I spent some time responding to an article sent to me by conservative relatives today. Here's some of it. There may be some points in here you can use in talking to conservative friends.
Thanks for the link to William Whittle's website and his article about "Power".
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000066.htmlThe article is interesting and you may be surprised that as a "liberal' I agree with a lot of it.
quote:
"... we also have to ask ourselves some tough questions regarding the use of power. Does fighting back reduce or enlarge the threat to our country? What are the diplomatic costs, and do they exceed the benefits gained from unilateral action? And because we are a moral nation, most importantly: how do we know when the application of our vast power is justified, not only for our own self interest, but also in the consequences to those on the receiving end of that power?
This subject is too important to screw up, frankly."In general this essay has many good points. Despite the current altercations about Iraq, I believe that the vast majority of Americans (excluding a few on the left and right fringes) would generally agree with the above statements.
"So it is time for hard questions: how much power is enough? Who can wield such power without being corrupted? And if we voluntarily relinquish this power?
What then?So far, so good. Then we start getting into the "straw man" argument:
"Those that would have us disarm, withdraw, apologize and retreat make the assumption that by removing American Power from the world, the planet will become a harmonious village of diversity and mutual respect. Remove American capitalism, and the world's people will trade solar cars for indigenous beads, our European moral betters will hand over their cash to the third world until all are perfectly equal, and everyone will live in a sustainable ecological paradise. Remove American cultural power and Britney will be replaced with Beethoven, and an exquisite and reasonably priced Pate de Foi Gras Existentialist Meal can be had at a corner drive in where the former McDonald's once stood. "This is utter nonsense..."Of course it is nonsense. Who exactly is making this argument? Howard Dean? Wesley Clark? Hillary Clinton?
The argument of (for example) Howard Dean on Iraq was NOT that "American power must never be used", but rather that "Invading Iraq at this does not make us safer nor does it serve our vital interests".
Let's remember who the real aggressor in the war on terror was. The perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks were radical Islamists, under the banner of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Reasonable people differ on whether the Iraq war was the right action. It may be that time alone will tell the tale. But it was certainly not associated with a "retaliatory" nor an "anti-terrorist" action because if it was, we missed the target. About 500 miles too far north in fact. (How many hijackers were Iraqi? How many Saudi?)
I'm about as "liberal" as a mainstream Democrat gets these days, and yet I supported the war in Afghanistan, as did probably 90 percent of the American people. Why? Well, because these were the people harboring our attackers. The reasons for the war were not the least bit ambiguous.
When it comes to Iraq it's another story. The "official" reasons for war seems to change every month, as the Administration line is tailored to meet the current evidence (or lack thereof) of WMD's, progress toward democracy, "transformation" in the Middle East, etc. The unspoken reasons (oil, money) increasingly bubble to the surface in the absence of compelling evidence supporting any of the "official" reasons.
The current dissatisfaction of about half the US population with the Bush foreign policy is the direct result of the Bush administration's dishonesty. The main issues at hand right now, are (1) Flawed assessment of a threat, and (2) Flawed case made to the American people, and (3) Flawed execution of the strategy. These are essentially the same problems than Johnson had in the Vietnam War. This is not necessarily a partisan issue - (Johnson was a liberal Democrat!) except to the extent that questioning the patriotism of the opposition is (as it was then) used as a shield to deflect criticism of the party in power.
But if we use the President's own characterization, then the war in Iraq was not a self-contained war, but a battle in the War on Terror. If is just a battle, then one could reasonably ask, was it a necessary battle? Did the battle serve the objectives in the campaign or theater? Did it serve the overall goal? Did it move us toward victory? In the run-up to the war, the "appeasement" and "Munich" analogies were bandied about by pundits and politicians. To me, a more apt analogy would be the Gallipoli campaign.
It seems to me that Afghanistan and Pakistan, (even Saudi Arabia and Indonesia) are much more central to the war on terror than Iraq. The Iraq War is pretty obviously a sideshow. A sideshow that is sapping our financial and military resources, bogging us down, and diverting us from the main theater. Maybe, like the Italian sideshow in WW2, it will contribute to ultimate victory. Or maybe, like the Gallipoli sideshow in WW1, it may be an unmitigated disaster. Either way it is a sideshow.
Now we come the simplistic analysis of the terror problem:
"There is loose in the world a cancer, a cult of death and destruction, a force that loves nothing but destruction and pain and revenge for slights real and imagined. We face people whose hatred and rage sends them into fits of ecstasy at the thought of their own children being blown to bloody shreds so long as they can kill as many innocents as possible. And the higher we build the more fervent and hardened their desire to bring us down. It is a sickness, it is a disease - it is, in fact, the last animal howling of rage and impotence at a new idea of humanity that is, at a long, bloody and terrible price, fighting and winning a war against racism, sexism, religious extremism, tribalism, conformity and slavery. It is a war for and against the liberal freedoms of the West, for and against the idea of self-determination, personal liberty and responsibility, human creativity, diversity, and freedom of expression."This is not a terribly helpful argument in considering the perils of the new century. Terrorism has been around a long time. Unfortunately, it is especially fearsome when combined with the threat of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. To confront this threat, we need clear thinking much more than we need ideology. If terrorism is really a disease, then do we cure it by killing the patient?
When confronted with German Tiger tanks in Normandy, did the GI's simply scream about how "evil" they were? No, they figured out their strengths and weaknesses and learned to fight them. That is what we have to do.
Osama, as far as we know, is alive and cranking out audio and video tapes while adding new recruits by the score. By invading Iraq we distracted resources from tracking him and have just proven (to them) that we are only in it for their oil.
We don't have the surplus cash to help the Russians secure their nuclear materials, and we've given up any leverage on Pakistan, the REAL rogue Islamic state with nukes. And we've given Little Kim a pass on his own WMD program while proving to him how much he needs it.
Meanwhile, the useless, wimpy, hand-wringing Europeans have succeeded in getting Iran to agree to begin inspections of their nuclear program.
There are plenty of other states in the world that are ruled by evil dictators. It's pretty clear that we can't invade all of them. A recent example:
"We are encouraged by China's cooperation in the war against terror. We are working with China to ensure the Korean peninsula is free of nuclear weapons. We see a China that is stable and prosperous, a nation that respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people." - George W. Bush, October 22, 2003
How's that for appeasement? Back to the "good vs. evil" argument, it's obvious that even for George W. Bush, there are "degrees" of good and evil, and shades of gray in between. For my money, China is our next big strategic competitor and potential menace. It is even more menacing as a proto-fascist capitalist state than it was a communist state.
Unfortunately, to me the Iraq war is strangely puzzling. It is as though we had been struck by Japan at Pearl Harbor, had Nazi Germany declare war on us, then we turned around and invaded Spain "because they have ties to Nazis" and "because they were ruled by an evil dictator" - both of which were true, but were irrelevant under the circumstances.
Now I will offer some words on American power from the "arch-peacenik" of all time, George McGovern (1967) - a liberal who fought in a war, and knew something about it:
"America has achieved a position of power and influence in the world that is unprecedented. We have often used that power generously and courageously, perhaps more than any other nation of our age. I have no doubt of our capacity to respond effectively to a genuine crisis that calls for vigorous and decisive action. I should like to believe that we will also develop a talent for discovering and responding rationally to the underlying forces at work in our time. But to those innumerable tensions, struggles, and incidents of the future that we neither can nor should control, I hope we will manifest a measure of Ralph Waldo Emerson's wisdom: "Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/mcgovfp.htm Foreign Policy and the Crisis Mentality.
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