Thursday, February 02, 2006

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MILLENARIANISM LIGHT

by Srdja Trifkovic

Some commentators have said that President George W. Bush's State of the Union address last Tuesday was more low key and less assertive this year than before. That view is incorrect. A grand domestic theme was absent this time-last year it was the ill-fated Social Security reform-but on world affairs and terrorism Mr. Bush offered a host of cliches, platitudes, and assertions every bit as ideological as his first State of the Union address in 2002, every bit as misguided as his speech at the National Endowment for Democracy last October.

Barely 300 words into his address Mr. Bush presented the choice facing America in starkly Manichean terms: we must "act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom-or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life." In a complex and challenging time, he went on, "the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting-yet it ends in danger and decline." The only way to protect America, to secure the peace and "to control our destiny is by our leadership-so the United States of America will continue to lead." Abroad, Mr. Bush asserted, this demands pursuing "an historic, long-term goal . . . the end of tyranny in our world."

This is a breathtaking agenda indeed. "The end of tyranny" is a metaphysical objective that is indistinguishable from candidate John Kerry's insistence , in 2004, that America's interests "are consistent with the peace, prosperity, and self-determination of every country on earth . . . [America's] interests and the world's are one."

There is nothing to choose between those two "visions." The bipartisan consensus is set, and its implications are staggering. For as long as there is a single country anywhere in the world that is gripped by tyranny (Bush), or that does not enjoy peace, prosperity and self-determination (Democrats), it is ripe for regime change by all practicable means, USAF and USMC included. This is not to be done in order to protect America's security interests in any traditionally defined sense: even supposing that such interests are not necessarily identical with those of "the world" smacks of "isolationism" and shows readiness to "retreat from our duties."

Mr. Bush's circulus vitiosus was reinforced last Tuesday by some bad history, and in particular by the entirely false claim that dictatorships are inherently aggressive while democracies "replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbours, and join the fight against terror." As Tom Fleming reminded us Athens was a democracy when it converted the Delian League into the Athenian Empire and provoked war with Sparta and its allies.

The parallel is worth expanding. In imposing their benevoleng hegemony, the Athenians claimed that their "leadership" was needed to promote free trade and, yes, democracy. That was the first time in history that one state sought to order the affairs of others in the name of an ideological concept. Athens' self-appointed role signaled the birth of a view of international affairs that has created endless problems, both for its upholders and for its victims, ever since. Pericles sought to justify Athenian imperialism in the language heralding Bush-Kerry's millenarianism, claiming that it brought freedom from fear and want to the Greek world. He, too, subscribed to the view that the way "to control our destiny is by our leadership." The end of that road came in 404 B.C., when Athens was routed by Sparta, stripped of its empire and de-militarized, never to rise again.

The worst single statement in Mr. Bush's Tuesday address concerned his characterization of "radical Islam" as "the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death." This stale mantra is not worthy of a fresh comment, so let us merely restate our verdict on similar statements made by the President over the years.

In the immediate aftermath of 9-11 we hoped that Mr. Bush was not serious. In a "Memo to the President" ( Chronicles , December 2001) we wrote , "While political considerations may temporarily oblige you to say that 'Islam is a religion of peace,' you must understand that Islam as such-not some allegedly aberrant form of it-is the main identifiable threat to America's global security in the coming century, and, in the longer term, to the survival of our civilization."

Two months later, after Mr. Bush's first State of the Union address that contained the idiotic claim that the "real" Islam is America's ally in the War on Terror ("Let the skeptics look to Islam's own rich history-with its centuries of learning, and tolerance, and progress"), we again noted that Bush may be disingenuous rather than seriously deluded:

Like communism or Nazism, it is part-religion and part-ideology that seeks to impose mind-numbing uniformity of thought and feeling on its faithful, to subjugate and ultimately destroy all non-believers. It accepts no "peaceful coexistence" and never will. But while Mr. Bush should have no illusions about the nature of the beast-which may lead him to serious miscalculations as to who is, or can be, America's friend or ally-there is no reason to continue alienating over one billion Muslims in Asia and Africa. Their peculiar ways notwithstanding, he should make it clear that we have no immediate quarrel with them for as long as they do not threaten America. Once again, the U.S. foreign policy must avoid creating conditions for specifically anti-American Islamic hostility.

But like a Bourbon who "learns nothing and forgets nothing," President Bush announced last Tuesday that the policy of poking the hornets' nest will continue: "In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores."

Mr. Bush is simply wrong. The war against those "vicious attackers" can never be "won" in the sense of eliminating the phenomenon of terrorism altogether, but it can be successfully pursued to the point where the Western world can be made significantly safer by adopting strategies-defensive strategies-that would reduce the danger of such incidents to as near zero as possible. To put it succintly, this would necessitate leaving the Muslim world to its own devices and preventing it from having a toehold in America: the victory in the War on Terror will come "not by conquering Mecca for America but by disengaging America from Mecca and by excluding Mecca from America; not by eliminating the risk but by managing it wisely, resolutely, and permanently."

The intent "not to abandon our commitments" Mr. Bush justified by the unprovable assertion that "America rejects the false comfort of isolationism": "We are the nation that saved liberty in Europe, and liberated death camps, and helped raise up democracies, and faced down an evil empire." He was wrong or misleading on three counts:

. "Our commitments" imply the existence of a constitutionally binding document, debated and passed into law by the House and Senate. Policies pursued by executive fiat and ad-hoc decisions of the White House or various Cabinet members are no "commitments."

. America's alleged rejection of "isolationism" should be tested against the fact that 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the president's Iraq policy and only 39 percent approve. This represents a reversal of those ratios since May 2003, and compares to the nation's mood on Vietnam in 1968.

. Europe was saved from Nazism-never mind "saving liberty," we all know what happened at Yalta-by the Soviet Army, which caused 85 percent of all Wehrmacht casualties, and which also liberated the worst death camps of them all, Auschwitz, Birkenau and Treblinka.

Not allowing mere facts to invade his pseudo-reality, Mr. Bush went on to assert that, "once again, we accept the call of history to deliver the oppressed and move this world toward peace." This reference to "the call of history" is an old theme in Mr. Bush's speeches. It was present in his 2003 State of the Union address, when we commented on its megalomaniacal implications:

To deal with various threats effectively and on the basis of consensual leadership, the United States should discard the pernicious notion of its "exceptionalism," reflected in Madeleine Albright's memorable phrase that "the United States stands taller than other nations, and therefore sees further." The implication that America is not only wise but also virtuous, and that its foreign policy is influenced by values and not by prejudices, is untrue. It hinders interest-based alliances and blurs the clarity of debate . . . That the claim of exceptionalism makes literally billions of people all over the world very angry indeed is neither here nor there; but it should also irritate all real Americans, whose sense of common decency and modesty has to be offended by such hubristic ravings.

Moving to Afghanistan, the President declared that "we remain on the offensive" in that country, "where a fine President and a National Assembly are fighting terror while building the institutions of a new democracy." This is in line with the manner in which Mr. Bush hailed last September's parliamentary election in Afghanistan as "a major step forward" for the country's democratic process.

When the results were published three months ago, however, it became obvious that the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) will be dominated by warlords, veteran jihadists and former Taliban officials. The new National Assembly includes Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, the head of the Ittihad-e-Islami (Islamic Union Party), who was mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report as a mentor to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind behind the attacks in New York and Washington. It also includes Hazara warlord Mohammed Mohaqiq , notorious for hammering nails into the heads of captives; the Jamiat-i-Islami's Younis Qanooni , accused of countless atrocities during the civil war in the 1990s; and many others tainted by violence and criminality. Far from being a "major step forward," Afghanistan's elections illustrate the perils of "spreading democracy" in the Muslim world. That world's genuinely democratic transformation would require a reform of Muhammad's faith so colossal as to turn it into something altogether new and different. Short of that elusive goal, the question we should ask is not how shall we bring them democracy, but how shall we reduce interaction with them and make America safer.

The President's presentation on Iraq was devoid of any new moments. We're on the offensive, with a clear plan for victory. We're helping Iraqis build an inclusive government, so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency will be marginalized. We're continuing reconstruction efforts. And, third, we're striking terrorist targets while we train Iraqi forces that are increasingly capable of defeating the enemy: "In less than three years, the nation has gone from dictatorship to liberation, to sovereignty, to a constitution, to national elections." This is all old hat , and so is the critical scrutiny.

Suffice to say that Mr. Bush's expressed confidence "in the will of the Iraqi people" may be at odds with his assertion that "we are in this fight to win, and we are winning." His words imply the existence of a consensual and cooperative relationship in which a significant majority of Iraq's citizens is actively supportive of the U.S. presence in their country, or at least tacitly sympathetic to it, but the reality is vastly different: according to British government sources , 82 percent of Iraqis are "strongly opposed" to the presence of foreign troops and 45 percent support attacks on them. Almost three-quarters of Iraqis, 72 percent, have "no confidence" in the foreign forces, and fewer than one per cent (!) think that continued military involvement by the United States and her allies is helping to improve security in their country. This being so, the real question is how to end the war and disengage. That it can never be "won" in a conventional sense is obvious, but in his State of the Union address the President appeared devoid of fresh or useful ideas.

A bizarre part of Mr. Bush's address concerned recent elections in the Middle East. "The great people of Egypt have voted in a multi-party presidential election," he said, "and now their government should open paths of peaceful opposition that will reduce the appeal of radicalism." The reality behind this innocuous sentence is that the Muslim Brotherhood scored a major success at a parliamentary election in Egypt last December. The Brotherhood is an officially banned movement that seeks to impose Sharia on Egypt. Even though its candidates had no run as nominal independents, it easily won 88 seats. In more than half the districts where they ran, the "Ikhwanis" triumphed over their rivals from both the ruling party and from the secular opposition and are now the main opposition to President Hosni Mubarak's government. They would have won more seats were it not for the government crackdown on their strongholds during the final round of voting. That was a victory of democracy of sorts, but it will translate into fewer freedoms for women, into increased persecution of Egypts beleaguered and dwindling Christian minority, and a more stringent posture vis-a-vis Israel. Predictably enough the Brotherhood will refrain from promoting its Islamic political agenda for the time being, because it wants to press for broad democratic reforms of which it will be the main beneficiary. Mr. Mubarak would be crazy to follow Mr. Bush's advice and facilitate this process because it would end in his own demise and the Brotherhood's eventual triumph.

"The Palestinian people have voted in elections," Mr. Bush went on, "And now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace." That hope faces the reality that Hamas triumphed in Gaza and the West Bank and won 76 of 132 seats. It now dominates the Palestinian Authority, and has the power of veto over any eventual peace package that a weakened President Mahmoud Abbas may deliver. Its activists do not dwell on the group's manifesto that calls for the destruction of Israel, but wisely focus on the corruption of the old Fatah establishment.

The victory of Hamas and the success of the Brotherhood present Mr. Bush with a dilemma. "Democracies in the Middle East will not look like our own," he said last Tuesday, "because they will reflect the traditions of their own citizens." Bold words, which conceal the fact that the kind of people he'd presumably like to see elected-secular reformers and technocrats America can do business with-are unelectable. The continuing American presence in Iraq and the perceived structural bias in favor of Israel makes the United States more thoroughly disliked throughout the Muslim world than at any time in living memory. Whatever Mr. Bush hopes for, the locals will want more of the opposite. Whoever its candidate or political force of American choice, the "street" will reject them the moment it suspects that there is a connection.

In his closing remarks Mr. Bush said that "we've been called to leadership" in a decisive period: "Sometimes it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore," he said. "Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing." That was a new rendering of an old fallacy of Mr. Bush's: "history" is linear, and it has a "destination" determined by human action. The President's speechwriters reflect a post-Christian, liberal-democratic variety of millenarianism. The Citizen-Man is on the right track, and he'll keep self-improving until an eschatological shortcut to the End of History is developed that does not require a Second Coming.

"History has called America and our allies to action," Mr. Bush initially asserted in his first State of the Union address four years ago, and by now this claim has become an act of faith. It is one of the most dangerous delusions in history. As we commented back in February 2002 , "This historicist fallacy has bred not only Gnostic ideologies that murder millions of those who are deemed to be on the "wrong" side of history-foreigners as well as their own citizens-but also results in the inevitable destruction of the over-expanded, over-extended bearer of the divinely appointed task . . . Epistemological hubris is in the heart of every utopian who wants to make the world obey. God knows; man only thinks he knows, and actually knows far less than he thinks. When he thinks he can play god, he does abominable things."

President Bush's 2006 State of the Union address was delivered in a less triumphalist tone than others before it. His premises, however, and the strategies derived from those premises-pursuing the enemies of freedom, controlling our destiny by our leadership, striving for the end of tyranny in the world-seem more deeply internalized, more ideologically inflexible than ever before. They are dangerous for America and should alarm the rest of the world.

Thucydides taught that States, threatened by the Imperium, should take on a balancing role as a deliberate policy designed to discourage or contain excessive power. He was right, and Russia and China are doing so as we speak. An imbalance neglected for too long can only be resolved through the disaster of war. External restraint dictated by containment is a viable route to peace. Thucydidian prudence, if properly applied, can save peace. Such prudence is eminently American in spirit, and its rebirth would re-legitimize the notion of America as a real and completed nation, a State with definable national interests as the foundation of its diplomacy. Contrary to Mr. Bush's claims, this is neither defeatism nor escapist isolationism; it is sanity.

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