If you look through James Dobbins’ article in Foreign Affairs, you will look high and low for any admission that policy experts, think tanks and public intellectuals dropped the ball.  Almost everyone else in Washington comes in for criticism, and “the entire nation” receives some generic blame, but the policy wonks and pundits escape all censure.

Indeed, you can argue that over the past month, Obama has been shaping the foreign policy debate for the Democrats — and getting the best of the arguments. ~David Ignatius

You could argue that, if you didn’t know anything about foreign policy.

I appreciate Mark Krikorian’s fair description of my post criticising this idea of his about how to combat and defeat “radical Islam.”  We are still in disagreement about his proposal, but let me say a couple of things about his response.  He wrote:

Islam will change, but only (or at least sooner) if we pursue some variation of what Larry Auster calls “separationism.” “Separationism” is the isolation of Islam from the rest of the world through military action, restrictions on immigration, and other means, presumably including a radically more aggressive search for alternative automobile fuels.

I grant Mr. Krikorian that Islam will change, as any religion with so many adherents spread across the globe would inevitably change over time, and it has changed before.  The first difficulty is that certain kinds of Islam already have changed in the past, and many of the changes wrought by revivalism and Salafism have been to take Islam in quite the opposite direction of the “moderate” Islam Mr. Krikorian envisions emerging in the aftermath of this apparently militarised embargo of the Islamic world.  As a kind of glorified sanctions regime, it would have many of the adverse, undesirable effects of a sanctions regime.  Militarised embargoes are also not generally known to help bring down their targets, but rather reinforce the more hard-line and radical elements inside a country while the population is cut off from the outside world and forced to fall back on whatever the local authorities tell them.     

I think the separationism described here (with which I do not entirely disagree, at least as far immigration is concerned) would certainly cause a change in the Islamic world.  It is not clear to me, however, that the change would necessarily be the kind Mr. Krikorian hopes to see.  If such an isolation of the Islamic world from the West were possible, the isolation of that world from the rest would never be complete in any case, as large parts of the rest of the world are not interested in isolating themselves from the Islamic world.  India cannot isolate itself from that world without cutting itself in two and closing itself off from markets for its labour.  China would probably opportunistically try to fill any void left by Westerners.  A policy of isolation combined with military action would seem to combine the worst of both worlds, since it would reinforce the most violent instincts among jihadis and build up sympathy for them while rejecting any alternative connection.  It would be our Cuba policy writ large, but with an added refusal to take in refugees.  I suppose the idea here is to create sufficient internal pressures within the Islamic world such that something gives way in dramatic fashion, but if the end result would be to encourage internecine strife inside this isolated Islamic world it seems as if this would simply strengthen the worst elements and produce an Islamic world in far worse shape, politically, socially and economically, than exists today.  Everything that fuels jihadism would remain, and the indigenous forces that oppose it would probably have been swept away and purged in the process.

There’s an ideagoing around that calls for Maliki’s (political) ouster are bad, and that Maliki is being made into a scapegoat.  I disagree with this latter claim, since a scapegoat has to have a plausible chance of ridding a people of its sins, and I don’t think Maliki is up to the job.  I certainly agree that replacing Maliki with another member from his party or the old SCIRI would hardly improve matters, since it is the sectarian nature of the government and its close ties to Sadr (who has now abandoned Maliki to the wolves) that have compromised it from the beginning. 

Talking about dropping the Maliki government is premised on a mistaken idea that the supposedly conciliatory legislative agenda that has been stalled can actually be pushed through the Iraqi parliament, provided that we just find the right political helmsman to take the wheel of government.  This is the mistaken view that the political situation in Iraq is salvageable in a form agreeable to Washington.  It is the same kind of mistake that led Washington to endorse Maliki’s ministry in the first place.  As far as it goes, forcing Maliki out would help some American pols score some points in the “blame the Iraqis, don’t blame me” game, but it would achieve little else.  It would also help the White House by providing the President with a new pretext to say that “we must give the Iraqis more time.”  A new prime minister would probably be followed by a change of other ministers, and there would be some delay before the government was ready to try to do much of anything.  Those complaining about the slowness of political reconciliation would actually find themselves frustrated by the even slower movement as the new PM got his act together (assuming that he did).  In the end, Maliki is not likely to have a successor any more capable of or willing to foster political reconciliation, since the major Shi’ite parties still thrive on communal conflict and the promise of continued Shi’ite predominance in government.  The deep flaws of the current Iraqi government are a good argument not for Maliki quitting his job, but rather for us to quit Iraq.

There can be absolutely no argument that a million or more Armenians died during World War I.  But, on issue of whether genocide—a deliberate plan to eradicate a people—occurred or not, there is a big gap between the narrative of Diaspora communities and that of prominent historians.  The historical debate is more complex. ~Michael Rubin

Via Yglesias

Well, there is certainly a big gap between historians who take the Turkish government’s view and those who actually properly handle the evidence.  I don’t know whether the Turkish historian Taner Akcam ranks as “prominent” in Mr. Rubin’s world, but the argument he lays out for the deliberate, central planning of the genocide is thorough and persuasive.  Even though it required quite a lot of political pressure to make it happen, the ADL’s belated, grudging and qualified acknowledgement of the genocide is to their credit. 

It goes without saying that similar agnosticism and references to the complexity of historical debate in connection with certain other genocides would be considered despicable, dehumanising to the victims and basically unwelcome in polite society.  The histories and historiographies of Cambodia and Rwanda were and are no less complex, but there were still deliberate genocides carried out in those countries.  Of course, neither the Khmer Rouge nor the Hutu Power maniacs have well-heeled lobbyists, a U.S.-allied government and willing apologists to help cast doubt and cover up for them. 

Update: Due credit to Jeff Jacoby for a good column on this.

Today’s dynamic and hopeful Asia — a region that brings us countless benefits — would not have been possible [bold mine-DL] without America’s presence and perseverance. ~George W. Bush

You know, if I were Japanese (or Taiwanese or Thai, to say nothing of Indian) I think I would get pretty tired of hearing this sort of thing.  Yes, I understand that this was a speech to the VFW and the President is obliged to pay his respects to veterans of the Pacific and Korean Wars, as well he should.  Nonetheless, we peddle these myths about our indispensible role in the reconstruction of many of these countries after the war, and this leads us to make mistakes in our current policies.  Thus Mr. Bush once again trots out post-WWII occupation and reconstruction as some sort of “proof” that current Iraq policy makes sense, which would be interesting, except that Japan was not like the way Iraq is and the two cases are not comparable at all.  If there were people who believed that Japan was unsuited to democracy (if today’s virtually permanent LDP rule they have there is what you want to call democracy), they were evidently too much in thrall to official propaganda about the nature of the Japanese regime, since the Japanese had already had universal manhood suffrage for decades.  They had a liberal constitutional monarchy, and their legal system was based on European models.  (Also, the implicit comparison the President makes between Shinto and Islam is unpersuasive for what I would hope are obvious reasons.) 

For people who normally get so edgy when Vietnam is mentioned in any negative connection with Iraq, the administration is strangely happy to make lame analogies with U.S. involvement with almost any  Asian country now.  For what it’s worth, Japan was fairly “dynamic” before the Pacific War, and they were, I suppose, “hopeful.”  It may have been the hopefulness of a would-be empire and regional overlord, but it was hopefulness all the same.  Indeed, they were rather too optimistic in what they thought they could accomplish.  That’s something worth bearing in mind.

There is one way in which Mr. Bush might have a small point, if he means to refer only to the postwar period and he wanted to talk specifically about, say, South Korea alone.  It was primarily the Japanese themselves who rebuilt their own country and transformed it into the economic dynamo that it became.  Having already industrialised significantly before and during the war, the Japanese were hardly unfamiliar with modern industry, finance and capitalism, and they had also had some experience with parliamentary government.  Having successfully created and sustained these things once before, they were prepared to rebuild and recreate anew.  Our role was to allow this without allowing Japan to rearm and resume its great power ambitions.      

Running throughout this speech is the idea that every nation in the world wants freedom and has the potential to do great things, but none of them could have done or will ever do anything if the Americans don’t show up to “help” or, more precisely, make them do it.  Especially if Mr. Bush is right about the potential and the desire of all peoples to live free, this is appalling arrogance to claim that their success is dependent on us.  On the other hand, if it is so heavily dependent on us, how will it be sustained if we should ever depart?  If the former, our involvement is redundant and pointless, and if the latter our involvement is ultimately futile.

My Scene colleague Matt Feeney raises an objection to Ross’ critique of Chait‘s criticism of Kristol (ah, the fun of blogging), noting correctly that there are internal political reasons why TNR does not say much about the war one way or the other.  There is something else worth mentioning here. 

Ross began his post thus:

Jon Chait’s attack on Bill Kristol’s supposed “thuggery” in support of the current American strategy in Iraq would be considerably more interesting if it were possible to discern where Chait’s own magazine stands on the question. 

By the same token, Ross’ critique of Chait would be considerably more powerful if it were possible to discern clearly what Ross’ own view on the war was at the present time.  It isn’t that Ross never writes about the war, but he doesn’t say much about what kind of Iraq policy he thinks would be best.  In his bloggingheads appearances, he will often make a point of declaring himself to be something of an agnostic on the “surge,” and thus ends up, by default, with a “wait and see” position.  That’s fair enough, but it is a bad  position from which to criticise someone else’s reticence about Iraq policy.   

I would add that it shouldn’t matter here whether TNR’s position on the war is discernible, and I don’t know that it would necessarily make the criticism that much more interesting.  If TNR were an openly pro-withdrawal, antiwar magazine, Chait’s criticism of Kristol could–and would–be written off by other war supporters as a standard attack on a prominent “hawk,” which would immediately make the criticism less interesting to large numbers of people.  If it were an openly pro-war, stay-until-we-“win” magazine, this might make the article more noteworthy as evidence of some political rift among the “hawks,” but it would in no way make the underlying criticism of Kristol more or less interesting. 

On the contrary, the nebulous nature of TNR‘s position could make the criticism of Kristol all the more powerful, as it sets up an opposition between a magazine trying to offer a report about the reality of the war and the reflexive, ideological, party-line response of a major war supporter.  This entire Beauchamp affair has been a miniature version of the larger pro-war obsession with the media’s “failure” to report the “real news” and “good news” from Iraq.  The pro-war responses to the Beauchamp reports, of which Kristol’s is one of the more prominent, have been typical representatives of this kind of argument.  Underlying this “they aren’t reporting the real, good news” view is the assumption that any media outlet that reports things that war supporters don’t want to hear must be reporting them because of their inveterate opposition to the war and their hatred of the troops, etc.  After all, only ideologically-driven antiwar fanatics could believe that anything was really going awry in Iraq, since war supporters know that the “surge” is working and all will be well. 

When there is the slightest hint of erroneous reporting, the war supporters believe they have found the Holy Grail in their quest to uncover antiwar media bias.  Arguably, Iraq reporting in a magazine whose editors have an ambiguous or divided view of the war stands a slightly better chance of breaking through this otherwise impenetrable cloud of willful pro-war ignorance.  Similarly, such a magazine’s criticisms of war supporters whose first resort is vilification and insult instead of real argument might be more effective in forcing less obnoxious war supporters to recognise the shallowness of the arguments offered on their behalf by a prominent “hawk.”

Update: Ross gives a good reply here, and he convincingly rebuts at least part of my post.  TNR does have more of a responsibility to address Iraq policy.

It is certainly a conundrum of America’s laudable foreign policy objective of democracy promotion that electorates sometimes freely vote for parties whose goals are distinctly inimical to US foreign policy objectives. ~Gerard Baker

You could call it a conundrum.  Or you could call it an entirely predictable outcome of empowering populations that despise U.S. foreign policy, which is not so much of a conundrum, since virtually everyone already knew the attitude of the populations in question.  Conundrum makes the outcome sound somehow mysterious, inexplicable and bizarre, as if it were the last thing anyone might have expected. 

Baker continues:

And yet, for all its perils, President George Bush is surely right to insist on the primacy of freedom.

Well, this seems to be a decidedly strange way to run U.S. foreign policy (the primacy of the just American interest would seem to be appropriate), but even supposing that Mr. Bush insisted on the “primacy of freedom” and did the necessary legwork to make sure that his rhetorical insistence was matched with proper support, an insistence on the “primacy of freedom” has next to nothing to do with the promotion of democracy.  As Near Eastern, Latin American and other elections are reminding us all the time, democratic elections in most countries are a sure-fire way to ensure that there is much less freedom in the country, since majorities in these countries are far more interested in using their political power to gain benefits and subsidies than they are in gaining any real sort of freedom.  This may have something to do with the fact that most people, when faced with the choice of either doing the hard work needed to possess and retain freedom or not doing it, will opt for the easier path.  This rather makes nonsense out of Mr. Bush’s refrains that all people want freedom, since they might very well want it and could still want many other things far more. 

If Mr. Bush were insisting on the “primacy of freedom,” he would be actively discouraging elections and encouraging the development of civil society and liberal education.  Instead, there is virtually none of the latter and constant chatter about the former.  Besides, all those purple-thumbed Iraqis make for better television than the drudgework of changing political culture over the long haul (not that I think that the U.S. government should be involved in any of this).

Pluralistic though it was, Islamic Spain was no democracy. ~Alexander Kronemer

Additionally, Kronemer writes of a generic “Islamic Spain,” as if there were no difference between Umayyads, Almoravids and Almohads.  The latter two dynasties were decidedly much less interested in perpetuating whatever toleration and good intercommunal relations there had been before, and they were, in fact, much more fanatical.  It is remarkable how these dynasties play no role in Kronemer’s description of the worsening relations between Christians and Muslims in Spain.

There was a time when neoconservatives sought to hold the moral and intellectual high ground [bold mine-DL]. There was some- thing inspiring in their vision of America as a different kind of superpower–a liberal hegemon deploying its might on behalf of subjugated peoples, rather than mere self-interest. As the Iraq war has curdled [bold mine-DL], the idealism and liberalism have drained out of the neoconservative vision. What remains is a noxious residue of bullying militarism. Kristol’s arguments are merely the same pro-war arguments that have been used historically by right-wing parties throughout the world: Complexity is weakness, dissent is treason, willpower determines all. ~Jonathan Chait

That first line is amusing.  Certainly, neocons have always sought to strike the morally and intellectually superior pose, but their taking of the “high ground” usually consisted of declaring that their policies are the ones most consistent with American values and then declaring those who oppose them to have lost faith in those values.  Chait is right that neocons did stress the idealistic cant about “benevolent global hegemony” and their enthusiasm for democratising the world more than they tend to do these days, but when exactly was this pristine time when they did not simultaneously engage in vilification, demonisation and, as he calls it, “thuggery”?  Thuggery and intimidation have always been part of their method, and they have, at least until very recently, been fairly successful in marginalising political rivals as a result.  Neocons learned fairly early on that ideologically-charged demonisation of opponents was quite effective in either shutting up or discrediting their foes, and it seems to me that some of them taught Mr. Bush a thing or two about this. 

Part of the advantage of their support for democratisation, a foreign policy of “values” as well as interests and an idealistic hope to reform politically dysfunctional societies was that they could–and did–very easily cast anyone who opposed their preferred policies as people who were not very supportive of, or who actually hated, democracy and American values (or who actively sympathised with despots and noxious ideologies).  To deny the feasibility and practicability of the democratisation of the Near East was not just common sense or prudence.  No, it was evidence at once of cultural supremacism and/or racism and also cultural relativism.  If you did not accept that freedom and democracy were universally possible, you did not really think people in other countries were fully human, and so on.  This was the standard kind of argument put forward by neoconservatives.  Nowadays, it is true that the neocons tend to go straight for the jugular by smearing their opponents as unpatriotic backstabbers, but this is simply because their more “idealistic” rhetoric does not have the power to shut down debate that it once did.  Heavy-handed nationalist and militarist appeals (which have been integral to neoconservatism for at least the last 12 years) are their best rhetorical weapons for shoring up their base of support and bludgeoning their foes.  Naturally, it is not persuasive or intelligent, but that has been true of these people for a very long time.

Accusations of treason are a dime a dozen for these people–what does Chait think their unending warnings against policies of “appeasement” are if not accusations that their policy opponents are aiding and abetting the enemies  of the United States?  The embrace of simplistic abstractions in the place of complex analysis has been commonplace, and you need only browse Krauthammer’s archives for a few minutes to find some nauseating invocation of the power of the will and the need to show “resolve.”  This was all true before the invasion of Iraq, and for years before that.  If Chait has finally discovered the hollowness and shallowness of modern neoconservatism, good for him, but it is not exactly a new thing.