“Setting aside Paul Wolfowitz’s complex, controversial career and what it all means for a moment, the problem with David Brooks’ piece in today’s New York Times is his concluding sentence: “But with change burbling in Beirut, with many young people proudly hoisting the Lebanese flag (in a country that was once a symbol of tribal factionalism), it’s time to take a look at this guy [Wolfowitz] again.” That was so twenty-four hours ago. What would David make of today’s Hizbollah-sponsored counter-protest in Beirut? Half a million Lebanese citizens marched in support of Syria and against Western meddling in their country — far more than we’ve seen in the anti-Syrian protests to date.
Like a majority of Americans, David Brooks tends to think monolithically about our Middle East policies: we are “on” the side of the people and “against” their despotic leaders; if the Arab masses would only emulate our democratic traditions then a new wave of security and economic prosperity would wash over their lands; we Americans will be “safer” if the Arab world is more “free.” Only time will tell. Today’s huge demonstration in Beirut only shows how difficult — silly, really — it is to apply a single, unifying theme — in this case, American-style freedom — to millions of people who may ultimately reject it. Or, more saliently, the power of the ballot box in the Middle East may usher in more Iranian-style, theocratic, anti-American governments, such as the one that may well emerge in Iraq.
As someone who watched the events of September 11th unfold from my Brooklyn roof deck, I don’t think we’re any safer for the neo-con theories at work in the Middle East now. Do you? Free elections in Iraq may have beneficial long-terms effects for American security but we won’t know that for years, if not decades. Meanwhile, as Porter Goss and Robert Mueller have recently testified and terrorism experts like Clarke and Bergen stress, al-Qaida is still capable of causing unspeakable harm to us in our homeland. Osama bin Laden is still at large and able to shape events from some relatively secure place, probably in Pakistan; over 90% of our shipping containers slip in without inspection; our borders, particularly our southern one, remain alarmingly porous; our first responders are still shockingly underfunded; another piece in today’s Times reports that al-Qaida operatives may be penetrating the C.I.A.(!)
In other words, you and David Brooks may be sitting pretty on the Wolfowitz bandwagon, proclaiming a new and better world, but I’m hanging back, largely because the images of September 11th haunt me. I’m afraid that it may take another large-scale attack on U.S. soil to refute the idea that our Iraqi adventure has somehow made us safer here. And after all, Andrew, isn’t that the sole stated reason George W. Bush took us to war?”
The Dish 