Here’s an email which reminds me why I remain so conflicted about this election. I don’t think I’m the only one. The notion that the vote this year is obvious does indeed understate the complexity of the decision. Resolve versus indecision? Or incompetence versus a new path? Do we write Iraq off, or do we plow on? Here’s an email that is about as persuasive a case as I have read on why Kerry, for all his glaring faults, is still worth considering – for conservative reasons:
When the invasion of Iraq was being debated, I had just returned from two years in Morocco and my now wife had just returned from a year in Egypt. We both considered supporting the war. The Arab world is mired in a political culture obsessed with blaming others for their misfortunes and obsessing over Israel while doing nothing to find practical solutions to their own problems closer to home.
When I was in Morocco, there was a demonstration in Rabat that drew between half a million and three million demonstrators against the reoccupation of the West Bank in April of 2002. Never mind that Israel is on the other side of the Mediterranean and that their demonstration could have no impact on the Palestinians’ situation. Never mind that their own government has occupied the Western Sahara against the wishes of the native inhabitants of that territory, a situation that in some ways parallels the situation of Israel and Palestine. Never mind that, in the early 21st century, they are still ruled by a Monarchy making only feeble gestures towards instituting a democracy, and have a stagnant economy barely able to keep up with the country’s birth rate, let alone employ the millions of idle, jobless young Moroccans whose best hope in life is to emigrate legally or illegally to Europe in hopes of finding menial, low-wage labor. Few Moroccans will lift a finger to try to change their own situation, but they will pour into the streets for the sake of an impotent gesture on the behalf of the Palestinians. Political discussions tend to revolve around conspiracy theories involving “The Jews.” The 10 year old who lived downstairs from me was convinced that 4000 Jews had called in sick to work on 9/11, tipped off by the Mossad that the attack was going to occur. His father would not admit to holding this view, but probably did and would say publicly that Bin Laden was not behind the attack (Powell promised a dossier in Arabic spelling out evidence of Bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11. This was never done, to my knowledge. A serious oversight.).
My wife had similar experiences in Egypt. We both thought that a shock to the system and a scheme to jar at least one Arab country onto the right track might be worth it. In the end, we both decided that it would be a bad idea, and for good conservative reasons. Utopian social programs rarely work domestically, in circumstances in which the architects of social engineering share a language and culture with their subjects and in which the surrounding society is stable and prosperous. If this is the case, how can we expect a radical experiment in social engineering to succeed in a foreign country with a radically different culture, and in which distrust of the United States is imbibed with mother’s milk? Arabs are fixated enough on what they perceive as past humiliations, how can adding another defeat to the list help them?
Subsequent rationales for the war were not convincing. Engage the terrorists in Iraq or face them here? Does anyone really believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had a one-way ticket to the US and a scholarship at a flight school but decided to turn around and have a go at us in Iraq after he heard about the invasion? Iraq, in fact, supplies a theater for attacking the US that most of the fighters there, foreign and Iraqi, would not have if we had not given it to them. If Saddam Hussein were still in power, we could continue to contain him for 2 billion per year and when his system did finally collapse, it would be up to Iraqis to sort out the mess, not us. As for Blair’s claim that Muslim militants hate the West for our very existence, I don’t buy it. Resent us, yes. Envy us, sure. But if we didn’t meddle in Middle Eastern affairs, I doubt they would attack us. Bush’s claim in his first public statement after 9/11 that they hate us for our freedom is a close parallel to the claim of Muslim militants that we hate them for their core identity and values, that is, that we hate them for being Muslims, that we hate Islam as such. The Middle East is a disaster. Its economies are stagnant, its resources are minimal and being depleted, its population is growing, its infrastructure is crumbling, its literacy rates are low and so on and so forth. There will be no stability there in the foreseeable future and the correct response to this should be to minimize involvement with the region.
Now, we are stuck fighting to try to democratize a polity that is inherently unstable. If there are democratic elections, the result is not likely to be a liberal democracy, but rather one of the illiberal sort. Defeat would be a disaster, victory will be hard to define and unlikely to bring great reward. I agree with Christopher Hitchens that it is shameful to be wishing defeat on the US in Iraq in the hopes that this translates into defeat for Bush at home. I agree that we have to face the fact that we are committed in Iraq now and cannot afford to talk about the past as though turning back the clock were an option. I am no fan of Kerry. Despite all of this, I don’t want to hand another four years to a man who brought us unnecessarily into this predicament at such great cost and who waged this war so incompetently. This, combined with the irresponsible economic policy that you have also criticized, have convinced me to cast my vote for Kerry. We cannot afford to dwell on the past at the expense of engaging with the present as it is. But neither can we forget past lapses of judgment and hope that they will not occur again.
The conservative case for Kerry. It’s worth pondering.
The Dish 