Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Charles Krauthammer can’t help himself. He is a desperate man. Like Pavlov’s dog he cannot help lapping at Hitler’s corpse when presented with the opportunity. Krauthammer, like a good neo-conservative soldier, throws everything including the kitchen sink at Iran. Krauthammer wants to attack Iran like he wanted to attack Iraq. He wants the United States Government to feed his bloodlust by attacking Iran. He wants the citizens to fall in line by exploiting the memory of the Holocaust and using it as an emotional hammer to bludgeon us into submission.

Charles Krauthammer is a deeply cynical dangerous warmonger. He paints the picture of Jewish suffering and the attempted annihilation of Jews by Hitler:

For 2,000 years, Jews found protection in dispersion — protection not for individual communities, which were routinely persecuted and massacred, but protection for the Jewish people as a whole. Decimated here, they could survive there. They could be persecuted in Spain and find refuge in Constantinople. They could be massacred in the Rhineland during the Crusades or in the Ukraine during the Khmelnytsky Insurrection of 1648-49 and yet survive in the rest of Europe.

Hitler put an end to that illusion. He demonstrated that modern anti-Semitism married to modern technology — railroads, disciplined bureaucracies, gas chambers that kill with industrial efficiency — could take a scattered people and "concentrate" them for annihilation.

Then he applies the emotional coup de grâce:

His successors now reside in Tehran. The world has paid ample attention to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s declaration that Israel must be destroyed. Less attention has been paid to Iranian leaders’ pronouncements on exactly how Israel would be "eliminated by one storm," as Ahmadinejad has promised.

He wants us to dispense with reason and follow him down his cynical journey:

As it races to acquire nuclear weapons, Iran makes clear that if there is any trouble, the Jews will be the first to suffer. "We have announced that wherever [in Iran] America does make any mischief, the first place we target will be Israel," said Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani, a top Revolutionary Guards commander. Hitler was only slightly more direct when he announced seven months before invading Poland that, if there was another war, "the result will be . . . the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

Until finally we are in a box of his making and overcome with emotion we shout to the world, "Never again!":

When Iran’s mullahs acquire their coveted nukes in the next few years, the number of Jews in Israel will just be reaching 6 million. Never again?

I would have some empathy for Krauthammer and may have been duped into believing that his argument might be heartfelt save some inconvenient history. Krauthammer and his cohorts have dragged around the corpse of Hitler whenever it suited them. They are always tilting at the corpse of Hitler whenever they want to aim the immense military might of the United States at their chosen foe.

So it was with Saddam before we were misled into attacking Iraq:

Former CIA Director James Woolsey warns that Saddam Hussein "poses the same kind of threat to the United States that Hitler posed in Germany in the mid 1930s when the British and the French kept postponing dealing with him in the way that some people are advocating dealing with Saddam how."

The corpse of Hitler also comes to the rescue whenever we need to bash Hugo Chavez:

"I mean, we’ve got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money," Rumsfeld added. "He’s a person who was elected legally _ just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally _ and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others."

And now this nation’s tired guns are being pointed at Iran. Krauthammer tag teams with William Kristol and others in pulling the corpse of Hitler through the American town square. They scream, "Never again! Never again!" and they want us to join in on the chant.

The trotting out of Hitler to justify another first strike by the United States is so without merit that it really does not warrant a substantive rebuttal. It merits only ridicule. That and the obvious observation that if Israel so chooses it could wipe Iran off the map with a massive nuclear strike.

Krauthammer and his cohorts are desperate to go for the trifecta before their time in power runs out. With Iraq dispatched they have their sights on Iran and Syria. I hope the American people will not be fooled again. We should meet these baseless and cynical attempts at fear mongering and collectively shout at Krauthammer and the neo-conservative fanatics that we will not be fooled again. We should collectively shout: "Never Again!"

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had initially decided not to get too deeply involved in Charles Krauthammer’s tantrum (it is probably best to stay out of the way when you see a man foaming at the mouth). But, I have since changed my mind for two reasons:

• Francis Fukuyama was online today at The Washington Post website answering questions about his book and the Krauthammer column
• Krauthammer’s column has generated substantial debate in the blogosphere

So, I thought I would address the substance of Krauthammer’s charge in his juvenile column more directly. Krauthammer’s column, it seems to me, is basically arguing the following:

1. Francis Fukuyama lied in the Preface of his latest book about a speech Krauthammer made (nana-nana-boo-boo!)
2. Francis Fukuyama in "America At The Crossroads", by making unconvincing arguments,  proves Krauthammer correct that there was no alternative but to attack Iraq (nana-nana-boo-boo!)
3. Francis Fukuyama is a sheep who changed his mind on Iraq after public opinion turned against the war. And everyone knows no self-respecting neo-con can doubt the rightness of one’s cause even against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (nana-nana-boo-boo!)

There, I think I have captured the essence of Mr. Krauthammer’s bile. Sheesh, these guys don’t like it when they think they are misrepresented. All that venom, and its not even about the book, its about the Preface to the book. Now, that is petty.

I will address each point in turn and, to confuse the reader, I will address them in reverse order. But first, it is well worth pointing out that long before Prof. Fukuyama published his book, he wrote an essay in June 2004 entitled "The Neo-Conservative Moment" for the National Interest critiquing Krauthammer’s speech. In this essay, Fukuyama offers a convincing and compelling critique of Krauthammer’s vision of American dominance in a unipolar world. It is a long essay and I will not attempt to summarize it here. Please read the essay as you may find it remarkably prescient and well informed about our entanglement in Iraq.

In one part of the essay, Fukuyama knocks down one of Krauthammer’s (and Mr. Bush’s) favorite talking points: "Where is it written that Arabs are incapable of democracy?". The implication is that we have a lack of respect for the Arabs when we say this. Fukuyama responds sharply:

It is, of course, nowhere written that Arabs are incapable of democracy, and it is certainly foolish for cynical Europeans to assert with great confidence that democracy is impossible in the Middle East. We have, indeed, been fooled before, not just in Japan but in Eastern Europe prior to the collapse of communism.

But possibility is not likelihood, and good policy is not made by staking everything on a throw of the dice. Culture is not destiny, but culture plays an important role in making possible certain kinds of institutions–something that is usually taken to be a conservative insight. Though I, more than most people, am associated with the idea that history’s arrow points to democracy, I have never believed that democracies can be created anywhere and everywhere through sheer political will. Prior to the Iraq War, there were many reasons for thinking that building a democratic Iraq was a task of a complexity that would be nearly unmanageable. Some reasons had to do with the nature of Iraqi society: the fact that it would be decompressing rapidly from totalitarianism, its ethnic divisions, the role of politicized religion, the society’s propensity for violence, its tribal structure and the dominance of extended kin and patronage networks, and its susceptibility to influence from other parts of the Middle East that were passionately anti-American.

 There, in two short paragraphs, is a concise and coherent reason for not invading Iraq. But, Fukuyama is not breaking new ground here. This is an obvious line of reasoning that the Administration should have seriously contemplated before embarking on our disastrous misadventure in Iraq. Instead, they were drinking Krauthammer’s blood red Kool-Aid.

 Now, to get back to those charges in Krauthammer’s column.

As to the third charge, Fukuyama was against the Iraq invasion publicly from the summer of 2002. Krauthammer is simply misinformed.

As to the second charge, we don’t even have to look at Fukuyama’s book. Fukuyama’s essay outlines many reasons to not invade Iraq (one I mentioned above), not the least of which is that Iraq was not an existential threat to the United States and it therefore did not justify a pre-emptive strike. There were many options on the table for the United States. The argument made after one bad option was exercised to suggest that there were no other plausible alternatives is nonsensical. It is more appropriate to say that Krauthammer saw no other alternative in his own mind because his analysis was clouded by his belief in the certainty of the Iraq mission’s legitimacy. Krauthammer fooled himself, and still fools himself, into believing that his course of action was the only course of action. This is not really about policy, but more about his psyche and best left to the likes of Wittgenstein.

As to the first and obviously the most irksome charge, Fukuyama did not contend that Krauthammer’s speech was about Iraq. Fukuyama’s point was that Krauthammer, in 2004, did not recognize that the failures in Iraq had undermined Krauthammer’s "democratic globalism". Here are the relevant paragraphs from Fukuyama’s critique of the speech:

The 2004 speech is strangely disconnected from reality. Reading Krauthammer, one gets the impression that the Iraq War–the archetypical application of American unipolarity–had been an unqualified success, with all of the assumptions and expectations on which the war had been based fully vindicated. There is not the slightest nod towards the new empirical facts that have emerged in the last year or so: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the virulent and steadily mounting anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, the growing insurgency in Iraq, the fact that no strong democratic leadership had emerged there, the enormous financial and growing human cost of the war, the failure to leverage the war to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and the fact that America’s fellow democratic allies had by and large failed to fall in line and legitimate American actions ex post.

The failure to step up to these facts is dangerous precisely to the neo-neoconservative position that Krauthammer has been seeking to define and justify. As the war in Iraq turns from triumphant liberation to grinding insurgency, other voices–either traditional realists like Brent Scowcroft, nationalist-isolationists like Patrick Buchanan, or liberal internationalists like John Kerry–will step forward as authoritative voices and will have far more influence in defining American post-Iraq War foreign policy. The poorly executed nation-building strategy in Iraq will poison the well for future such exercises, undercutting domestic political support for a generous and visionary internationalism, just as Vietnam did. [Emphasis added by me]

 Fukuyama is quite clear here that Krauthammer does not mention Iraq in his discussion of "democratic globalism" nor does Krauthammer realize that his thesis is not supported by the facts on the ground (does that sound familiar?).

So, it appears to me that Krauthammer has gotten bent out of shape about nothing. He is focusing on the minutia of a Preface of a book to somehow gain the upper hand on an already lost argument. It is truly frightening that the last holdouts of a debunked application of a flawed theory believe so much in the rightness of their cause, that they go to great lengths to deny the reality all around them. Again, it may be time to trot out Wittgenstein.

In the battle of Fukuyama versus Krauthammer, it is safe to say that Krauthammer was knocked out at the opening bell. Compared to Fukuyama’s reasoning, Krauthammer’s thesis sounds downright childish and naive. That is not to say, of course, that Fukuyama is correct in his arguments. But, at least, he is making well thought out arguments that are open for debate amongst reasonable people. And, most importantly, his vision is informed by some connection to reality. As for Krauthammer, it is time to cut back on the Kool-Aid.

A friend of mine pointed me to the article "Why Did We Destroy Iraq?" by Paul Craig Roberts. The article is, as the title suggests, an angry diatribe against our current Iraq policy. As criticism of the Iraq policy, it is nothing new nor is it particularly well reasoned. However, what is striking is that the article is published on the NewsMax website. NewsMax is a conservative website founded by Christopher Ruddy, who is best known for his work on the Arkansas Project.

Although Roberts has been against the Iraq war from the start, it is revealing to see the gap that is widening between the President and the so called paleo-cons on the one side, and the divide between the President and the neo-cons on the other. Iraq has certainly come between President Bush and the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

General William Odom, former Director of the National Security Agency, compares Iraq to Vietnam in Nieman Watchdog. It is a very interesting read. I think both these experiences illustrate the fallacy of viewing circumstances on the ground through the prism of ideology rather than how they really are. The Iraqi people’s politics are probably much more driven by internal dynamics between the various ethnic groups and communities, than by some monolithic drive toward liberty or democracy. It is a fairly trivial observation that we are destined to fail in our goal of establishing a democracy while trying to sort through the complexities of Iraqi politics, the undercurrents of which we barely understand.  All this, it seems to me, was a fairly predictable outcome. The question then really is: what was our exit strategy when we planned this intervention?