If It's Friday . . .
. . . then I can get my blood pressure raised by reading Charles Krauthammer. It's astounding stuff. First off, he explains that idealistic rhetoric has just been a smokescreen for an agenda of regional hegemony (someone tell George Packer): "We are instead trying to sustain fragile democracies in three strategically important countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon -- that form the geographic parentheses around the principal threat to Western interests in the region, the Syria-Iran axis."
Is it an axis of . . . evil? Nevermind.
Next comes the key phrase, the mind-blowingly obvious error that lurks at the heart of the project. "We are trying to bring democracy to Iraq in particular because a pro-Western government enjoying legitimacy and popular support would have been the most enduring means of securing our interests there." Now ask yourself, what does the fact that a pro-western, popular, and legitimate government in Baghdad would serve our interests have to do with the logic of toppling Saddam and then holding an election? It also makes sense if you simply assume -- for no reason at all -- that an election will bring to power a government eager to support America's regional strategic ambitions. The upshot? "We should nonetheless make a last effort to change the composition of the government and assemble a new one composed of those -- Kurds, moderate Sunnis, secular Shiites and some of the religious Shiites -- who might be capable of reaching a grand political settlement."
You see! We invaded Iraq to build a democracy, but the Iraqis ruined it by voting the wrong way, so we can fix things by dictating to them the terms of a more appropriate parliamentary coalition. After that perhaps we can unleash Chiang!
Comments
as always, we are forced to ask: why do columnists get tenure?
not to mention: when will a publisher wake up and realize that overpaid pundits who produce a couple of chicken-scratchings a week make no economic sense (admittedly, it's not clear if donald graham ever wakes up)....
You missed the best part! We should give Maliki an ulimtatum- 2 months or we're bookin'! So a Krauthammer is one-third of an FU!
I think two months is considered "one Khalilzad"
Exactly, Krauthammer, an installed democracy is the answer. Ninety-five percent of democracies worldwide think our government is careening off on a half-wit adventure led by a dim bulb of a president. And those democracies are in places like France, Spain and Canada, where we haven't screwed every available pooch or dropped bombs on wedding parties or tortured taxi drivers, at least not yet. A democracy in Iraq? Yeah, Chuck, they'll be a bulwark of American support for decades to come.
He is an insufferable sniveler. But he did say one thing with which I could agree. Why would anyone think that Iran and Syria might be interested in helping the U.S. save its sorry ass if the U.S. is not going to recognize officially that circumstances have dealt Iran and Syria the big prizes in the aftermath of the Iraq lunacy?
"We are trying to bring democracy to Iraq in particular because a pro-Western government enjoying legitimacy and popular support would have been the most enduring means of securing our interests there."
Curiously Freudian use of tenses; implies that we are still attempting something that once seemed to be a good idea, even though it's now been proved a failure. The Kraut's solution, of course, is to clap harder.
Dr. Strangelove, I presume.
Somebody help me on the "chiang" thing?
Chiang Kai-shek?
What Quentin said. We're not going to get squat out of Syria and Iran. All the calls for "please, let's just talk to them, what can it hurt and blah blah blah" are just as asinine as Krauthammer's call to divide the country in some way that will magically solve all our problems.
Our Iraq adventure is going to end in disaster. We just need to pick the least disastrous course and do it.
Perhaps someone should popularize a new term -- "freedom-hating democracies", which represents countries who elect people America doesn't like. Examples include the Palestinians, Venezuela, possibly Iraq, and any traditional democratic ally who doesn't fully support America's policies.
The one bright spot of this whole debacle is watching the Neo-nutters try to salvage their reputations.
Imagine if Krauthammers ideas had never been implemented. His ravings would still be taken seriously now, and possibly for years to come.
Full explanation of unleash Chiang here.
re: chiang - it is an old Bush family saying representing a mystical force, origins a bit murky. as I have heard it, it was used in family tennis matches, so it could be from Michael Chang, or it could be a merging of that and what WillieStyle says above.
Kevin Brennan's link appears to be much more accurate than my rehashing.
talk about decapitating the snake. beyond the emperor not having any clothes on he seems to have lost his head in the bargin. (I suppose in a way that saves us from suffering the fashion faux pas a hat for him would risk) it's getting clearer just why the mossad agents posing as utility workers were seen cheering on the rooftop of an apartment building across the river from the collapsing world trade center towers. like krauthammer's envisionment of leading edge neo-con momentum they were intrigued with the idea of making a little "history". why they were ushered safely and quietly out of the country isnt really a mystery, as much as it's another component of the complete deception the press would rather not address. (formerly known as The Truth)
You shut up, Krautthammer very intelligent alanyst, you are nothing but blogger wanna bes.
Two months is metric, 2 semimillideciFU's. You Murkins wouldn't understand it.
I'm curious... how does one visually distinguish "Mossad agents posing as utility workers" from, you know, actual utility workers? That sounds like a useful skill.
You like that? Try this comment over at Defense Tech (I hasten to add this is a comment, not a posting by the site authors. The authors are a fairly realistic bunch):
"freedom-hating democracies"
By your definition, this would be most of the democracies in the world. If you are a coalition of one, could it possibly be that you've have gotten it wrong?
I think the internets will have proved useful if in the future every time someone says, "The next six months will prove..." that an off-stage horse would loudly snicker. Like in a Mel Brooks movie. You'd think that would be impossible -- where could you find a horse at the NY Times? -- but I think that the phrase is actually never uttered except where klieg lights burn.
Cranky Observer on December 1, 2006 11:28 AM
I hope this post was a farce. Internment camps for everyone.....are you Cambodian, maybe predisposed to wearing rouge, perhaps related to Pol Pot?
> are you Cambodian
Good reading skills there Shared: I posed a _quote_ from another blog site, not something I had written myself.
And no, I don't think the original author intended to write a farce; I am pretty sure he was serious based on many similar things I have read on milblogs.
Cranky
A legitimate democratic government enjoying popular support would have meant nothing. India has one. Yet Pakistan (Islamic military theocracy) and China (communist dictatorship) are closer to us and have the 'Most Favored Nation' status, not India.
I think I detect some actual editing of his column! Note how he refers to "moderate Sunnis"; last time I checked, the magic formula for a new Iraqi government included "Sunnis who recognize their minority status but are willing to accept an important, generously offered place at the table." Progress?
At least the Defense Tech commenter is intellecually honest. Krauthammer basically wants the same thing but he can't admit it, possibly even to himself. It is quite clear that when conservatives speak of "democracy" in the Middle East they are not talking about giving the population the ability to choose its own leadership and a voice in how their countries are run, they really mean letting the Middle East be run by people who want to share our values and will align their interests with the West. In some cases it is not even clear that the commenters truly understand that they are conflating two very different ideas. At the heart of this seems to be an unconscious (?) assumption that devout Muslims do not deserve any political representation and that a Middle Eastern Government that does not share the value of, say, 60-70% of the population it governs would nonethelesss be perfectly legitimate - certainly this is true of Krauthammer and Marty Peretz.
As if an Iraqi democracy was going to invest its oil profits in the West.
I can telenetically diagnose that Krauthammer suffers, like Frist, from "Med School Megalomania."
yes, let's install a democracy, just like we do here in the US.
(it's up to you to decide whether I'm being sarcastic or not)
shorter Krauthammer: "C'mon you Kurds/Shia/Sunni, knock this shit off and get along!"
Seriously... what does it take to get through to these people that their false idol has feet of clay?
No WMD in Iraq.
No al-Qaeda in Iraq, at least before the insurgency started.
Capturing Saddam's sons didn't help the situation in Iraq.
"Democracy" has not helped Iraq, nor has it spread throughout the Middle East, in fact 'democracy' has been given a bad name.
Capturing Saddam hasn't helped the situation in Iraq.
The war has cost far, far, far more than promised.
The war was supposed to last weeks or months at most. Now, most knowledgeable commenters are talking in terms of years or decades.
The Coalition of the Willing has become the Coalition of the Leaving. The PMs of Spain and of Italy were defeated in no small part due to deep opposition to the war. The PM of the UK is leaving office due to the same reasons.
Our military is broken.
The voters threw the Republicans out a few weeks ago due in part to deep opposition to opposition to the war.
Bush's approval rating has languished in the low to mid 30s for most of the last year.
For God's sake, what does it take to get through to these people?
Dr. Strangelove: Sir! I have a plan!
[standing up from his wheelchair]
Dr. Strangelove: Mein Führer! I can walk!
"Unleash Chiang" was indeed a joke of the elder Bush, but, it was not about some mystical force, rather it was a slap at the earlier generation of right-wing foreign-policy crazies, who argued that we had "lost China" to the Communists by not allowing Chiang Kai-Shek to win against Mao.
The argument, such as it was, was that we just needed to "unleash Chiang" and let him win, and, we could have saved China.
The elder Bush (and most sane people) recognized this as nutty enough to be made into a joke.
joshb
Krauthammer needs to team up with Friedman and take their show on the road.
Neoconservatives and the Dilemmas of Strategy and Ideology, 1992-2006
In all the discussions of neoconservative foreign policy that have taken place over the past couple of years --- some more informed than others, some more disapproving that others --- there is one abiding perception that seems to unite critics and proponents alike: that a neoconservative foreign policy is distinct from other strands of conservatism because of its emphasis on democracy promotion and that, in fact, exporting democracy for strategic and moral reasons --- and through hard power if necessary --- is one of the central defining purposes of contemporary second generation neoconservatism.
This paper will challenge the dominant view that neoconservatism prioritises democracy promotion. It will examine the nature of the neoconservative foreign policy strategy articulated during the 1990s --- which, it is argued, has been widely misinterpreted --- and will discuss the strategic and ideological tensions inherent within the strategy. Though the George W. Bush administration has not followed a neoconservative strategy in every respect, his administration has been strongly influenced by it and so some of these strategic and ideological tensions have also emerged since 9/11. It is my belief that the central cause of this tension is that the most important priority of the neoconservative strategy has always been to preserve the post-cold war ‘unipolar moment’ by perpetuating American pre-eminence and this clashes with the purported emphasis on democratization. The strategy also risks imperial overstretch and, for the most part, it fails to consider matters that are not state-based economic or state-based military issues.
At the end of the cold war, the first generation of neoconservatives that had emerged in the early seventies, was replaced by a second, younger generation that began to gravitate around the idea of American unipolarism.1 (This is the group that will be the subject of our discussion here.) It is important to clarify from the beginning that although this younger group was organised and led primarily by neoconservatives such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan, it was not their exclusive domain; rather it was a mix of neocons and other conservatives, such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who all shared a vision of a unipolar America, a vision of global dominance. Gary Dorrien refers to this group collectively as “unipolarists”.2 In the main, neocons were the most important organisers and theorists within this network, but their ideas enjoyed some wider support.3 How much of a difference there, in fact, is between neocons and their other conservative sympathisers is an issue we will return to.
In terms of strategy, this group embraced the concept of unipolarism.4 At the end of the Cold War, American found itself, to use Charles Krauthammer’s famous phrase, in a “unipolar” position. It no longer had to accept the existence of a competing superpower, so rather than following a defensive strategy, like the one put forward by the first generation of neocons in the 70s, the US could now project power offensively to shape the world and construct an American imperium.5
This was captured in the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document, written for then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, by staffers Zalmay Khalilzad and Lewis Libby, who worked for the undersecretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz.6 In contrast to the first generation of neocons, they now had the freedom to develop a strategy that rejected coexistence with any rival power and actively sought to prevent the emergence of a new competitor. This was the essence of the neoconservative strategy that was built upon by their think tanks and advocacy groups during the nineties.
In preventing the emergence of a rival power, Washington would be constructing --- in the words of Kristol and Kagan ----a “benevolent global hegemony”.7 While this would not solve every problem in the world, American hegemony would be better than any conceivable alternative. Joshua Muravchik wrote in 1992 of “the soothing effect” of American power because it could maintain order in the world and reassure those feeling threatened by other states.8 Moreover, according to Kristol and Kagan, “most of the world’s major powers” “welcome…and prefer” American hegemony to any other alternative because they are much better off under Washington’s tutelage since it looks after their interests too9 and thus discourages them from seeking to challenge American power.
According to most of the neoconservatives, the “benevolence” of this “empire” --- to use Kagan’s words --- was assured by the fact that moral ideals and national interest almost always converge.10 What is good for American preponderance is, de facto, good both morally and strategically for most of the rest of the world too. As Wolfowitz wrote in Spring 2000: “Nothing could be less realistic than… the ‘realist’ view of foreign policy that dismisses human rights as an important tool of American foreign policy.”11
More:
Neoconservatives and the Dilemmas of Strategy and Ideology, 1992-2006 [pdf]
"We are trying to bring democracy to Iraq in particular because a pro-Western government enjoying legitimacy and popular support would have been the most enduring means of securing our interests there."
CK makes the assumption that a democratic Iraq would align itself with "our interests". Which would be, what, exactly? Low oil prices? And why would what's in "our interests" be in the interests of Iraq?
Now that we've got unleash Chiang out of the way, could someone please tell me what an "alanyst" might be?
Krauthammer did the same thing with Gulf War 1.
Back when it was wardrumming time, he spouted all the nonsense about how Bush Sr brought together a magical, amazing coalition of nations blah blah blah.
Years afterward, he angrily admitted that the so-called 'coalition' was only a "fig leaf" for US-UK leadership -- angrily because he thought that a mighty imperial power like the US shouldn't try to hide its massive, muscular, impressive martial prowess behind a 'fig leaf' of coalitions.
"The argument, such as it was, was that we just needed to "unleash Chiang" and let him win, and, we could have saved China."
I thought this saying dated from the 50s and the idea was that the Pacific Fleet should ferry him across the Taiwan Strait for another run a Mao?
My dad used to say "Did you unleash Chiang Kaishek?" to mean had I let the cat out. The cat's name wasn't ever Chiang, or anything. My dad was just a guy who was amused by weird little sayings.
Speaking of unleashing Chiang, did anyone notice the insane op-ed last week in the LAT claiming we can still win in Iraq, if we just back Maliki - just as we could have won in Vietnam if we had stayed true to fracking Ngo Dinh Diem?
It's the mother of all Vietnam revisionism. It had to happen sooner or later.
Please tell me in 30 years I won't be watching biometric holoblogs about how our occupation of Mars can still be successful if only we back Zorgon Thanax to the hilt, just as we would have won in Iraq if we'd stuck with Chalabi.
r€nato - you forgot Zarqawi, who was GWB's Iraqi bogeyman for almost as long as Saddam was. On those rare occasions when I run into wingnuts who say the war's still winnable, I ask them, "So, how'd that Zarqawi thing work out for you? Hardly any insurgency left, right?"
Krauthammer says:
If an improbable hypothetical isn't satisified in two months, "the U.S. will abandon the Green Zone, retire to its bases, move much of its personnel to Kurdistan where we are welcome and safe, and let the civil war take its course."
In other words, he would order a troop pullback and declare a unilateral ceasefire quicker than Murtha would.
The Kraut reminds me that not all the members of my tribe have brains and commen sense. Oy!
I'm pretty sure that Krauthammer's using the neo-con definition of "democracy", i.e. "not a threat to Israel". Other definitions, emphasizing majority rule, minority rights, respect for legal norms, etc, are archaisms, something Chaucer might talk about.
Executive Branch Conflict says "We Stay"
Were it not for the fact that two thirds of the earth's known hydrocarbon reserves are in or proximate to Iraq we would not be in our present mess. Each and every one of Vice President Cheney's lies concerning Iraq are consistent with his serving the interests of Halliburton and the major oils. To say that he and, to a similar or lesser extent, the President do not have the appearance of a conflict of interest is disingenuous.
Given that the executive branch has a conflict of interest, what follows is that US foreign policy will be skewed to meet the oil interests until 2009.
We stay. We stay. We stay!
(cognitorex blogspot)
Doktor Krauthammer recommends "Kurds, moderate Sunnis, secular Shiites and some of the religious Shiites" to make up his govt of choice.
He tries to avoid the fervent Muslim element in a country where for hundreds of years religion has been the state. Does he not read books about an area he hopes to opine about?
Krauthammer has shifted from "bring our enemies to their knees" (Sept 2001) to "give the vote to our enemies' ... neighbors". I don't follow. He also sounds like the very UN apologists he criticizes, asking for some more time, one last try, and hope.
Don't worry, Matt, 45 comments and someone finally got your little Dr. Evil joke.
"I like animals; maybe I'd be a vet."
"An evil vet?"
"No!.... Maybe work at a petting zoo."
"An evil petting zoo?"
"you always DO that!"
"a country where for hundreds of years religion has been the state."
That's not Iraq's history, at all, not that Krauthammer is right, either. Iraq, 80% Shiite, has a long history of oppressive rule by Sunnis (e. g., the Ottomans), secularists (like Saddam and his predecessors), and Europeans. You have to go back to the early 16th century to find any appreciable period in which Shiite religious types were in charge.
You see! We invaded Iraq to build a democracy, but the Iraqis ruined it by voting the wrong way, ....
Just like those darn Chileans in 1970. We got that straightened out, eventually.
Cranky Observer on December 1, 2006 11:28 AM,
That passage/comment reminds me of the film "Hearts and Minds" where they show napalm ripping through a village and children running and screaming while a voiceover of some guy seriously saying "The Orientals don't value life the way we do."
Glad-to-have-him-aboard:
>> In other words, he would order a troop pullback and declare a unilateral ceasefire quicker than Murtha would.
I was wondering if anyone was going to point that out.
As a spokesman for american imperialism kraut basically is spilling the beans as to the real intent of the iraqi invasion. It was nothing more than a power grab to further american imperial interests in the middle east that was not informed by historical precedent but by a surfeit of hubris doomed to failure. What a miserable batch of war criminals,
Never been a fan of The Charles, but one thing really creeps me out.
I've caught him on Sunday shows sitting with his wheel chair draped in a dark cloth and barely noticable.
Why? This isn't the 1940s. Is he that uncomfortable with viewers knowing his physical condition?
If that is the case, that is so sad.
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