Up From Neoconservatism

The raging and chaotic civil war in Gaza (and incipiently in the West Bank) is hard to deny. Marty Peretz sees the same pattern as Iraq. So here's a question for Marty: if Arab cultures are completely immune to democratic life, as he has long argued, why does he support the coercive democratization of Iraq with the blood of young Americans? By his own logic, isn't it doomed to abject failure? And isn't staying there therefore a fool's errand? This is one aspect of neoconservative thought on Iraq I still haven't fully understood (and I was exposed to and often impressed by the frankness of many neocons when it came to the limits of Arab-Muslim political culture). By neoconservative logic, the U.S. has undertaken about the least viable, most intractable, self-defeating task on Planet Earth. Why? Once the WMD rationale was exposed as a delusion, why haven't neoconservatives cited the pathologies of Arab culture to argue for withdrawal?

I think the answer is that, beneath the surface, they actually believe in American empire - or, at least, the alleged peril of not having an empire - and Iraq is a new staging ground for the empire's fear-driven expansion. By this, I don't mean a literal Brit-style occupation of half the globe. I mean the U.S. having the final say in every region of the world. (I'm sure, by the way, that most neocons hope it will also spread democracy and freedom and all those good things. I'm not judging their good intentions, just their judgment and assumptions.) I mean a faith in the unipolar moment becoming the unipolar century. This, I suppose, is where I get off the bus. While I don't doubt that America may be a largely benign hegemon (although that's easy for me to say), I'm happy for the world not to be unipolar. I'm content if America is not the dominant power in many regions. I'm fine with China having its own zone of influence, or Russia emerging as a regional power. I really don't see our moral obligation to save Africans from the consequences of their own awful decisions. This restraint may not always mean freedom and happiness the world over. But it's not one country's God-given role to impose and spread such freedom and happiness indefinitely. And if you want to see the evidence that such good intentions do not always lead to freedom and happiness in any case, then please read the paper.

I think that's where I part company with my neoconservative friends.

I read Bob Kagan and I don't see why he logically doesn't support American enmeshment in or occupation of almost the entire world. For him, this search-and-rescue-mankind mission gives America meaning. For me, America's meaning lies not in its control of the world, but in its search for individual freedom, away from the old world, and its proof that constitutional democracy is the best system we have. When the world threatens that democracy and that constitution, or that democracy as it has been established among our allies and friends, we should act, sometimes proactively, sometimes swiftly, often with solid alliances, sometimes with military power. But when any lack of total control is interpreted as a threat, when we are committed to occupying a restive, ungrateful, toxic brew of religious and political hatred for the indefinite future as a price for "security" or "freedom", then we obviously need to rethink. If the occupation had gone swimmingly in Iraq, then envisaging a few thousand residual troops for the indefinite future as a geo-strategic act of support, is a fine idea. But after this occupation and in this global struggle, what we're envisaging is an imperial outpost for decades ahead - a permanent casus belli between us and every Islamist on the planet. I think we have to be firm on this point: no. Unless we want to become Israel. And please don't give me that crap that somehow if we leave there, they'll follow us home. They've already followed us home.  They can now. They always will be able to target us in the modern world. The question is simply whether ineptly occupying a country that even the Brits couldn't pacify makes us less or more safe. I don't see how any sentient observer of the last five years can believe it has made us more safe. It has certainly made us less free.

In other words, my difference with the neocons has emerged more fully in my mind in the past few years: I can see why the burden of running the globe may not, at some point, be worth the trade-off. They seem to think that more Americans in uniform in more places can only be good. Don't get me wrong. I'm not favoring isolationism. There will be many times and places where the U.S. needs to maintain a presence - and a credible threat of military force - for world stability and peace. I can see the rationale for overwhelming superiority in fire-power, in a strong navy, in m issile defense, in bases across the globe in friendly countries. But occupying the Middle East for the rest of our lifetimes? You've got to be kidding me. If that's the agenda, can we please say so and let the public thrash it out? For my part, I can't for the life of me see how keeping thousands of troops in Iraq for the indefinite future serves our national interest. At this point, I also don't see what right we have to be there. Assuming we will be there for ever - as the Bush administration's plans for bases and a mega-embassy indicate - is a form of imperialism. In so far as Iraq's insurgents oppose this, they have a point.

(Photo: David Furst/Getty.)