This does not mean they [Republican voters] cannot be persuaded by non-interventionist arguments, but doing so will require a message stripped of all traces of humanitarian, we-are-the-world gobbledygook. ~George Hawley

While I was away, there was a debate over non-interventionist rhetoric that is worth discussing. The above quote from Hawley sums up the argument he has been making, which elicited responses from Jack Hunter and Matt Barganier. As someone who does sometimes employ moral arguments against aggressive war and empire, I don’t accept that repudiating aggression and empire as both unjust and imprudent necessarily makes non-interventionists “sound like Code Pink.” It is a strange sort of outreach that takes for granted that one’s target audience is morally bankrupt. It is also an odd way to try to appeal to core Republican voters by starting with the assumption that the far left has some kind of monopoly on the language of justice, which is therefore unavailable to war opponents on the right. More to the point, non-interventionists almost never use rhetoric that could be confused for “humanitarian, we-are-the-world gobbledygook.” Indeed, what distinguishes non-interventionists from most realists, antiwar leftists and liberal internationalists is our belief that global interdependence is vastly exaggerated and global governance is impossible.

What Hawley is proposing is to have the non-interventionist right adopt a defensive crouch in foreign policy debates (because such me-tooism has worked so well for post-’72 Democrats over the years) and to try to change the rhetorical presentation and image of non-interventionists so that hawkish nationalists will not immediately dismiss our arguments. Having conceded that exuding “toughness” is what really matters in these debates, Hawley would put non-interventionists in a contest with actual hawks that we can never win. The only way to compensate for a so-called “tough guy problem” is to play part of the “tough guy,” which would inevitably mean endorsing policies that non-interventionists currently find unacceptable in order to show their “toughness.” You cannot use the language of power projection and global “leadership” and simultaneously oppose the policies that these things require for their maintenance. Even if it is merely implicit, you cannot accept the view that rejecting U.S. power projection has something to do with “anti-Americanism,” which is what all of these rhetorical contortions suggest. Once you grant this, you have endorsed the view that opposing aggressive war and empire is a kind of disloyalty. In the end, framing antiwar and anti-imperialist arguments by saying, “Well, at least we’re not like those lousy hippies” doesn’t get you any credit with the hawkish audience, but it simply confirms in their minds how idiosyncratic your arguments are.

As Barganier correctly noted in his response:

The funny thing is, the warbots are not allergic to “humanitarian, we-are-the-world gobbledygook” – in fact, they devour it when it’s in the service of American imperialism. Anyone who watches Fox News knows how quickly right-wingers can pivot from “kill ‘em all” to “aww, purple fingers!” The problem is not that peaceniks have tried the wrong arguments on them; they will accept any argument, no matter how heterodox it appears on its face, so long as it reaches the correct conclusion…

Barganier is right about this, but even more troubling is the ease with which war supporters can switch from from the most severe moral indifference to the most extreme universalism and back again: the rights of other nations are irrelevant when our security is at stake, but everyone ought to be free and must be made free by force of arms (and you hate other kinds of people if you disagree), but if a few hundred thousand are killed and millions displaced in the process these are acceptable costs in the pursuit of a vastly exaggerated definition of national interest. The nationalist oscillation between the will to dominate and the benevolent quest for liberation is an old one.

Non-interventionism doesn’t have a “tough guy problem,” but instead very simply has a nationalist problem. Most nationalists do not and cannot accept non-interventionism because of the fundamentally aggressive nature of most forms of nationalism. Non-interventionists cannot credibly appeal to such people without ceasing to be non-interventionists. For the latter, the national interest is quite limited, definite and obtainable, while for nationalists it is expansive and virtually unlimited, because this is the only kind of national interest commensurate with their idolatry of the nation. To say that some foreign quarrel is none of our business is to impose a limit, which in the eyes of nationalists is to diminish the nation, and this they will never tolerate. How do you persuade such people that we should forego empire and aggressive war? For one thing, you have to challenge rather than pander to their nationalist assumptions.

Starting today I will be off on a road trip for a couple weeks. I may occasionally check in when I’m in Albuquerque next week, but most likely I won’t be writing again here until mid-July. I would like to add one thing about Honduras before I leave. After he was thwarted from landing in Tegucigalpa, Zelaya called on Obama to impose economic sanctions on Honduras. “Otherwise, it’s the death of democracy in the Americas,” he said. We have become far too comfortable identifying the cause of democracy in other countries with the cause of particular politicians. In Honduras, it is Zelaya, while in Georgia it has been Saakashvili. We have already seen how this identification has enabled reckless, dangerous behavior by Saakashvili and so poorly served Georgia. If we fall for this trick again, it will be the majority of Hondurans and not the oligarchs contesting over their future who will suffer the most for it.

Last year we saw how most Westerners automatically gave the benefit of the doubt to Saakashvili and his supporters during the war with Russia in August. As it turns out and as most people who followed the war from the beginning understood, the blame was mostly Saakashvili’s, but this did not stop constant, outraged cries about “Russian aggression.” It is true that the Russians went further than they needed or should have gone, and so aided their foreign critics in painting them as the villains of the story, but the root of the problem was Saakashvili and the West’s tacit or open encouragement of his recklessness. As Saakashvili did, it was Zelaya who escalated the crisis and precipitated the conflict that has been unfolding over the last week. The institutions of Honduran government responded to this escalation in a way not very different from the Russian response to Georgian escalation: they retaliated and struck back, and mistakenly have gone further than they should have. Just as Saakashvili inspired visceral loathing in the Kremlin, Zelaya seems to inspire the same visceral hatred in the Honduran elite, and as understandable as that feeling might be in both cases it has led to excesses in responding to a situation made worse by the reckless demagogue. In both cases, the demagogue is ultimately responsible, but those who are trying to hold him accountable have to hold themselves to a higher standard, and in this case that means not resorting to violence in response to the provocations of Zelaya’s supporters. If it is going to survive, Honduras’ government cannot afford any more bad press.

I hope everyone has a festive and enjoyable holiday, and I very much hope that you are not wasting it reading this on the day it was posted. Regardless, here are some remarks from three years ago that are worth re-posting:

The Declaration did also include a number of rhetorical nods to the early Enlightenment and Whig thought of late seventeenth century Britain, as Locke and Sydney, among others, had sought to justify the Great Rebellion and, in the case of Locke, also the “Glorious Revolution.” The constitutional guarantees confirmed in the Bill of Rights of 1628 and the Petition of Right of 1689, and secured by the main force of regicide and foreign invasion, had become the patrimony of our forefathers and represented the established and venerable custom that they then sought to preserve against perceived innovation and usurpation. Though exceedingly minor, the infractions against which they rebelled represented for them the thin end of the wedge and, if left unchecked, the source of future usurpation based on the precedents then being set.

Fidelity to their republican spirit and their constitutionalism would seem to me to be an important element of what it means to be American, just as the defense of their constitutional patrimony represented for our forefathers their identity as Englishmen. However, even that standard would be to make American identity dependent principally on the acceptance of a certain political regime; defense of the constitutional inheritance should be done in the spirit of preserving the broader cultural patrimony we have received from our British ancestors.

For those of you inclined to spoil your holiday by reading an annoying apologia for the “freedom agenda” (which was neither an agenda nor was it about freedom), here is Kori Schake’s article at Foreign Policy.

On another subject entirely, Sarah Palin has announced that she will not seek re-election and will be resigning from her office in a few weeks. The GOP really is in freefall. The governor most Republicans like and want to support is apparently dropping out of politics, and Mark Sanford remains in office despite scandal and disgrace. Though there is otherwise really nothing in common between them, Palin is every bit as finished politically on a national level as Sanford is.

Despite all of the talk about the recent Vanity Fair feature on her, Andrew’s renewed obsessions with every detail of her life raising of important questions, John’s tireless refutations of those obsessions important questions, and reports of the continued support she enjoys from most Republicans, I have felt no need to say anything about her for several months. By the end of the election campaign, I had come to think that she was unqualified for the post she was seeking, and I probably allowed her more irritating supporters to color my judgment of her more than I should have, but once the election was over I would have been pleased to let her get on with her work in Alaska. After a flurry of post-election appearances, she seemed to do just that, and that was fine. I don’t think I ever feared that she would run for President in 2012. If she ran, she would lose the nomination to someone else, and if she didn’t she would have gone off into the sunset with all of the other losing VP candidates. Palin was never as threatening to the left nor as wonderful for the right as both sides imagined. Her resignation will prove to be a good thing for her, her family and Alaska. Her tenure as governor has been so lackluster that it might be fair to say that Palin never demonstrated her worthiness for the office so much as in her departing from it.

Never has a major political candidate been so poorly served by her own supporters. To quote that Russian proverb again, “The yes-man is your enemy, but your friend will argue with you.” Palin was surrounded and cheered on by almost nothing but yes-men, because once anyone tried to offer any kind of criticism that person seemed to become persona non grata in her circle and in the wider conservative world pretty quickly. That is why a reasonable column offering advice and encouragement to Palin could be met by so much insane fury from so many of her supporters. It will be very difficult to explain to later generations what it was that the Palinites saw in her that made them so fervent and enthusiastic. The Palin enthusiasm of 2008 will not end up making much sense a few years from now. At least the excitement about a Jack Kemp presidential campaign after 1996 was based in a record with some accomplishments in it.

While I initially gave her some benefit of the doubt, I never pretended to be a supporter, because I could not bring myself to cheer on anyone who would work so closely with McCain, but like many on the right I found something initially very likeable about her. After the first week or so, likeability became much less important once we started finding out something about her record. What came to be so annoying about her was not so much that she performed poorly in interviews, had no policy knowledge outside of issues related to oil, and had an unremarkable record as governor (except when she was jacking up windfall profits taxes to redistribute liberate the money from oil corporations), but it was that her supporters seemed intent on never acknowledging her errors, refused to hold her accountable when she made misleading statements and began making virtues out of her weaknesses. Whether or not Palin could have become a much better candidate, there was no way that things could work out well for her or the country with supporters like this.

P.S. I never did understand why so many people on the right liked to refer to her as conservatives’ Joan of Arc. At least in the earthly, political sphere, that meant she was doomed to defeat. Just another example of the sheer weirdness of some of her supporters, I suppose.

Update: This was not clear to me when I started writing this post, but it seems that there are crazy people advising Palin that this is how she can run for President in 2012. John Weaver observes that it doesn’t make sense:

“I’m not smart enough to see the strategy in this,” said John Weaver, a senior party strategist. “Good point guards don’t quit and walk off the court.”

To use a different sports reference, there are no votes in becoming the Vince Young of politics.

Second Update: I keep seeing these odd Richard Nixon references in commentary on this resignation. As Alex Massie notes, Richard Nixon was already a fairly significant, well-established political figure by 1960. Just as important, he was the losing candidate in a close race in which he was the presidential candidate, and so far as I know Nixon never resigned from a major office before his term was up unless it was to take a more prestigious post. To make a Nixonian comeback, it might be helpful if Palin’s career were in any way comparable to Nixon’s.

Third Update: After a commenter appropriately pointed out my stupidity, I need to correct that one remark about Nixon. Obviously, at the end of his career he did resign his office in disgrace. I was referring to the pre-1968 period of his career, but made a silly blanket statement.

Even so, there is no evidence of Hondurans clamouring for the president’s return with anything like the enthusiasm of outsiders. ~The Economist

This much has been clear. Al Giordano can whine about statements from the “Oligarchic Diaspora” to his heart’s content–it doesn’t make the transitional government’s actions any less popular, nor does it change the overwhelming consensus of the Honduran political and military leadership that he had to be removed from power. We have seen in many “color” revolutions that the “pro-Western” or “pro-American” faction in other countries is often more oligarchic and has a much narrower social base than its opponents. Naturally, those are the causes that Westerners have embraced wholeheartedly, including during the Iranian protests. Today we have the spectacle of the world united in support of the cause of a disgraced cattle baron with 25% support who allies himself with Hugo Chavez, and they call that support for democracy.

One of the dangers of any sudden change in who holds political power, be it a coup or revolution, is that it does not necessarily reflect public opinion and has not been done with the consent of the majority. Worse than any simply legal violation, it can damage the social and political fabric of the country, and it can tear at the organic constitution that has grown up over time. As a result, the sudden change creates upheaval and conflict in the country, and introduces bitter divisions that can lead to cycles of violent resistance and reprisal. If the change is violent, as if often is, it can radicalize the entire society and make future political compromise impossible. However, what we have seen in Honduras does not fit these descriptions at all. Somehow the deposition of a wildly unpopular, law-breaking president has been declared anti-democratic. I would have thought that only Cheney-like presidential cultists could so closely identify the substance of democracy with the element in modern republican government that is most monarchical, but I would be wrong about that.

According to Mexican pollster Mitofsky’s April survey, Zelaya was Latin America’s least popular leader. Only 25 percent of the nation supported him. Another survey found that 67 percent of Hondurans would never vote for him again. Why? Because the Hondurans attributed to him a deep level of corruption; because they assumed he had links to drug trafficking, especially drugs originating in Venezuela, as former U.S. Ambassador to the O.A.S. Roger Noriega revealed in a well-documented article published in his blog; and because violence and poverty — the nation’s two worst scourges — have increased dramatically during his three years in power.

Simply put, a huge majority of the country — including the two major political parties (including Zelaya’s), the Christian churches, the other branches of government and the armed forces — do not want him as president. ~Carlos Alberto Montaner

Does it really make any sense to say that the collective response of all of the country’s political institutions to remove Zelaya from power, which reflected an overwhelming majority consensus of the population, resulted in an attack on democracy? What would its defense look like? It would be one thing to say that Zelaya should return to restore social peace because he still has broad support from much of the country, but this is not the case. He broke the law and most people there are sick of him. It’s all very well to say that the Honduran government should have handled things better, but what would bringing Zelaya back into the country and back into office do except exacerbate political tensions and increase the chance of civil strife? That is what the U.N. and OAS (and Washington as a member of both) are demanding Honduras do, and it doesn’t make sense.

Andrew asks on Honduras:

Can you remember a story where pundits have varied so widely on the basic facts?

Yes, I can. The war in Georgia, the pre-war debate on Iraq’s weapons programs and supposed ties to Al Qaeda, and the “genocide” in Kosovo come to mind as the most outstanding examples of two different sides seeming to inhabit entirely different universes. We went to war against Yugoslavia and Iraq because the side that was largely inhabiting a fantasy world won the public relations battle. Fortunately, the experience of Iraq, the complexity of the situation in Georgia and the dangers of intervening directly prevented fools from rushing in once more. In Honduras, the stakes for the U.S. are lower, which may help account for why there is less fundamental disagreement about what has happened there. The differences are more a matter of emphasis and interpretation than fact, but to some extent there are still pretty wildly differing accounts of recent events.

One of the reasons why I was so skeptical and wary of the pro-Mousavi enthusiasm that automatically sprang up everywhere after June 12 was that it reminded me of the same kind of enthusiastic misunderstanding about foreign affairs that led so many people to be so spectacularly wrong about what was happening and what should be done about it in those other cases. I am still wary of attributing too much significance to the protests, but in the early days of the protests the general Western presumption in favor of a “coup” explanation of what happened in Iran seems to be identical to the early, automatic international acceptance of pro-Zelaya arguments. At this point, the coup label is much more appropriate for Iran than it will ever be for Honduras, and even in Iran it doesn’t fully convey what happened.

What worried me about the automatic solidarity with Mousavi and his supporters was that it was simply taken for granted that the side we in the West found more attractive could only have lost through fraud and illegality, and therefore must have won and been cheated. Even now, we do not know and will probably never know what the real vote count was, because it seems clear there was never any intention of actually counting it, but the illegality of the government’s response has been plain for all to see for some time. Likewise, the automatic presumption in the Honduras case was that it was basically wrong to depose a democratically-elected president regardless of the circumstances (even if looking at those circumstances would make his deposition seem entirely justified). Perhaps in time the illegality of Zelaya’s actions will be as universally recognized and his deposition will be seen as the appropriate response after all.

President Obama has emphasized that the United States’ post-Cold War policy towards Latin America would support institutions and legal processes, not individuals and political ideologies. ~Michael Thomas Derham

Of course, by effectively siding with Zelaya against all of the institutions of the Honduran government that had the president deposed for his illegal activities, Obama not only gives the appearance of supporting an individual and an ideology rather than institutions and legal processes, but he also really has lent support to an individual and an ideology. The administration may believe that it is showing its devotion to democratic principle by backing the claim of a politician whose agenda and alliances they claim to oppose, but by endorsing what is at this point an illegitimate claim of one man over against the institutions of the Honduran government the administration is clearly showing partiality towards an individual at the expense of principles of constitutional government. Honduran institutions blundered by involving the military in a hasty defense of those principles, and had they not done so they would not have given their foreign critics and enemies ammunition to use against them. Nonetheless, if the administration is ultimately guided by respect for institutions and legal processes, it ultimately has to come down on the side of the flawed institutions that poorly handled a constitutional crisis, but which still retain far more legitimacy than Zelaya, whose intent to challenge and undermine those institutions should make the choice between imperfect alternatives much easier. Obama may think he has chosen principle over personalities by backing Zelaya’s return, but he is badly mistaken about this.

In the meantime, he has given an easy target to the people who wrongly railed against him over his handling of the Iranian protests. Much of the criticism of Obama coming from the American right on Honduras is as opportunistic as the OAS’s newfound devotion to democratic principles and the letter of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, but Obama has provided an opening to those critics who will try to find fault with everything he does. Most of these critics may be quite confused, demanding foolish, counterproductive action in Iran and non-interference in Honduras, but that does not make them wrong on Honduras. Unfortunately I fear that some of the same knee-jerk reaction against whatever the “neocon line” appears to be is also informing the response of some realists and non-interventionists to what has happened in Honduras. Supporting the transitional government is the right thing to do even if The Wall Street Journal editors and their ilk take that view.

Honduras’s military acted under judicial orders in deposing President Manuel Zelaya, Supreme Court Justice Rosalinda Cruz said, rejecting the view of President Barack Obama and other leaders that he was toppled in a coup.

“The only thing the armed forces did was carry out an arrest order,” Cruz, 55, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Tegucigalpa. “There’s no doubt he was preparing his own coup by conspiring to shut down the congress and courts.”

Cruz said the court issued a sealed arrest order for Zelaya on June 26, charging him with treason and abuse of power, among other offenses. Zelaya had repeatedly breached the constitution by pushing ahead with a vote about rewriting the nation’s charter that the court ruled illegal, and which opponents contend would have paved the way for a prohibited second term. ~Bloomberg

Constitutional assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. When Zelaya published that decree to initiate an “opinion poll” about the possibility of convening a national assembly, he contravened the unchangeable articles of the Constitution that deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term. His actions showed intent.

Our Constitution takes such intent seriously. According to Article 239: “No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform [emphasis added], as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.”

Notice that the article speaks about intent and that it also says “immediately” – as in “instant,” as in “no trial required,” as in “no impeachment needed.”

Continuismo – the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely – has been the lifeblood of Latin America’s authoritarian tradition. The Constitution’s provision of instant sanction might sound draconian, but every Latin American democrat knows how much of a threat to our fragile democracies continuismo presents. In Latin America, chiefs of state have often been above the law. The instant sanction of the supreme law has successfully prevented the possibility of a new Honduran continuismo. ~Octavio Sanchez

I would like to think that these reports would make advocates for Zelaya’s reinstatement think again, but whenever the magic word of democracy is invoked it seems as if even those who are otherwise the most skeptical, critical thinkers become like groupies cheering for their favorite musician. Crucially, there has been a stunning absence of Honduran voices condemning the actions of the military and the transitional government. I don’t rule out that there are many Hondurans who oppose Zelaya’s deposition, but it is getting harder and harder to credit that the Honduran military acted without orders from duly constituted legal authorities. The way Honduras is being treated by the rest of the world is a disgrace, and neither U.S. interests nor regional stability is being served by the isolation of Tegucigalpa.

More from Bloomberg:

Cruz acknowledged that the interim government faced a “very difficult” task trying to sway the U.S. and other countries to recognize its authority.

“But as a sovereign and independent nation, we have the right to freely decide to remove a president who was violating our laws,” she said. “Unfortunately our voice hasn’t been heard.”

Honduras is learning the bitter lesson that so many small nations have learned in the last twenty years and in the century before that: small nations are never really sovereign and independent if some grander scheme requires them to be trampled on. It is shameful that Washington is participating to the extent that is in the mistreatment of Honduras.