin would have been staffed to the gills with all of the pro-war Democrats and their advisors, so there would always have been a chance that they would attack Iraq, but it would have been less likely. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have started another war for different reasons more suited to humanitarian interventionist views. The leadership of both parties has accepted aggressive war as a legitimate means of policy; they disagree about targets, tactics and timing.
Obama is not vastly different from McCain in his foreign policy views; Gore and Bush were even closer together. This is not an accident, but a function of constraints imposed by entrenched interests and political forces. The argument I made against personalizing our relations with other countries applies to assessments of our own government’s policies as well. The differences between what Bush did and what Gore would have done are probably shockingly fewer than anyone would imagine.