As Glenn Greenwald shows in response to some of Ledeen’s rambling, the main rule of American politics I was talking about does not, of course, seem to apply to warmongers:

So Gen. Abizaid, who “failed” in his mission, also “suppressed” the “copious evidence” of Iranian involvement in Iraq. That sounds like Ledeen is accusing General Abizaid of being less than honest — how else can one characterize someone who “suppresses” evidence? — and that, as we learned this week, is not allowed. The Commander-in-Chief just explained this morning that such attacks are “disgusting” and constitute attacks on The Troops Themselves.

Greenwald also says all the necessary things about intellectual–and I would add moral–cowardice of neoconservative jingoes.

I don’t know whether Scarborough meant the last part rhetorically, but regardless he has picked up and extended a critical meme of modern liberal thinking – it’s President Bush’s war.  This couldn’t be more wrong, both factually and morally.  Regardless who started it and how it began, it is now an American war. ~Dean Barnett

Of course, it is Mr. Bush’s war.  He launched it arbitrarily and illegally.  He perpetuates it every day that it goes on.  He can end it any time he wishes, and he does not.  He received a meaningless resolution that “authorised” him to start a war and violate the Constitution, but the resolution actually authorised nothing.  It was simply a capitulation, a symbol of Congressional weakness and timidity, an abdication of the duties of the legislative branch.  He who would govern as an autocrat must accept the responsibility for what he unleashes upon the world.  It is Mr. Bush’s War, and in the last analysis it belongs to him more than to any other.  This is why “the people” do not have an obligation to continue this war, and why we are not bound by the promises of an arbitrary executive.  There was no real consultation with and consent of the people in the beginning, and there never has been.  The people do not accept responsibility for Mr. Bush’s War, no matter what twaddle Gov. Huckabee may offer on its behalf.    

Barnett refers to this Joe Scarborough post.  Like Scarborough, I think MoveOn.org was phenomenally stupid to run the Petraeus ad.  Worst of all, the attack ad is irrelevant.  MoveOn targeted Petraeus for criticism because it saw him as a threat, but his testimony changed absolutely nothing in public opinion.  As antiwar conservatives have come to expect from this sort, they shot themselves in the foot for no reason. 

Rather than thinking in terms of smart political strategy, MoveOn went for the viscerally satisfying put-down typical of the left-wing netroots set.  They are, of course, an embarrassment to opponents of the war, and above all they are a joke, which is what you would have to expect from an organisation that was founded on the principle that Bill Clinton was a good President. 

I have yet to understand the thinking of progressives who want to fight their political foes on such unfavourable ground.  The clever line of attack would have been to stress Petraeus’ relative successes while emphasising how futile and impossible the overall mission still was.  Didn’t these fools learn the basic rules of American politics: whatever you do, hands off the military, which you shall not criticise in any substantial way.  It doesn’t matter right now whether this is a desirable state of affairs (it would horrify the Founders)–it is the political reality that we have.  Publicly criticising a combatant commander is political suicide.  Small children know this.  The brain-damaged know this.  Dogs know this.  MoveOn apparently does not.  

It is, of course, tempting to accuse domestic supporters of the war of the same things they routinely accuse us of doing: treason, subversion and all manner of villainy.  It is very tempting sometimes.  You have no idea.  It is tempting to come up with arguments why they deserve those accusations, but it is wrong.  Many of them may espouse loyalty to an abstraction and a myth, but I think they are not willfully disloyal to their country.  They are dishonourable enough to accuse many others of disloyalty, but that is something else.  Accusing other people of treason over political differences is the act of an ideologue, a commissar, the very sort of person who has promoted this war and backed this administration to the hilt. 

Even so, leveling such accusations at military personnel is utterly and in all ways foolish and misguided.  First of all, it is almost certainly false, it is a show of disrespect to men who are in almost every case trying to carry out an impossible task assigned them by their civilian masters, and it is politically buffoonish.  Tragically, it helps the administration’s apologists and the supporters of prolonging the Iraq war.  With friends like MoveOn.org, the antiwar movement needs no foes.

The relationship of the United States and Israel is special, even unique. And it seems not to fit their schema very well – which, in their eyes, can only mean that there is something “off” about the relationship, not about their framework. ~Scott McLemee

Via Cliopatria

Of course, this is where the original essay, and now the book, really bothered a lot of people–the authors simply rejected the assertions (and assertions are all that they usually are) that Israel is strategically valuable, reliable and that its relationship with America is “special, even unique.”  If you do not accept these very questionable assumptions, U.S. policy towards Israel appears irrational and at odds with the national interest.  To which defenders of that policy say, “You better believe it’s irrational!  It’s based on a special, unique relationship that you don’t understand.  Now stop puncturing our myths.”  

If you do not accept a priori claims about the significance of the current relationship, you might reasonably think that political activists have built up these claims and used political pressure to have them accepted.  That is what political activists do–they work to shape perceptions and tell a story that is most advantageous to their cause.  It is apparently pernicious to point out that this also happens in the setting of Near Eastern policy. 

Now the relationship didn’t used to be so “special,” much less unique.  At the founding of Israel, Secretary Marshall didn’t want to recognise the state but was overruled by Truman, which tells me that the obvious, natural and “special” bonds tying the two countries together were hardly anything of the kind sixty years ago.  At the time of Suez, the relationship wasn’t very good at all.  In 1967 it wasn’t good, either.  The “special, even unique” bond with Israel that is supposed to have these deep roots in our own “secular Zionism” and past rhetoric about being the Chosen People (which, besides being an impious usurpation of a role that orthodox Christians properly attribute to the Church rather than to a nation, is obviously a direct rejection of the Jews’ claim to the same role in the present, since a New Israel displaces the Old) has existed for a little over thirty years.  In its present “unprecedented” form the relationship has existed for all of six years.    

Of course, the South African Nationalists were heir to the Calvinists who believed the Afrikaners to be the New Israel in a new Promised Land.  It was not because of this rhetoric of Christian Zionism, but rather in spite of it, that Israel and SA collaborated on security matters.  Like their distant coreligionists in New England, the Afrikaners thought of themselves as the Chosen People because of their Christianity, which meant for them that the Church took the place of Israel.  This is not normally seen as the basis for strong solidarity with contemporary Jewish people, because it obviously isn’t.  In any other context, no one would propose that talk of New Israel means anything else.  It seems to be a measure of the general ignorance of Christian theological tradition that such a claim could be made in earnest. 

Early modern and modern usage of the New Israel language was frequently used by (at least nominal) Christians engaged in nation-building or nation-expanding efforts; the experience of settling new lands and displacing the indigenous peoples, often by violence, made it natural to draw comparisons with the Old Testament Israelites.  Settlers from Reformed traditions seem to have been more inclined to draw such comparisons because of their more frequent recourse to the Old Testament, which would have made it the most likely source for literary and symbolic references.

In the preface to their book (which, it might be noted as an aside, is dedicated to their colleague and friend Samuel Huntington), Mearsheimer and Walt make a point that I think has been overlooked in the larger debate about their argument:

America’s response to that war [Lebanon, 2006] proved to be a further illustration of the lobby’s power, as well as its harmful influence on U.S. and Israeli interests.

That would seem to agree with what I said here, though I will need to read on more to see what they say specifically about Lebanon.

NATO and EU missions are hampered by low defense budgets among almost all the states of both organizations. “For decades, successive secretary generals of NATO said defense budgets are too low to do the things we have to do,” said Appathurai, the NATO spokesman. ~International Herald-Tribune

Via James

Continuing our NATO-fest, which our Scene colleague Matt Frost has also joined, James points to this IHT story on the stillborn Rapid Reaction Force.  This makes you wonder how much Australia, Japan et al. would really bring to the the “new NATO” of Giuliani’s fever dreams.  Australia has been engaged in a military buildup that has brought its defense spending to a whopping 2% of GDP, while Japan’s defense budget is 1% and India’s is just a little over 2%.  That means that India and Australia just barely meet minimum NATO standards of a defense budget at 2% of GDP, and Japan does not.  In absolute terms, they are three of the top twelve nations in military spending, but their budgets are not that much larger than those of mid-level NATO states, such as Spain and Poland.  Britain’s capacity has already been pushed to the limit (while being gutted by the Blair Government at the same time), and it is one of the better-funded NATO members.  If most current NATO members cannot be bothered to increase their spending (and they can’t), why would India, Australia or Japan do so to provide resources for a “new NATO”?  Coming back to Ross’ question: what would the “new NATO” actually be trying to do that would persuade Indian, Australian and Japanese voters to accept larger and larger military budgets?

P.S. Yes, I realise this tends to give a manifestly stupid idea far more consideration than it probably deserves, but there are so many things wrong with the proposal that it is difficult to sum them all up in one or two posts.

Never one to miss an opportunity to embarrass himself, Michael Gerson successfully rebuts a claim that Mearsheimer and Walt never made:

In fact, Israeli officials have been consistently skeptical about the main policy innovation of the Bush era: the democracy agenda.

Of course, Mearsheimer and Walt do not claim in their original essay that Israeli officials encouraged the “democracy agenda.”  Their focus in any case is primarily on the domestic lobbying and political efforts of pro-Israel activist groups, not all of which are in agreement with Israeli government positions.  Gerson ignores all of this, and thus evades the substance of the matter.   Some pro-Israel activists in this country and U.S. officials did and still do endorse the “democracy agenda” and were adamant about its importance.  Some pro-Israel former members of the administration are also ideological democratists (e.g., Paul Wolfowitz), which explains the difference between these American pro-Israel figures and the Israeli government view.  The difference between them can best be understood by the distances involved: the Israelis have to live with the disastrous consequences of democratisation, while pro-Israel democratists can pat themselves on the back and feel morally superior for having supported political reform without running any risk themselves.   

Gerson spent all those years in the White House and doesn’t seem to remember what the major policy innovation of the administration was.  Actually, the “main policy innovation of the Bush era,” a.k.a., the Bush Doctrine, is the idea that the United States should target terrorism-sponsoring regimes for elimination and use preventive warfare against those states that appear to pose a long-term threat of developing and/or distributing “weapons of mass destruction.”  That is the radical, new thing that Mr. Bush introduced, and for the most part it has been a failure in practice.  That is the part that some Israeli officials had no problem with at all, even if some would have preferred more attention be paid to Iran. 

The U.S. government has been formally promoting democracy as the “solution” to the ills of “developing” nations, including nations in the Near East, at least since the Carter Administration.  In its foolishness and misguided idealism, Mr. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” is every bit as counterproductive to U.S. (and Israeli) interests as Mr. Carter’s Shah-undermining democracy promotion was 30 years ago and has had more or less the same results.

The rest of Gerson’s article is rubbish (maybe it’s even “dangerous rubbish”), since he does not even attempt to address what Mearsheimer and Walt actually say.  He ignores the militantly pro-Israel policy views of many conservative evangelicals and the political pressure they bring to bear on Republican candidates by saying that Mr. Bush does not accept premillennial dispensationalist theology, as if Mearsheimer and Walt said anything of the kind (they did not).  Indeed, the two authors made a point of referring to pro-Israel Christians by way of anticipating the charge that they are discussing a “Jewish lobby,” when they clearly are not.  They are talking about a collection of American interest groups that support, in their view, a misguided and dangerous foreign policy.  Since that foreign policy is misguided and dangerous, and inimical to American security interests, critics of the essay never have anything to say on the substance of the matter, but must constantly talk of anti-Semitism and conspiracies.  References to “grassy knoll” and “the DaVinci Code” have no place in a serious response to the argument the authors make, but then there has hardly ever been a serious response made by anyone.  Lacking in anything to say, Gerson resorts to the standard method of vilification followed by arrogant dismissal.

The appeal to the opinions of the mob people, which is what pro-Israel pundits are always reduced to, is not very compelling, and I’ll tell you why.  Large parts of the public have long been very fond of Britain, they have many sentimental and cultural attachments to Britain, many of them are of English, Scotch, Welsh or Irish descent and feel a strong affinity for the people of Britain, and they see the origins of their own political principles in the British constitution.  That doesn’t mean that there were not very specific and powerful interests lobbying for U.S. entry into wars that had no connection to U.S. national interests.  Those interests wanted U.S. entry into WWI to protect Britain (some of this concerned large loans that had been made to Britain), and they managed to use their considerable influence to bring political pressure on the government to go to war against Germany.  An overwhelming majority of the public, despite having many reasons to sympathise with Britain and despite knowing about German provocations that helped build support for war, did not want to go to war in 1917.  Over two-thirds of the people did not want to fight in a European war.  Interested parties lobbying the government for war and a President already inclined to intervene brought us into that war.  If Gerson had been alive then, he would assure us that there were no Anglophile Eastern business and financial interests involved in the drive to intervene in WWI because they did not endorse Wilson’s Fourteen Points.  He thinks that an example of a different bad policy that the interest groups did not push proves that they do not wield the kind of influence attributed to them regarding an entirely distinct policy.  In other words, he cannot reason properly.

Advocacy for certain policies is what political activists and interest groups do: they shape and influence policy by wielding political clout and threaten those who don’t play ball with strong opposition.  This is how petitioning and lobbying works.  As Mearsheimer and Walt have said repeatedly, this is a legitimate and proper part of our political system.  To listen to their critics, you would never know that they say this.  

Activists are by definiton more focused and intent on specific areas of policy than the political class or public generally.  The interest groups the activists and lobbyists represent are focused on how any given politician votes on their pet issues, and they make sure to broadcast those votes to their groups’ members and make sure to support the political rivals of those who vote the ‘wrong’ way.  Publicising the record of someone as an opponent of your group’s goals is a standard method of trying to wield influence, and better still if the group can spin that opposition as an expression of some hateful or vicious attitude.   

While there may be groups that offer opposing views and try to see them enshrined into policy, it is often the case that one side of any given debate is much more mobilised, energised and better prepared to get its view across.  That is certainly the case in American domestic politics when it comes to policy related to the Near East and to Israel in particular.  This means that policy will tend to be influenced by those groups that have the most passionate and often more extreme views about a subject than the general population (including the larger group that the activist and lobbyist claim to represent), but even more so by those that are well-connected to both parties and well-funded.  Because such interest groups are typically so passionately committed to the policies that they want to see enacted, it is usually prudent for politicians who don’t want trouble to yield to their entreaties on any particular vote, unless there are other, even more powerful, countervailing interests that take precedence.  With respect to pro-Israel groups, they are able to deploy a number of additional political threats, including ultimately using the threat of a charge of softness on terrorism or anti-Semitism to intimidate and cajole dissenters on a relevant vote.  There is usually no political benefit in angering such groups, and nothing to be gained and much to be lost by taking the opposing side.  This is not because the public is overflowing with ardent love of Israel (this is exaggerated considerably), but because these groups will target those who oppose their agenda.  Such groups can make the political lives of opponents much more difficult, and the fear of this discourages opposition in the first place. 

The most effective interest groups are those that are better organised, better funded and better able to communicate their message to politicians than their rivals.  By general agreement, AIPAC is considered the most effective single organisation; add to its significant clout all the other interest groups that have a stake in promoting what are perceived to be “pro-Israel” policies, and you have a formidable array of interests that nonetheless represent a fairly narrow sliver of the nation. 

However, just because an interest group is effective, organised, well-funded and able to communicate well obviously does not mean that it represents the broad public interest.  By definition, it represents a fairly narrow interest, but one which it claims is consistent and complementary with the public interest.  But any narrow interest group’s claims of this kind can be, and frequently are, exaggerated, if not entirely false.  The group or groups has/have every right to compete for its share of influence, but no group has some unquestionable right to that influence.  Its preferred policies are not beyond question, and the scope of its influence is not beyond scrutiny.  If the policies it proposes are damaging to the commonwealth and the national interest, any narrow interest must be challenged and questioned and its agenda opposed if necessary.  Attempts to wrap itself in popular opinion should be seen as the cynical ploys that they are.  When defenders of the interest group or groups begin resorting to ad hominem and invective, this should be taken as indirect proof that they cannot defend the substance of their preferred policies on the merits.

What Mearsheimer and Walt say is very straightforward and not in the least sinister.  They say that American pro-Israel groups and individuals, for which “the Lobby” was used as a catch-all shorthand term, wield great influence and shape U.S. policy in the Near East to a considerable extent.  Since no one can actually deny that this is true, they impugn the motives of the people saying it.  But if the present level and nature of support for Israel are so natural, so obviously right and so consistent with the American interest, as the defenders of the supposedly non-existent lobby say, why all the hysterical fits and foaming at the mouth?  Why the rampant talk of anti-Semitism?  Why is it not deemed a legitimate difference of opinion over U.S. national interests in the Near East?  Why can no one–literally no one–put forth a positive case for the current U.S.-Israel relationship in response to Mearsheimer/Walt? 

I would have to guess that it is because pro-Israel activists cannot justify the current U.S.-Israel relationship in terms of its advantages for the United States, because they are only too aware that there are not many tangible or discernible advantages for the U.S. coming from this relationship.  The costs are only too obvious.  In any remotely realistic calculation of costs and benefits, the pro-Israel side loses and loses badly.  That is why we must never peer too closely at the costs and benefits, or we might soon start adopting different policies.  I would guess that pro-Israel activists support the current shape of the U.S.-Israel relationship and the policies related to it in the conviction that they are the “right thing” to do for both countries.  There is just no tangible, measurable or visible evidence that this is so, and plenty that seems to point towards the opposite conclusion.

NATO has already expanded to include former adversaries, taken on roles for which it was not originally conceived, and acted beyond its original theater. We should build on these successes and think more boldly and more globally. We should open the organization’s membership to any state that meets basic standards of good governance, military readiness, and global responsibility, regardless of its location. The new NATO should dedicate itself to confronting significant threats to the international system, from territorial aggression to terrorism. I hope that NATO members will see the wisdom in such changes. NATO must change with the times, and its members must always match their rhetorical commitment with action and investment. In return, America can assure them that we will be there for them in times of crisis. ~Rudy Giuliani

James and I have had our turns criticising Giuliani’s most recent re-statement of this proposal, but this section of his FA essay could stand a little more scrutiny.  Giuliani says that NATO should “build on these successes.”  Which successes?  Bombing the Serbs and provoking Russia by incorporating its former satellites into the alliance?  Evidently.  If we have many more such “successes,” we might wind up with a real crisis with Russia on our hands.  If this is what Giuliani rates as a successful adaptation of NATO, we do not want to see what he would do with an even larger alliance. 

NATO has acted beyond its original theater in Afghanistan because the alliance was fulfilling its obligations to respond to an attack on a member state.  He says the “new NATO” should confront threats to the “international system” (which he has already shown that he does not understand), but he gives no indication that NATO would cease to be an alliance for mutual defense.  Even so, he says:

We should open the organization’s membership to any state that meets basic standards of good governance, military readiness, and global responsibility, regardless of its location.  

On its face, this means that any state in the world that meets these criteria can belong to the alliance and would presumably be entitled to the same security guarantees as any other member.  In the new, global “NATO,” on what basis would you make security guarantees to Poland and Latvia and not to the new members?  Giuliani lays out activities for the “new NATO,” but says nothing about the benefits of membership, except saying that “America can assure them that we will be there for them in times of crisis.”  Is it not safe to assume that the benefits of mutual defense remain?  And if America will “be there for them,” are major European states not going to “be there” for the new members and vice versa?  Of what use is the alliance to eastern European states if those security benefits disappear with the “transformation” of NATO into GloboLegion?   

Update: Ross makes other sound critiques of Giuliani’s “new NATO” here.  He starts with what should be the first question everyone asks about this: Why do it?

Would Mukasey be out of his depth as AG?  Bob Novak says yes, and provides the story of how Mukasey was selected.  In fairness to Mukasey, whose experience on the federal bench makes him look like a Titan compared to the man he’s replacing, there are probably many very competent people who are “unqualified and ill-equipped” to rehabilitate the Justice Department after Gonzales trashed the place with his mismanagement.  It could well be that no Attorney General could undo the damage that Gonzales has done over the past two and a half years in the time remaining in the second term. 

That said, it does seem that Novak’s view is correct–there were other potential nominees whose experience in the department would have made them much more effective in cleaning up the current mess.  Everyone is pointing to Mukasey’s long legal career, which certainly looks impressive, but running a government department is a very different kind of task.  At the start of a presidential term, Mukasey would be a good enough selection, but if this were the start of the term the President would not be so politically hobbled and weak, the Democrats wouldn’t control the Senate and selecting Mukasey would be unnecessary.  Well, as they say, decisions have consequences.

Someone else noticed Fred Thompson’s bit of stupidity that I criticised here.  It is apparently also a regular part of his stump routine.  The Post writer notes:

Even if the Soviet Union is not included in the calculation, U.S. military casualties in all wars combined remain lower than those of the British Commonwealth (“a combination of nations,” in Thompson’s phrase) in World War I and World War II. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the British Commonwealth lost 1.7 million troops in the two world wars.

Even excluding WWI, which was a fight for the “rights of small nations” only in the delusional mind of Woodrow Wilson and his admirers, Thompson’s claim is false and obviously so.  Of course, in my original post, I didn’t talk about the Soviets, because the idea that the Soviets were fighting for “other people’s liberty” was ludicrous and obviously so.  The Post does itself no favours by even mentioning this, since it has a perfectly solid argument against Thompson’s claim by looking at the sacrifices made by all our free allies in WWII.  There might be another occasion for acknowledging the enormous losses suffered by the USSR in WWII, but this was not it.

Thompson’s claim wasn’t exactly “jingoistic,” though it might be employed in service of future jingoism, but it was certainly nationalist and was rather chauvinistic at that.  It is a declaration of vast American moral superiority over all other nations put together.  These are the words of someone who would be President?  He would be the one to represent our country to the world?  The President, whose words carry tremendous influence for good or ill, cannot long afford to be so reckless and sloppy in his language as this. 

Thompson’s statement was an insistence that Americans have sacrificed more than all other nations combined for the sake of liberty.  It was plainly inaccurate, which is bad enough, but the significance of the remark is much worse.  I say again that this is an example of appalling arrogance and a show of enormous disrespect to all those soldiers of free nations that fought alongside our soldiers.  We expect, no, we normally demand that western Europeans remember the sacrifices made by Americans on their behalf.  They should remember and respect our war dead, just as we should remember and respect theirs.  We were allies, fighting on the same side towards the same end.  

Republican politicians were not always so oblivious to the rest of the world.  We once had a President who proudly acknowledged the contributions of U.S. allies in Normandy:

Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him. Lord Lovat was with him — Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken. There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet” and you, the American Rangers. 

“The impossible valor of the Poles” has no place in Fred Thompson’s view of what happened in WWII, nor do the forces of free France or the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.  Apparently, he thinks it’s all about us, or at least it is so much more about our role that everyone else just pales in comparison.  In his view, we must have done all the heavy lifting and all the real work.  The hundreds of thousands of Allied dead?  Fred Thompson doesn’t remember them, doesn’t even seem to know that they exist.  With his embarrassing statement, which he keeps reiterating, Fred Thompson is reminding us why he is not like that President and why he is not fit to be our next President. 

Taking pride in the achievements of our country is admirable and good, and we should be enormously grateful to those who served and those who lost their lives in America’s foreign wars.  Maybe that was Thompson’s original intention in saying what he did, but even the best of intentions do not excuse such historical ignorance and disrespect to some of our oldest, most reliable allies.  Patriots do not need to boast of the greatness of their country or the extent of the sacrifices made by their people.  They do not need to tally up casualties to prove their country’s value, nor do they need to constantly talk about how superior the country is.  Indeed, they can bring disrepute to their country by insisting on its superiority.  As we are reminded (a little too often) in other contexts, Americans have no monopoly on the love of liberty, nor have we outdone all other nations combined in the sacrifices made in its defense.  A patriot loves and admires his country and its people because they are his own and because they possess virtues peculiar to them–not because they are The Best Ever or The Most Heroic Ever.  Such an attitude seems to premise patriotism on the greatness of a people’s achievements, when patriotism should inspire the native of the tiniest, least powerful land in the world. 

It should be enough to say that our armies truly have fought and sacrificed for the sake of the freedom of other peoples.  That is true, that is admirable and that is something that should never be forgotten.  Neither should it be distorted or exaggerated into something that it is not–this is actually to fail to respect the actual achievements of our soldiers and to invent other achievements to take their place.  The reality of American sacrifice in WWII, for example, is sufficient to merit great honour and respect, and it does not need this exaggeration.  Chauvinists exaggerate the reality because they cannot tolerate other nations sharing in the praise and the glory of the achievement–they want it all for their own country.  Chauvinism of this kind is a disorder of the appetitive part of the soul.  It is an excess of pride. 

What can Thompson’s remarks be but a slight (unwitting and ignorant as it may be) to all those British, Commonwealth and free European soldiers who were there together with ours in France, Italy, the Low Countries and Germany?  How would Thompson’s defenders react if a foreign politician said something that excluded and ignored the sacrifices of Americans?  They’d scream bloody murder, that’s what they’d do, and they would have a point.  Well, it works both ways.  Some people have forgotten how to show respect to American allies over the last few years, and in the process they have forgotten that Americans will soon receive no respect if they do not show it towards other nations as well.   

Update: Alex Massie makes other good points related to WWII and modern American obliviousness about Allied contributions in his post on Gelernter.

Look, if we were at all serious about public diplomacy, we’d have had all our regional experts who speak Arabic flooding the airwaves apologizing for Condi’s immensely tone-deaf “birth pangs” comment during the Lebanon-Israeli war the summer before last, when the entire Islamic world was enraged by images of cluster munitions being littered willy-nilly through south Lebanon, not to mention the horrific incident at Qana. Or she would follow her predecessor Colin Powell’s recommendation to close Guantanamo without delay, by having a come to Jesus w/ the Decider about how the Cuban penal colony (along with the hooded man at Abu Ghraib) was overshadowing the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of America among many around the world.

These would be the makings of a serious public diplomacy effort, not this breezy, palsy-walsy festiveness with Cal [Ripken]. But what good does it do to scream on like this? You do public diplomacy with the public diplomacy team you have…. ~Greg Djerejian

Via Yglesias

I agree.  Then again, if we were serious about public diplomacy we would have a lot more regional experts who speak Arabic working for the government than we do right now.

Djerejian is responding to this unfortunate episode, catching Secretary Rice saying something especially silly:

I’ll bet he’s going to go out and find people who want to be Cal Ripken in…Pakistan, people who want to be Cal Ripken in Guatemala, people who want to be Cal Ripken in Europe, and that’s the wonderful thing about sports…it really transcends culture and it transcends identity.

That must be why we are all such avid soccer and cricket fans here, and hockey is wildly popular in Brazil.