Pentagon vs State Dept - whats your take?

The Greens on the other hand collect under the banner "Make Law Not War". I think that when, for example, Syria now comes up, we should focus on what we would propose in terms of international lawmaking and -enforcing to deal with its dictatorship, rather than merely on highlighting where Rumsfeld's case in the question is wrong and to be distrusted. However much easier and more acutely provoked the second is.

If we ruled the world: a tale of two revolutions
Ian Buruma
When even New Yorkers refuse to drink French wine, or patronise French restaurants, you realise things are bad between the two nations that presume to have invented liberty. The war against Iraq was never especially popular in this city. And xenophobia is not really a New York thing. But even New Yorkers were furious about France's attempts to thwart US aspirations.
The two countries have never been the easiest of allies, but now it is almost as if they were at war. Yet France and America are curiously alike, and perhaps that is part of the problem. The most important common factor is the revolutionary birth of their democracies.

In the 18th century the French and the Americans were still full of mutual admiration. The French were inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, and Benjamin Franklin was happy to have his infant son blessed by Voltaire in the name of liberty.

The differences between revolutionary France and revolutionary America soon became apparent. Whereas the US founding fathers sought to guard individual liberties by limiting the powers of the State, the French State took on huge powers as an expression of the will of the people: the difference between Rousseau and Jefferson. Nonetheless, both were convinced that they represented universal values, and it was their manifest destiny to spread them across the world.

The French mission ended in the bloody fields of Waterloo. But the old missionary zeal survives in its now forlorn attempts to run the European Union, its not always honourable interventions in Francophone Africa, and above all, in its constant poking in the eyes of Anglo-Saxons.

If the French mission to shape the world is more or less over, the American one is still blasting with both barrels. In many ways, we Europeans should be grateful. Without America, we might well have ended up living in a fascist empire. The world of international institutions that Europeans now rely on owes everything to Woodrow Wilson's dreams. American idealism (as well as enlightened self-interest) was also responsible for the Marshall Plan, the restoration of democracy in Germany and Japan and, probably, the collapse of the Soviet empire.

But it was also the driving force behind less successful ventures, such as the war in Vietnam, another task once shared by the French. Unless one believes, like Noam Chomsky, that the war was fought for the sake of corporate interests, that too was at least partly the result of American idealism. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson thought they were protecting Asian dominoes from falling to communist tyranny. Remember that the Quiet American was not a heartless monster, but a missionary for American democracy. Like many US political missionaries, he was a kind of democratic Trotskyite, who caused mayhem without realising why.

Vietnam put a big dent in American self-confidence. Realism marked the 1970s and 1980s. In a way, Henry Kissinger's hardnosed realpolitik matched the desire of liberals to rein in America's ambitions to change the world. But this began to change under Ronald Reagan, when neo-conservative intellectuals, many of whom had been Trotskyites, demanded a revolutionary programme to combat evil empires.

This was a departure for Republicans, who had rarely been interested in saving the world. That was always more of a Democratic project. Republicans wanted stability, and to be left alone to take care of their economic interests. The world outside was a place to do business in, not to change through democratic revolutions. But the New Right was gradually injecting the zeal and rhetoric of the Old Left into Republican politics.

The true nature of this enterprise was spotted by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the "Danny the Red" of May 1968. In a recent meeting with Richard Perle, he said that Perle reminded him of his own student days in Paris. Perle, he exclaimed, was a Bolshevik. All his life, Cohn-Bendit had been fighting Bolsheviks on his left. Now they were on his right.

The neo-cons' most zealous ambitions never became mainstream, however, even under Reagan; and Bush the Elder, a typical country-club Republican, was quite cautious, despite his talk of a new world order. When his son ran for election, he too promised to be careful, to have a "humble" foreign policy. This humility changed after September 11. Finally, the revolutionaries hovering around the Pentagon, writing for such journals as The Weekly Standard, and holding forth at such forums as the American Enterprise Institute, got what they wanted: a revolutionary war.

And this is largely why we fought in Iraq. A peculiar coalition of evangelical Christians, neo-conservative intellectuals, and former leftists, have revived America's idea of its manifest destiny to change the world. Paul Berman, a former leftist who jumped on Bush's bandwagon, thinks the war against Saddam was like Lincoln's campaign to free the slaves of the South. In his new book, Terror and Liberalism, he claims that European democracy is cynical, soft and bloodless, because Europeans don't share America's ambition to revolutionise the world.

It does explain why the French are the most vehement opponents of the US. For France is the only European nation that still thinks it represents universal values. And the French no longer believe they share them with the US. When you have competing views of universalism, fireworks are inevitable.

The Franco-American rift is ominous for the future of our democracies, for it has split the West. The damage will not be easy to repair, but the French, and especially the Americans, would do well to heed the words of a great statesman, Talleyrand: "Toujours pas trop de zèle" (Above all, not too much zeal).

nimh wrote:

The Greens on the other hand collect under the banner "Make Law Not War".

And what exactly does that Green Party plan to do when those "laws" are ignored? [..] 17 seperate resolutions were passed that were specifically directed at Iraq. Sanctions were put in place for "enforcement", and the very same Green Party decried how those sanctions were to the detriment of the Iraqi people and should have been lifted all along.

That is the paradox of the left - more laws, more laws, more laws.. But the minute attempts are made to actually enforce those laws the cry goes out from the very same people about how "unfair" the laws are.

I think the French have been a bit embarrassed by not being seen as a world leader since the end of World War II. They were upstaged in Europe politically by the UK and economically by Germany (and to some extent by the Netherlands in the last 10-15 years..).

France sees itself as the center of world culture and up until recently their means of demonstrating against anything not French was to withdraw from NATO, attack a local McDonalds or attack Euro-Disney all of which have ended up bringing them nothing but humiliation on the world diplomatic stage. The rise of the EU brought France a chance to demonstrate that they had the power to influence world affairs. I think they were a bit surprised when the rest of Europe didn't toe-the-line behind them in opposition to the issues of Iraq. Of course, France's own economic interests in Iraq played into their position as well...

Even if the US ends up fumbling with Iraq, France has to deal with the fact that there are other European countries that are willing to break with them politically.

Fishin', how unexpectedly well-informed you suddenly seem to be on the positions of the Dutch Green Party.

As a matter of fact, the Green Party here did not plead against sanctions. It posited that existing sanctions should be replaced by better working ones, not that they should be "lifted", let alone that they "should have been lifted all along".

That is the paradox of the left - more laws, more laws, more laws.. But the minute attempts are made to actually enforce those laws the cry goes out from the very same people about how "unfair" the laws are.

So the dilemma you illustrate about wanting to make laws but not uphold them is false rhetorics.

Begging pardon if this piece is rather large, but I think it is a worthwhile contribution here.

Being that I lived in Europe for a number of years as well as work for a company headquartered out of Amsterdam and worked out of Rotterdam for quite a while I'd guess my knowledge of the Dutch Green party is at least as good

Reread my original post again and explain how "replacing sanctions" is not the exact same thing as lifting THOSE sanctions?

nimh wrote:

So the dilemma you illustrate about wanting to make laws but not uphold them is false rhetorics.

Uh huh.. It's false rhetoric but it's the difference you were trying to illustrate? So basically you disagree with yourself.. I see.

Here in Holland we have two leftist parties opposing the war - the Socialists and the Greens. The Socialists have the slogan "No Saddam No War" - well-meant, but basically meaningless in indicating anything more than opposition to this war - there's no alternative implied. The Greens on the other hand collect under the banner "Make Law Not War". I think that when, for example, Syria now comes up, we should focus on what we would propose in terms of international lawmaking and -enforcing to deal with its dictatorship, rather than merely on highlighting where Rumsfeld's case in the question is wrong