1 Boring Old Man

George Will’s piece in today’s Washington Post, Transformation’s Toll, reminds us that a Conservative person can be a rational person. It is, in fact, a piece about the distorted logic of the Neoconservatives, in particular, William Kristol’s assertions in It’s Our War. He starts with Condoleeza Rice’s recent defense of current policy:

Speaking on ABC’s "This Week," Rice called it "shortsighted" to judge the success of the administration’s transformational ambitions by a "snapshot" of progress "some couple of years" into the transformation. She seems to consider today’s turmoil preferable to the Middle East’s "false stability" of the past 60 years, during which U.S. policy "turned a blind eye to the absence of the democratic forces."

In the first place, if I may make my monotonous point, Rice talks about "the administration’s transformational ambitions" as if our goal in waging unprovoked war in Iraq was to transform their government into a democracy. That’s not what they said! They said we were protecting ourself from Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism. So the truth is told. Our goal was to create a democracy in the middle east – ergo Operation Iraqi Freedom. Says George Will:

Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson – one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job – about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies.

Will’s language is eloquent and right on target – the real motives of the Administration, the Neoconservatives is based on a false premise, which is not only wrong, but has enormous negative consequences – predictable negative consequences. Of course we didn’t create Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda, but we sure strengthened their position. Actually, in a piece of tragic irony, we helped them at the polls in Lebanon, in Palestine, and in the eyes of the world. Says George Will:

But there also is democratic movement toward extremism. America’s intervention was supposed to democratize Iraq, which, by benign infection, would transform the region. Early on in the Iraq occupation, Rice argued that democratic institutions do not just spring from a hospitable political culture, they also can help create such a culture. Perhaps.

But elections have transformed Hamas into the government of the Palestinian territories, and elections have turned Hezbollah into a significant faction in Lebanon’s parliament, from which it operates as a state within the state. And as a possible harbinger of future horrors, last year’s elections gave the Muslim Brotherhood 19 percent of the seats in Egypt’s parliament.

He then turns to William Kristol, arch Neoconservative, and his article It’s Our War:

The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to the Weekly Standard — voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, "neoconservatism" — everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything .

"No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria . . ." You get the drift. So, the Weekly Standard says:

"We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions — and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

Will replies:

"Why wait?" Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if Bashar Assad’s regime does not fall after the Weekly Standard’s hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?

As for the "healthy" repercussions that the Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication’s powers of prophecy but wishes it had exercised them on the nation’s behalf before all of the surprises — all of them unpleasant — that Iraq has inflicted. And regarding the "appeasement" that the Weekly Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had heeded its earlier (Dec. 20, 2004) editorial advocating war with yet another nation — the bombing of Syria?

I make no apologies for quoting almost ever word in his article – it’s just that good. Democracy gave us George W. Bush, just like democracy gave Lebanon Hezbollah and Palestine Hamas. We think that democracy has built in mechanisms to self correct – to right itself when it loses its way. Well, it’s election day today where I live. We’ll see if we’re right about that. If democracy is, indeed, a viable form of government, the way to  make that point to the world is to show it to them by voting our current neoconservative misguided war-mongers into retirement, not by world conquest…