April 13, 2011
Remember how we were supposed
to leave Iraq in 2011? Indeed, a great many people think we’ve
already left, what with that official "withdrawal" announced
by the Obama administration and its media amen corner in August of last
year. Recall that MSNBC breathlessly reported the
"end of the US mission" and even interviewed what was purported
to be the last US fighting brigade on its way out of the country. Of
course it was all just public relations theater: the 50,000-plus troops
still there were simply redefined as "non-combat" troops –
a linguistic fig leaf for a logical impossibility.
And now, we have Defense Secretary
Robert Gates and the Pentagon hinting very strongly that we’ve
changed our minds and aren’t leaving after all. The Iraqis aren’t
too happy about this, with some of them going out into the streets and
demanding the US live up to its agreement and go already.
Obama’s much-heralded withdrawal
announcement was, in short, a lie, one promulgated with the full knowledge
and cooperation of Ms. Administration Shill
Maddow and MSNBC "News." For some reason, I doubt they’ll be "reporting"
on this sudden reversal, since there are, after all, more important
things happening in the world – like the unmitigated evil of those
nasty old Republicans, who insist on cutting the budget because we’re,
you know, bankrupt.
Oh, but never mind that –
that’s old news! Here’s some new old news: the Egyptians are back
in Tahrir Square, and the sainted Egyptian army is shooting at them.
Not only that, but they’re arresting bloggers again – this time
for failing to show sufficient respect for the armed forces. And it
looks like the Libyan rebels are again on the defensive, with Gadhafi’s
forces on the road to Benghazi and due to arrive at the city gates any
minute….
All of which leads me to fear
Nietzsche was right: that we do, indeed, live in a nightmare world of
eternal recurrence, a universe where US troops are always "withdrawing"
from Iraq, only to change course at the last moment. Where the Egyptian
military invades Tahrir in perpetuity, and repeatedly drags bloggers
away in chains. Where the Libyan rebels are in jeopardy unending, always
on the cusp of defeat – and the US and its allies are permanently
poised to plant boots on the ground to save them from certain annihilation.
Which means the neocons will
be eternally calling for a US invasion of somewhere-or-other – and
that there will always be neocons. This last is bad news indeed:
it’s like a cancer diagnosis, except there’s no relief in the form
of death. Just pain that goes on … forever.
If I’ve painted a dreary
picture, well then there’s no sense blaming the messenger: this is
our lot, and we just have to learn to live with it. It is, in short,
the human condition, which seems mostly to be a condition of forgetfulness,
a kind of historical Alzheimer’s in which we have no recollection
of our past errors – and, indeed, no memory of historical events beyond
the last presidential election. Americans wake up every day tabula
rasa, with no more knowledge of the lessons of history – especially
their own – than a newborn babe.
How else to explain the persistence
– nay, immortality – of error? We keep doing the same thing
– invading new territories in the name of spreading "democracy"
even as our older satraps rise up in rebellion against the lack of …
democracy. Stretching all the way back to the dawn of the American empire,
when Teddy Roosevelt and his crew of "progressive" imperialists
planted Old Glory on battlefields from Cuba to the Philippines, the
pattern of US overseas intervention has repeated itself down through
the years. We "liberate" a foreign people from the bonds of what
we regard as tyranny, only to find that the presumed beneficiaries of
this policy are lacking in gratitude – and blame us – us! – for
their subsequent problems. Although, you’ll note, that doesn’t
stop them from seeking aid and assistance from the US Treasury: in fact,
it encourages them. Since we’re the source of all their problems,
we must also be the source of their potential redemption.
This pattern repeated itself
recently in Libya, where the rebels first demanded Western intervention
– and then complained when NATO-inflicted "collateral damage"
took out a few of their own. The complaining didn’t stop there: the
air strikes, they contended, weren’t enough. They are demanding weapons,
training, full aid and assistance, diplomatic recognition – and if
all this isn’t immediately forthcoming, well then their blood is on
our hands. Either we accede to this ethical blackmail, or else Gadhafi
will march triumphantly into Benghazi, behead the entire population,
and stand atop the bodies, beating his chest and howling in bloody triumph.
Was there ever a war more suited
to irritating the liberal guilt gland of the Western "intellectual"?
No wonder our "progressive" Deep Thinkers are falling all over themselves hailing it as a triumph of human charity. It’s a hard sell marketing
war as an act of altruism, but once you get over that initial hump,
and the willing suspension of disbelief kicks in, it’s relatively
smooth sailing as far as selling the war to self-described "liberals."
Imperialism was considered
a forward-looking "progressive" project in Teddy Roosevelt’s time:
the news accounts of the day are full of descriptions of the numerous
cultural "uplift" projects and their unmitigated success in the
American-occupied Philippines, where water-boarding was practiced on
recalcitrant natives who somehow resented our tender ministrations.
That this was just a thin ideological veneer for more commercial considerations
is pointed out by Murray Rothbard, in his Wall Street Banks, and
American Foreign Policy, wherein the late great libertarian theorist
relates a history that seems oddly contemporary:
"In February 1895, a rebellion
for Cuban independence broke out against Spain. The original U.S. response
was to try to end the threat of revolutionary war to American property
interests by siding with Spanish rule modified by autonomy to the Cubans
to pacify their desires for independence. Here was the harbinger of
U.S. foreign policy ever since: to try to maneuver in Third World countries
to sponsor 'third force’ or 'moderate’ interests which do not
really exist. The great proponent of this policy was the millionaire
sugar grower in Cuba, Edwin F. Atkins, a close friend of fellow-Bostonian
[Secretary of State] Richard Olney, and a partner of J.P. Morgan and
Company.
"By the fall of 1895,
Olney concluded that Spain could not win, and that, in view of the
'large and important commerce between the two countries’ and the
'large amounts of American capital’ in Cuba, the U.S. should execute
a 180-degree shift and back the rebels, even unto recognizing Cuban
independence. The fact that such recognition would certainly lead to
war with Spain did not seem worth noting. The road to war with Spain
had begun, a road that would reach its logical conclusion three years
later."
Substitute Egypt for Cuba,
and you have a capsule description of current US policy in North Africa
and the Middle East: co-optation as a strategy to deflect the revolutionary
upsurge shaking the region. In Cuba, US intervention brought on the
dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the brutality and general sleaziness
of which led to the Cuban revolution – and the totalitarian austerity
of Castro’s Cuba.
In Egypt, and Libya – and
god knows where else – what demons will US intervention inspire? What
monsters lurk just beneath the radar of our narrative-driven "news"
media, waiting to surface in troubled waters? We cannot know in advance
– except that there’s monsters in those currents, and it’s best
to stay well out of them.
But no: as Rothbard points
out, in the Cuban case certain commercial interests – those ever-aggressive
entrepreneurs whose trade is investment banking – were intent on cashing
in, at least in the short term. And besides that, Cuba has its uses
as a hemispheric outcast, and ever-present "danger" to be quarantined and guarded against – a constant reminder that, yes,
even right here in "our own" hemisphere, the Enemy is present, and
a threat.
Today, too, certain commercial interests are in the drivers’ seat when it comes to US policy in North Africa and the Middle East, in
addition to the key influence wielded by Israel in the region. These
factors, and not fear of the unintended consequences of our actions,
define US interests for American policymakers, and that is the essence
of what Walter Russell Meade would call a "Hamiltonian" foreign policy,
one largely modeled after the British Empire at its height.
Despite all the "pragmatic"
pretensions of this administration, there is nothing at all practical
about this sudden US role-reversal, where Washington and its allies
are now supposedly leading the charge against despots they formerly supported. One can see how it would be convincing to a guilt-ridden
Western liberal, who somehow thinks he’s making up for the crimes
of US imperialism – and much less convincing (indeed, laughably
unconvincing) to someone who actually lives in North Africa or the
Middle East.
Our Cuban switcheroo gave us
Fidel Castro: will our North Africa adventure in partner-swapping pave
the way for his Muslim equivalent – or worse?
To anyone the least bit familiar
with our own history, US foreign policy in the Middle East and North
Africa – and, more generally – is a policy forever chasing its tail.
Forever cleaning up its own messes and those of its allies, and undoing
the unintended consequences of policies designed to benefit some domestic
pressure group. At this point, the tangled web of failed initiatives
and grandiose "visions" has become so complicated, and fragile,
that the whole structure of the "international order" we’ve created
is threatening to come down around our heads. And even then, we persist
in making the same mistakes, like robots wired for self-destruction.