Rumors Of Empire

Triumviratechipsomodevillagetty

Matt sums it up:

America playing an active role in the world doesn’t mean America seeking to dominate the world, and avoiding a quest for domination doesn’t mean eschewing the use of military force in all circumstances — it means working through legitimate institutional mechanisms.

Since the Iraq invasion, which I passionately supported, I’ve been forced, like a lot of people, to re-examine my core principles and ideas about intervention. I’ve thrashed through most of the Iraq-specific questions on this blog exhaustively, but the more general ones are worth regular check-ups. Do I oppose all US unilateral interventions in the world? Nope. I’ve long believed that America is a great force for good in the world. As a native European, I don’t doubt that. Neither do Poles or Ukrainians. I just have a much, much higher standard for supporting them than I once did, and a deeper sense of American fallibility. I’ve learned that just because the French oppose something, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s a good idea. Pre-emption? Again, I don’t think the concept should be ruled out entirely, but the criteria are much stricter in my mind than they once were. I now think we should pre-empt only when a grave threat is indeed imminent – not before it is imminent, as was the case with Iraq. After Iraq, my skepticism toward all government intelligence has, like many others, gone through the roof. I am far less likely to believe or trust the CIA or the vice-president on Iran than I once was, for example. Do I support a unipolar world in which the US is the prime global player, the indispensable nation? Here I think I’m clearer: no. A unipolar world may be a function of a short period of time – such as after the Cold War – but it is neither a desirable nor permanent state. Allowing other great powers to exercize influence in various regions of the globe is part of responsible, conservative statesmanship. To extend the American writ everywhere is to hobble a republic with the burdens of an empire. It’s an act of hubris. We should cut it out.

Did I just say "empire"?

Again, I don’t think it would have occurred to me to even use the word with respect to US intervention abroad before the Iraq debacle. But the US has now occupied a Muslim country with well over 100,000 troops for close to five years, with no end in sight. I see increasing signs that the Washington establishment would be quite happy to stay there indefinitely, if casualties declined, and the Chinese keep lending. In fact, I sense in Washington the notion that this is a natural state of affairs – for the US to be sinking down large military bases and vast embassies in foreign countries in pursuit of some global novus ordo seclorum. The Iraq benchmarks have now been abandoned, in favor of just hanging around for ever in the hopes of some kind of permanent improvement. There’s not even a pretense that getting a functional independent government in Baghdad is now, you know, urgent. So tell me this: if occupying a country without a government that far away with around 100,000 troops for the indefinite future in order to advance global stability and maximal oil supplies is not something like an empire, then what is? Is there a moment at which some of us can get off this bus? Or is our fate now sealed?

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

Face Of The Day

Foamjeffjmitchellgetty

Students from St Andrews University, indulge in a tradition of covering themselves with foam to honor the ‘academic family’ on November 26, 2007 in St Andrews, Scotland. The ‘raisin weekend’ every November stems from a gift of raisins traditionally given by a first year student to their academic ‘parents’ in gratitude for their guidance. By Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.

Fighting Over Libertarianism

You can see some of the many competing and contradictory themes within contemporary conservatism in Patrick Ruffini’s blogpost on Hewitt’s blog today. His heart is with libertarianism; but his head is with the Bush security state and current Republican coalition. When the two conflict, his brain hurts:

Libertarianism in the GOP took a big hit on 9/11, and it’s slowly coming back, with Ron Paul as the catalyst. Its underlying ideals still have appeal well beyond the cramped confines of the LP. If it’s possible to be known as a pro-life, pro-war, pro-wiretapping libertarian, then sign me up. Markos too brands himself a “libertarian Democrat,” though he’s never read Hayek and supports big government social programs.

Let’s unpack this a little. After any serious attack on a country, civil liberties are bound to suffer. I don’t know many grown-up libertarians so pure that they would deny this completely. But the goal is always to return to maximal liberty within the bounds of security, especially when the initial threat appears diminished. Of course this is hard to measure because the threat itself is hard to measure. But a libertarian will constantly be seeking to protect liberty where possible. You don’t really see that instinct in today’s authoritarian GOP. A libertarian also understands that there is no deeper threat to liberty than war and that a state of permanent war is close to the end of libertarianism. Hence the discomfort with amorphous wars against "drugs" or "terror," wars in which no enemy can ever surrender or ever be defeated. Patrick needs to grapple with that, it seems to me. Being a pro-war libertarian is possible if you see the war as an unavoidable measure for basic security. But Iraq, to take an obvious example, long ago ceased to be that. What being pro-war in the GOP today tends to mean is an unskeptical Hannity-Giuliani enthusiasm for war, and judgment that more of it, not less, is what we need. When you combine that with contempt for civil liberties, pride in waterboarding, disdain for even minimal judicial oversight of wiretapping, and a reflexive bent to accuse all domestic critics of treason … then you are far, far away from libertarianism, or my kind of conservatism. That’s why, in my judgment, Ron Paul is right to insist on the radical degeneracy of today’s GOP establishment. And why, for all his eccentricities, I’m immensely grateful he’s doing so well.

And some quibbles. No, you can’t be a pro-wire-tapping libertarian.

You can be for wire-tapping with judicial safeguards, but that’s not Bush’s mojo. And it’s simply absurd to say that Paul "blames[s] America for 9/11." That’s hogwash. It’s Giuliani’s ally, Pat Robertson, who blamed Americans for 9/11. Paul merely sought to establish that part of al Qaeda’s murderous ideology was fueled in small part by American troops in Saudi Arabia and the US’s long-time support for autocratic regimes in the Middle East. This is simply indisputable. And Patrick’s laudable attempt to square the circle is misguided:

Absolute freedom within our borders, for our own citizens; eternal vigilance and (when necessary) ruthlessness abroad.

The trouble is: this war knows no geographic boundaries and so the warpowers we have rashly given to the president against anyone he calls an "enemy combatant" inevitably affect US citizens and residents. The clear divide Patrick wants is impossible, alas. It seems to me that the most rational divide is to treat all non-citizen enemy combatants as prisoners of war (with traditional baseline protections against mistreatment) and US citizens as criminals, accused of the most heinous crimes and facing the direst consequences.

But at a deeper level, conservatives have to decide what their deepest value is: security or freedom. And how many have the balls, like Paul, to choose the latter if it really comes to that?

Edwards Targets Clinton

I’d say that one deep reason for Hillary Clinton’s slight slide in Iowa is the passion of John Edwards’ rehtoric against her. Marc accurately sums up the message:

Hillary Clinton is too emeshed in the corrupt culture of Washington to fix things and to take on the entrenched interests that need taking on. He — Edwards — is unafraid.

The truth is that Edwards has been making that case much more cleanly than any of his opponents, whether or not they began to make it first. It’s a different case than Barack Obama’s — he argues that Clinton is too polarizing to get the job done — Edwards takes the charge further: it’s Clinton herself who is part of the system that needs reforming, that it’s the Clinton legacy that has consigned the Democratic Party to second-tier status.

If Obama wins Iowa, it will be because of Edwards’ rhetoric and his own organization. And if Edwards falls below 15 percent in some caucuses, his supporters will surely not put Clinton second.

The Huckabee Threat

Rip van Novak rouses himself from a deep slumber:

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own?

Memo to Novak: have you heard of George W. Bush? Barely a government program he hasn’t expanded; barely a soul he doesn’t want to heal. Nation-building where there is no nation; borrowing when there is no more money. And all wrapped up in a theological bundle of conservative "compassion". The main difference between Bush and Huckabee is that Huckabee once actually raised the money he wanted to spend, instead of borrowing it from the Chinese. And Huckabee’s resort to left-liberal criticism of conservatism – that’s it’s heartless and greedy – has been deployed by Bush as well. Heroic Christianism – with its certainty about everything and moral imperative to intervene wherever "evil" strikes – is not compatible with any sense of limited government. It’s pretty amazing to me that it has taken Huckabee to wake some up to this somewhat obvious fact.

The Sacred Cow Of Social Security

Amity Shlaes does us all a favor by reminding us of the actual purpose of social security: in FDR’s words, to provide "some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family." That’s it. Not total security. Not a total guarantee that the gold-plated benefits of the late-century will keep growing and growing. And not a peg to wages rather than prices, linking retirees to current wage-earners rather than actual needs. I agree with Amy that the obvious, simplest reform to keep social security solvent is to remove the peg to wages, and  keep it indexed solely to price inflation. She rightly points out the trade-off:

The peg adjustment would make Social Security a smaller part of Americans’ retirement package a few decades from now. It would also erase at least two-thirds of the shortfall.

But how many of us in our thirties or forties expect social security to be as it once was when we retire? I’d rather settle for a lower sum because we planned for it than because we let the system collapse into insolvency.

Quote For The Day

"I thought it would have been weird to tattoo ‘Obama’ on my arm, but now I have some dude’s initials on me," – Rory Steele, an Obama campaign organizer, detailing how he keeps a tally of Obama supporters in Western Iowa.

Every now and again, amid the blog whirl, it’s worth reminding ourselves who will actually determine the outcome of this election.