UPDATED: Left Out
Here’s another essay examining the global Left’s decadence. From decay stems the slew of failures– to include the de facto support for anti-American dictators and apologies for terrorism (at least when terror is directed toward the US and the West). It’s from The Australian and is written by Michael Costello.
The lede:
How has it happened that the Left of politics across the world has ended up opposing a foreign policy philosophy of spreading democracy in favour of supporting the traditional conservative agenda of stability, sovereignty and the status quo? Because that is what the Left is doing in its hostile reaction to George W. Bush’s second inaugural address.
It is entirely understandable that the Left is viscerally anti-Bush. His political strategy is not based on the democratic approach of seeking the middle ground, but on sharpening differences and divisions, of defaming and intimidating those who do not support him as appeasers, immoral and weak. His and his cabinet officers’ contemptuous treatment of allies and the international institutional framework could not be better demonstrated than by his nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN. I have had direct experience of how Bolton works. He believes that when the US says “jump”, others should ask “how high?” He tolerates nothing else.
But there’s something much deeper at work here than the Left’s dislike of Bush. It is something that has bedevilled the Left since the 1960s.
And this is where the story begins to cover territory we covered in January and February (follow this link and this post on the possibility of a bi-partisan foreign policy emerging once our left-of-center reaches adulthood.)
Costello wrote:
Bush said in his second inaugural address: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
This is resonant of John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address in 1961, when he said: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Kennedy’s words inspired the world. It particularly inspired those of us on the progressive side of politics. But those words turned sour because they presaged the US drive deeper into Vietnam. And for most members of
the Left, Vietnam is the seminal personal and political rite of passage. Vietnam destroyed a Democrat president. It brought down a Republican president. It discredited the moral and political leadership of the US. Now when the trumpet sounds, the Left’s instinctive reaction is to cry “No, not another Vietnam”.
And so it has been over Iraq. The Left sees it as a Vietnam-style quagmire, a parcel of lies, leading once again to defeat. But the military, geostrategic and political terms of engagement in Iraq are different to those of Vietnam. The most profound difference rests on the issue of democracy. For 15 years the Americans ran the South Vietnamese political system; the elections held were dubious and led to regimes without legitimacy.
In sharp contrast, Iraq’s elections were for real. They are considered legitimate by the world because they are legitimate to Iraqis themselves, who voted in droves. A two-month delay in putting together a new government, far from being a negative, is a positive because those months were devoted to what democracy does best — political accommodation, power sharing, consensus building.
Here’s a sop to his fellows — and the sop, while rhetorically useful, is wrong. No one I know (military or diplomatic) underestimates the difficulties of establishing and nurturing democratic institutions, but Costello has to suggest that New Internationalists are stupid.
True, Bush and others are over-claiming progress and underestimating the dangers that lie ahead. We accept democracy as normal; it is not. Democracy is the most radical and revolutionary political idea in the world. Having an election does not, on its own, lead to good government (think of Russia), and democracy can completely fail (as in Zimbabwe). But it can also over time succeed spectacularly (for example, in eastern Europe and East Asia). Democracy is full of risk, but nothing is more full of hope — ask the voters of Iraq, Ukraine, Palestine, Afghanistan and elsewhere, who so treasure their right to vote that they risk their lives for it.
I agree completely with Costello’s conclusion– it’s what I’ve been hammering on for 20 years. Correction: 30 years and counting. This also echoes Michael Novak and his “universal human appeal of liberty.” Which, for that matter, echoes Jefferson, Locke, etc.
…A foreign policy without principle will fail because it is fundamentally sterile. That is why unadorned so-called “realism” in foreign policy, with its emphasis on stability and the status quo, can sound clever and sophisticated but in the end implodes under its own emptiness. But principle must be pursued with pragmatism and with patience if it is not to end in recklessness and aggression.
The key thing for those on the Left to understand is that intense dislike of Bush and echoes of Vietnam do not make a foreign policy. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Bolton - they too will pass. What will go on is the great human desire to be free, which should be at the core of our foreign policy. The great danger for the Left is that its Vietnam and Bush obsessions may mean that it will end up on the wrong side of history.
UPDATE: Wretchard at the Belmont Club has a slightly different take on Costello.
Costello is overly generous in his conclusion. The Left lost its moral high-ground when it abandoned Kennedy’s promise and left the South Vietnamese to suffer for its love of revolution, and lack of nerve and commitment to democracy. The left also lost its nerve in Iran allowing Khomeinism to grow into the terrorism that threatens us in our home today. The only success the left can point to in the last 50 years is South Africa, and one could be pardoned if one found the jury still out there. In the mean time, the Right has presided over the liberation of Eastern Europe and started on the Middle East. The right pushed Spain, Portugal, Latin America and Eastern Asia toward democracy. The road has not been all up and to the right. The fight was often difficult and involved alliances with parties one might not invite into one’s home for dinner. Parties like Pahlevi, Marcos, Pinochet and Deng. But the goal has been fixed and progress has been steady, if not constant. The Left has been on the wrong side of history for a long time. It will be interesting to read the history of this time in 60 years or so when academe has abandoned the romanticism of its Ward Churchills and returned to rationality. Much of the Left will be seen as such utterly unwitting fools that they have not yet figured out they had been left in history’s dust bin.
Comment by Richard Heddleson — 4/15/2005 @ 7:35 am
The Left has always had a serious perception problem. Many looked the other way when Communism took root in Russia and that factor has continued to affect the way they saw the world even after many of the abuses of the Soviet system came to light. To many on the Left, the failure of Communism was due to the imperfections of those who led Russia, not due to the inherent problems of the Communist ideology. Thus, they see that the ideal of a state, totally secular where each citizen willingly contributes according to his means without seeking reward, is something that Man should continue to strive for. That philosophy leads to the conclusion that our system is defective in that it does not serve this ideal. This means that our system should be “reformed” to bring it closer in line with that ideal. Democracy itself is not the best system of government for these folks. Because their idealism ignores the reality of human nature, their philosophy cannot work on a broad societal basis. The only thing that can result where a system like Communism is attempted on a societal level is an autocratic form of government, since people will always pursue power and the Communist system does not have the checks and balances built into the system to prevent the undue concentration thereof….that’s (unfortunately) human nature. Therefore, the Left will always be on the wrong side of history because (unlike our Founding Fathers) they ignore history’s driving force — human nature!
Comment by RAZ — 4/15/2005 @ 8:22 am
I’d disagree with post #1 and I’d point back to the recent post in Austin Bay’s blog “The Failure of Managed Democracy” Quoting from the Austrialian article
In my personal opinion the Left can’t let go of Vietnam, but the Right need to let go of Vietnam also and realize that Iraq doesn’t vindicate Vietnam. (When I read the section I just quoted, I wondered did Austin write that? It sounded just like his radio talk on klbj)
Comment by james — 4/15/2005 @ 8:38 am
The source of James’ disagreement is unclear and may lie with the incomplete presentation of my position. The Left, Johnson and Kennedy, got us into Viet Nam for the right reasons. The execution, at many levels, on many political dimensions was atrocious. But the Left, Mc Carthy and Mc Govern, with the Congressional class of ‘74, abandoned the goal of Johnson and Kennedy as well as their execution. That the elections as well as the military campaign seem to have gone better in Iraq is due to many things, one of them being that the Right learned better lessons from the Viet Nam experience than did the Left. One of them being to remain faithful to the primary goal of establishing democracy to create a more peaceful world.
Comment by Richard Heddleson — 4/15/2005 @ 8:59 am
It’s not about letting go of Viet Nam, but rather finding the real problems of the Viet Nam experience and actually learning something from them. The Left can’t “let go” of Viet Nam because they saw the same problems but drew too many wrong lessons.
Comment by Neo — 4/15/2005 @ 9:35 am
Your post is interesting but I think the conclusions are wrong. First, you paint the “left” with a very narrow brush and the “right” with a broad brush. You basically claim that anyone who is against the Iraq war is part of the left and all on the left are on the fringe. However, you embrace a lot of people on the right. For example, yes, Reagan was instrumental in bringing down Communism but, I remind you, he did it without starting a war! No one believes Reagan would have gone to war to stop Communism. Second, you want to promote democracy in other Countries yet seem to be willing to not have one here. Bush went to the American people to ask for consensus on going to war in Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction and were about to use them. Our fundamental survival was at stake. Further, he said that there were direct ties to Al Qaeda. Well, now we learn that there were no WMDs and the tie to Al Qaeda has been built as a result of us going to war not prior. If WE lived in a Democracy, Bush would have said I am going to war to expand Democracy. No one would have supported that. Finally, I notice you fault the left for supporting anti American Dictators. That is a false statement. No one that i know of (except those on the fringes.. they are to the left what the neo nazi movement is to the right) supports dictatorships. What they do support is bring them down through means other than war. War is when your survival is at stake. Who is this Government to tell me I have to die so that someone in Iraq can vote? Now, what about the right in support of Pro-American Dictatorships? So, we go into Iraq and destroy it to bring democracy. Now what? I will believe the right a little bit more when they support invading Saudi Arabia. Here is a dictatorship which financed 9/11, taught the 9/11 terrorists in their state run schools, and tacitly supported their war on America. Why do we not go after that Dictatorship?
Comment by Kevin — 4/16/2005 @ 9:11 am
Kevin apparently has not been reading the news or has been spending too much time listening to the MSM. Saudi Arabia has been cracking down on the terrorists and their supporters and looking at modernizing their society so far as the rights of women, etc. Egypt has opened the electoral process to multiple parties. Libya has stopped their nuclear project. Lebanon is now trying to get Syria out. Afghanistan has opened their society up to the women and their companies. This is a whole new scenario for them. Iraq has opened their educational system to women and has broadened the political base of their government to all the various groups and ethnicities. You really need to stop getting all your news from the usual sources and look around at what is actually going on in the world. Our media is doing a very poor job of informing us of the world affairs because it doesn’t fit the preconceptions of the reporters. Even when they do report some of the above news, it is buried in the last couple of paragraphs of the stories and the lede and headline point to less beneficial events. Check out some of the stories in the NY Times. The headline tells us that there are bombs going off and the first couple of paragraphs tell us it is all a quagmire. Later on in the story we read that the parliament has chosen its leaders and the Sunnis are trying to join the government and the Iraqis are attacking the terrorists rather than the other way around. All this in one story the headline and lede on the front page. The good news is on the continuation and below the fold way in the middle of the paper.
Comment by dick — 4/16/2005 @ 4:29 pm
Kevin — 1. I would agree that Vietnam for a variety of reasons is not applicable to today’s challenges. For one thing, it was a proxy struggle set against Cold War limits for fear of global nuclear war. So measures to assure victory were off the table (such as a massive amphibious invasion of North Vietnam, or a conventional armored thrust deep into North Vietnam. These limits on US action (for fear of China’s intervention ala Korea or nuclear conflict. 2. Democracy at home? Bush made his case that Saddam was a threat, which Democrats who got the same briefing voted to authorize (military action). Pre 9/11 this would have been only something akin to Desert Fox. Post 9/11 things were different. Note that Saddam refused inspections, and acted provocatively. Assuming that Bush was Clinton, America could not really threaten it’s enemies with serious consequences, and the world was like Sept 10, 2001. Even Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schroeder at the time felt Saddam had WMD, their view was that the appropriate response to that risk was to negotiate more with Saddam. At the time, there was considerable bipartisan support (including Kerry) for the US acting unilaterally and not taking Saddam’s word for it or negotiating ala 1998. 3. The Left IS generally supportive of anti-American dictators: Chavez, Fidel, Khadaffi, Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, Baby Assad, and of course Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the PA/Arafat. The sad case of the woman killed in Iraq (she was a fervent admirer of Castro), or the lauding of Castro by everyone by Oliver Stone to Michael Moore speaks for itself. 4. Did we go into Iraq to “destroy it?” No. GWB was no longer willing to tolerate the status quo post 9/11. To the horror of the Left and Europe and Saddam, he meant what he said and was absolutely serious about it. Saddam had he recognized political reality in the US could have avoided war, but foolishly chose otherwise. The GWB objective was after removing Saddam putting into consensual government in some form so we don’t have another Saddam re-run.
Comment by Jim Rockford — 4/18/2005 @ 11:23 pm
If Kevin thinks that the left doesn’t support anti-American dictators, I have a bridge I’m trying to sell. I have a simple challenge to Kevin: Every day when you go out, count the number of patriotic t-shirts and bumper stickers in conjunction with Republican, Libertarian, and Democrat logos, then count the anti-war or anti-American ones as well, then do the math. The left hates America, they hate Liberty, and love fascist totalitarianism. They are idiots with no connection to reality.
Comment by Improbulus Maximus — 4/27/2005 @ 1:25 pm