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Fri 17 Jan, 2003 08:04 am
Ian Buruma
A squeamish namby-pamby European wimp joins the Washington war debate
Tuesday January 14, 2003
The Guardian
Washington, according to some reports, feels like a city at war. A few days in the US capital are enough to reveal the splits, not just between Democrats and Republicans, but also the various factions on the right, squabbling for the president's fickle attention. Much depends on the outcome of these struggles.
Several people I met, none of them even vaguely on the left, were convinced there would be no war. The president, they assured me, was backtracking. Others told me, with equal conviction, that Bush certainly would go to war. Then there are those who talk as if the war is already over.
I was invited to take part in a discussion at the American Enterprise Institute about Iraq after Saddam. The AEI is a neo-conservative outfit, whose members are imbued with a revolutionary mission to bring democracy to the world, backed by American force. Our discussion, in which several prominent Arab liberals took part, was on the whole reasonable and interesting. We argued about the future role, if any, of the Baathist party, of the Iraqi armed forces, of the Sunnis, and of the Kurds. We talked about possible lessons to be drawn from the US role in postwar Germany and Japan.
But on the merits of the war itself, there could be no question. That was settled. Scepticism on this score was met with the kind of eye-rolling impatience with which committed Marxists treat people who still fail to understand the laws of history. In the course of this eye-rolling, I learned a new expression for the word "aesthetic", as in: "Oh, you're only against the war for aesthetic reasons."
The assumption here is that one is a namby-pamby European wimp, too squeamish for the necessary task at hand. Sure, a few tens of thousands may die, but what is that compared to the glories of democratic revolution? This goes beyond anti-European prejudices. It is where the neo-conservative ideologues reveal the now distant, but still unmistakably Trotskyist antecedents of their dogmatism. One cannot afford to be sentimental if one is to change the world. To a true believer the means to an essential end are indeed a matter of aesthetics.
This is quite different from the more cynical attitudes of traditional conservatives, whose interests are in every respect more businesslike. Order and stability are the aim. If our man is a brute, at least he is ours. And if that means violent oppression, well, as that great bourgeois character, Mr Peachum, says in Brecht's Three-penny Opera, "that is the way things are in the world." This is the attitude of Republican conservatives who don't believe in democracy in the Middle East, and see no point in trying. They may favour a war, but only for practical reasons.
There is, in fact, a parallel here with the occupation of Japan after the second world war. The Japanese prime minister, Yoshida Shigeru, divided the American occupiers into realists and idealists. The realists were rightwing conservatives, who worked together with Japanese conservatives to maintain an authoritarian, pro-business regime, governed by old bureaucrats, some of whom had been war criminals. The idealists were Democratic New Dealers, who encouraged trade unionists, socialists and Japanese liberals to establish an American-style democracy.
The idealists managed to push through many necessary reforms in the early years of the occupation, and Japanese democracy, such as it is, owes them a great debt. But once the cold war began, realism prevailed, war criminals were released from prison, leftists purged, and Japan became a conservative, bureaucratic, de facto one-party state.
My point is that the neo-conservatives today, as far as Iraq is concerned, are the idealists, and if their revolutionary ideals have any chance of succeeding, they will have to prevail over the realists, the oil men and the country-club Republicans, who will surely stand in their way. The irony here is that what is left of the left, on the whole, shares the views of the old right. Few believe in a democratic revolution in the Middle East, and even fewer think it is up to America to enforce it.
So there we are, on the cusp of a war which may or may not happen. If it does, the results in Iraq, and other parts of the Middle East, are not likely to be very aesthetic, but the future will depend less on battles fought in Baghdad, Basra or Tikrit, than on the wars which will rage in Washington DC.
Is this not an interesting notion? Recall the op ed piece in the NY Times by Brent Scowcroft suggesting Daniel Perle head up the first landing party into Bagdhad. Or John Quincy Adam's warning in 1821 that if America were tempted to "become the dictatress of the world, she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."
Realists, even if one were to say nothing else postive about them, do at least understand the dangers of 'hubris', that it tempts the state to a juvenile imprudence and the individual to the vulgarities of pridefullness.
Mere blather and academic-sounding taxonomies. What, pray tell, is his point? He sets up a moderately interesting analogy with American viewpoints on the post war reconstruction of Japan, - but he does nothing with it. He makes no meaningful distinction between the views of the "idealists" and the "realists" among "neoconservatives" as he calls them. The reference to Brecht's "Three Penny Opera" was telling. More 'fin de siecle' hand wringing from a pessimistic European.
Hi george...sturdy oatmeal for breakfast this morning, I see.
"Pessimistic European"...yes, that's the trouble with those guys over there, it's just too damned dank and cold and cloudy all the time. Who'd want to get out from under the down quilts just to go off killing and burning? Talk about your hand-wringers - they're sure it.
I think the equation here is, on the one hand, the old style conservative set of values and policies (Scowcroft would be a good example, or Ford, etc. - think of them as your daddy's conservatives) and the new Turks (Perle, Wolfowitz, Kristol).
What Baruma points to is an evangelical fervor notably present in the new youngs boys (none who've actually fought anytime) to spread wholesome, right-hearted, godly, American goodness across a sordid and lonely world. They know, you see, that they stand on God's right hand as it were, and He has told them (just as he earlier spoke to Trotsky and friends) that they alone have it right and that no matter how much or how loudly the peoples of the world say "We disagree, so bugger off", it is morally incumbent upon them to do what they know is right anyway.
I'm paraphrasing slightly.
Do I detect an ad hominem attack on those who have advocated American intervention in the Persian Gulf?
George old pal (I've PMed something over to you)
No, this isn't an ad hominem. It could be if I were to say, "Of course we shouldn't go into Iraq because neo cons have said we should and we know they aren't to be trusted." Thus if I said that, I would be attacking the speaker, rather than addressing why we should or shouldn't go into Iraq.
Baruma is doing something very interesting here. He is making a claim about analogies between Trotskyites and the modern movement within conservatism often referred to (even by themselves) as neo conservatives. There's nothing logically wrong with such an 'observation' or idea. We can, for example, say that modern conservatism is deeply influenced by the evangelical wing within and pretty much everyone would now consider that a fair statement.
Blatham,
Well, I answered your PM and still believe my assertion with respect to your post above is correct. Not a big point, but one I believe you should recognize - for your own benefit.
I reread the Baruma piece with the Trotskyite point in mind. OK, but I hardly think this is in any way insightful or illuminating. For a moment I thought he would take it somewhere with the Japan occupation analogy, but he didn't. (Indeed there he implies that his sympathy is with the idealogues). Hence my reference to blather.
That contemporary conservatism is deeply influenced by peope holding ideas also advocated by Pearle, Wolfowitz, et. al. is hardly news. With just a modicum of insight one could relate these ideas to those of Reagan and Thatcher, but even that was missing.
My breakfast was quite good - a good workout followed by fruit, bread, and coffee. Oatmeal not required. (by the way there was a good deal more pleasing art in that wisecrack than there was in the article you cited.)
george
Well, thanks for the oatmeal compliment, but I'd change intellectual places with Baruma in a quick instant.
Quickly, as I'm off to work, frankly I'm not sure Baruma takes a side here very clearly at all, but I'd guess he is unhappy with what he sees as the 'idealist project' because it is so susceptible to the blindness of pride. I think that is his point actually, that this part of the conservative movement is in danger of the same pride-caused blindness as were the Trotskyites. In the Japanese example, I think he might be suggesting that the 'realists' actually get the gears of functioning society going, and that the idealists though contributing something of value, can get those gears badly gummed up.
Academic-sounding taxonomies? Georgeob - you've outdone yourself.
Blatham,
You at last offered something a bit meaningful for what might have been behind his arguments. However Baruma neither said nor implied that.
I am not familiar with the man, but am willing to concede that he might be all that you assert. However, the piece you quoted does not support that proposition.
Are you then an advocate of the Argument by authority?
Have a good day at work. (I'm taking the day off)
You have made some good points but instead of all the intellectual arguments what about the old fashioned idea of common sense or has such a possibility become obsolete? The neoconservatives may consider themselves to be superior because they are intellectuals but they are an important part of the radical right along with libertarians and Christian Right.
It's the neo-conservatives who advocate a revolution, barely skidding past doing it by use of arms who bother me. Their ideology doesn't show much common sense to me if common sense means the desire to force it down all our throats. We went through this in the 60's with the John Birch Society. I don't ignore their right to express themselves but Ian Baruma brings up some questions about how they are organized that is a forbodding message for all of us. They're on the hard sell and it's no different than being drug into the closing room at an auto agency. I'm not buying.
Damnit! Got work to do ... but I'll be back. Go on without me, I'll catch up and jump in as soon as I can.
timber
Marvin
Welcome! I'm not sure I understand your point. Could you break it down a bit more for me?
Quote:To a true believer the means to an essential end are indeed a matter of aesthetics.
This sentence from Baruma's piece seems key. He is using 'aesthetics' here to mean 'trivial', perhaps like a handsome engraving on a bomb casing. To one who believes in a utopia which is within reach just around the corner and that we MUST get to it, for such a person, how he/she gets everybody there is trivial/aesthetic matter.
Baruma makes two uses of the term "aesthetics". The first is a phrase he puts in the mouths of his "neo conservative" interlocutors at the conference to the effect that "You are against the war only for aesthetic reasons". I take that to mean that, in their view, the war involves serious, weighty issues and objectives, and that they believe Baruma's expressed opposition is based only on the relatively insignificant matters involving the breaking of the international "peace" and the human suffering it will entail.
In his second use of the term Baruma turns the microphone around and himself uses the term to characterize them, "To a true believer the means to an essential end are a matter of (only) aesthetics." This, of course is a rather large leap from the first use of the term.
We have a curious situation in which the term aesthetics is used in one piece to characterize both the author's opposition to the war and his opponent's advocacy of it. Baruma solves the apparent dilemma by positing that "these people" (= neo conservatives) regard questions of war and peace, as they may relate to a desired end, as mere aesthetics. How horrible !!!
Baruma goes on to assert that other "realists" in the conservative camp (oil men and country club Republicans, as he terms them) are not so subject to this affliction and are, like liberals such as himself, inclined to oppose the war. (It is far from clear that the author would take the next step and align himself with his "realists" in the post war reconstruction of Japan. It is also far from clear that there ARE a sizeable number of "oil men and country club Republicans who oppose the war. Indeed Dick Cheney is known to frequent swank golf clubs and even the San Francisco Bohemian Club - and, after Haliburton, he surely qualifies as an oilman.)
We can ignore for the moment the author's liberal use of perjorative labels for those whose views he opposes, (A fault that often goes unnoticed in the stratospheric levels of liberal intellectual endeavor.)
The truth of the matter is fairly obvious. Even the icons of neo conservatism, Richard Pearle, Dick Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and others have declared that, in their view(s) the consequences of ignoring Saddam Hussein's Iraq will pose grave risks to the peace and stability of both the Persian Gulf and much of the world: that ignored he will bring about widespread, horrible suffering, just as he has done to his own people and his neighbors. Their desire and objective is to nip this ghastly flower in the bud, before it has nuclear weapons. This view is certainly arguable from several perspectives, but it is hardly based on any utopian vision of a democratic Iraq.
Each of these people (Pearle, Wolfowitz, Cheney) grew into prominence during the Reagan administrations. They had the experience of hearing first hand Reagans challenge to a then apparently invincible and growing Soviet Empire, and of witnessing its rapid collapse after this vigorous non intellectual, but independent, thoughtful, and intelligent American leader told the world that the evil emperor indeed had no clothes. The liberal establishment of the day was equally as aghast as was Baruma in this piece - and both equally wrong.
Well said, george. Perhaps the most treasured freedoms of a "Big L" Liberal are the perceived freedoms to impose restrictions and mandate attitude.
timber
George
On the use of 'aesthetics'...no, you have it wrong, there is but one sense of the term invoked. You read it correctly in your first example and it is the same sense in the second. In either it is the notion that the means to achieving an end are insignificant. Consider, as an example, that endearing class of evangelicals who root root root for conflagration in Israel thus bringing armageddon and happy rendevous with Jesus a day closer.
You talk about the views Baruma holds and disagrees with. I frankly have no clear idea what Baruma's ideas are as he doesn't state them here, other than suggesting there is a divergence of opinion on matters related to Iraq within the Republican camp and that one might gain an understanding by thinking of them as 'realist' and 'idealist', and that the former historically has a bad habit of justifying the means to achieve some end. There are no pejoratives here...country club republicans, maybe, but I belonged to a country club as early as 12 and I'm not offended.
You are right, the 'utopian' vision really has little to do with democracy in Iraq, just as Trotskyism had little to do with any one country. If you got clear on what this is about, it would be helpful. I'll wait by the phone.
Blatham,
I am underwhelmed. A truly weak and disappointing response
george...sorry to disappoint.
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