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Monday, September 12, 2005

Don't Waste Your Tears on Me

Jazz feels bad for me. I'm under some delusion that I'm a liberal. Apparently, neo-liberal "is code for neo-conservatives who want to sway people toward the hypnochrists." And to think I thought I was Jewish too--apparently, in addition to being a pawn of the Bush administration and "Dean Asmay acolyte" (someone whom I've rarely read--the point of confusion was that Tom Strong read Asmay, and I considered the arguments Strong found persuasive the same I do. My actual influences run closer to Tom Friedman, Peter Beinart, and Jonathan Chait), I'm also an unwitting member of Jews for Jesus. Who knew?

Let's start off with what Jazz got right--that I was indeed a bit ruffled by his first post. This was due to my false assumption that it was an attack on me. Alas, what we have here is a classic case of mistaken identity. Jazz simply refuses to believe my self-described motivations for my policy positions. He isn't making an argument, his post was the intellectual equivalent of covering his ears and going "I can't hear you."

For example, when I disclaim any support for Bush, he responds
Ok. You don't endorse Bush. You endorse his war in Iraq and his attempts to "spread democracy" (as if you believe that) in the Middle East. Fair enough. You don't endorse him. You simply endorse his worst policies. My apologies.

Even a cursory glance at my prior blogging would belie this (see, e.g., here, here, and here). I am appalled by Bush's horrific mismanagement which jeopardizes the democratic principles that caused me to support the war in the first place. Saying "I told you so" may be a valid attack (though it has very little critical bite, since the impact, "don't trust Bush," I've absorbed by myself, thanks). Saying that I'm a consistent shill for the Bush administration is simply facile. I support Bush as deep as the statement "I support the war" goes. In terms of conduct, preparation, justification, success metrics, and virtually any other indicator, we split.

His defense of the WMD statement? Same problem:
Ok. But you then go on to say, "I'm a neo-liberal anti-Bushite who believes in an at least partial WMD disarmament..." Oh, so you believe in PARTIAL WMD disarmament, do you? And since I'm wrong, I assume that you think the USA should give up their WMD's and Turkey, N. Korea, Iran and Russia should keep them, eh? Pull the other one, Senor... it doth have bells on it. You believe in the "bad people" disarming.

Actually, what I meant by disarmament was that both the US and Russia should significantly reduce their WMD stockpiles, and we should aggressively combat the proliferation of WMDs to other nations (it should be noted that one can be anti-proliferation without wanting ANY reduction in current WMD levels--proliferation being the spread of WMDs, not anything to with the status quo. But that's not my position). The "partially" was merely to denote that WMDs still have some deterrent effect on conflict and thus we should preserve SOME nukes--but we don't need as many.

Of course, some of this confusion may be related to my doubts as to whether Jazz even read my piece at all. Certainly, he did this discourse no favors by skipping over all the meat of my analysis (non-intervention as a conscious choice which reifies oppression and murder). Moreover, he completely mangles my characterization of his position. He says that I call him a "liberal" and a "pacifist." I do neither. I actually say that while his argument masquerades as being a pluralist case for non-intervention ("pluralists for tyrannies"), a look beneath the surface reveals a fundamental conservatism. Since the ultimate sticking point between us was whether or not my opinions could be characterized as liberal (as he puts it, to take my arguments and "couch them in a cloak of faux liberalism...borders on insulting"), it is rather integral to show that the counter-argument he makes against intervention cannot under any stretch be called liberal. Indeed, I specifically label it conservative ("...you can see the conservatism in the argument itself."), so it's a bit weird that he thinks me critique was that he was liberal. What we're disputing is what liberal is. My claim is that while the argument draws from leftist theories of pluralism, in effect it is a conservative position which justifies political inaction and marginalization of outsiders. You can even see the conservative influence in his invocation of his armed service--he served in Desert Storm (thanks for that, by the way. I'm totally serious), so his opinions on war are utterly and completely beyond reproach. Geez, where have I heard that type of argument before? As to the pacifism thing--I registered no claim as to what Jazz feels about any given war. I critiqued his objection to foreign policy intervention, but then, these subtleties seem to be escaping him.

The straw men keep coming. Why do I hate the UN? Because of oil-for-food (actually, it's because the UN has consistently refused to stand up to genocide occurring in front of it's very eyes: see, e.g., Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia, Congo, Iraq (Anfal campaign). And when other people try to pick up the slack, they declare the war illegal, see Kosovo. I have no use for an international organization who ignores its own explicit mandates to stop genocide for the sake of political expediency). Why do I hate Europe? Because they're "old Europe" (I actually don't hate Europe, but given their history of colonization in the middle east, they too have little credibility when it comes to liberation). What's the most important thing in the world to me? Fitting in the Rovian agenda (I hate, hate, Karl Rove). The post is a giant imputation of false motivations that can be disproved simply by reading my archives. What we have here, is a failure of imagination. Jazz cannot argue against anybody who isn't a neo-con. To compensate, he just insists that anybody who disagrees with him is a neo-con, and works from there. Sorry dear, but it just ain't flying.

Amidst all of that straw-bashing, there is a tiny, tiny, bit of substantive clash. It comes in the following two passages. Referring to my defense of democratization as an ideal (as oppose to America) as an ideal, he writes:

Do you honestly think that democracy is the only functional form of government in the world? Dave, ours is barely functional at this point. And there have been many successful ones that have lasted far longer than the gnat's lifespan that ours has been here. Democracies often implode, also. It's a hard form of government to run over the long haul. Others take other choices. Your desire to "democratize" puts the lie to your first statements.

Note, incidentally, that Jazz claims that authoritarianism is a "choice" by citizens in the third world. That's odd: how did they choose? Did they vote for it? The conception of "choice" in government is inextricably bundled with democratization--if you're supporting choice you're supporting democracy. This may seem paradoxical, but it isn't--unlike other forms of government democracy is characterized by its indeterminancy: the citizens of France can vote for one type of government and the citizens of Indonesia can vote for an entirely different one. Two totally different choices, both under the framework of "democracy." In dictatorships, by contrast, the only person choosing is the dictator. This is why Jazz's case is so easily deconstructed, again, it's defending dictatorships from the position of free choice.

Passage two:
David seems to think that when we went in and took out Saddam and his party every other Iraq was waiting to cheer and exclaim, "Finally! Finally, we can have equal rights for our women and for gays and for people of all religions!" Here's a tip, David. The Iraqis who do support us do so because they hate us slightly less than they did Saddam. Why do you think they are quickly moving to form a theocratic bond with Iran?

Societies change from within. Do you really think we can have a trooper standing at the dinner table with every Iraqi Man saying, "Embrace your wife's rights! Embrace your gay son!" Yeah. That will work. Cultures evolve over centuries. You don't do it at gunpoint. But David and the "spread Americanism at the end of a rifle" crowd somehow think you can.

Paired with the passage above, this boils down to a "democracy isn't so hot" argument paired with "democracy can only be home-grown."

I've never been the biggest democracy fan as a theory--I support it pragmatically because I'm Churchillian, I think that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.

Jazz tells me there are other "functioning" governments besides democracy. Alright Jazz, I'll call your bluff: what are they? Obviously this depends a lot on what the definition of "functioning" is. If it's just keeping order, then sure, there have been loads of functioning non-democratic states. The USSR, Nazi Germany, Communist China, to name a few. If "functioning" implies a basic level of rights for citizens, though, then suddenly the list becomes a bit tighter. Indeed, on an empirical level, and even controlling for economic development, democracies have outperformed autocracies on almost every level. Joseph T. Siegle, Michael M. Weinstein, Morton H. Halperin wrote in the September/October 2004 edition of Foreign Affairs that:
People in low-income democracies live, on average, nine years longer than their counterparts in low-income autocracies, have a 40 percent greater chance of attending secondary school, and benefit from agricultural yields that are 25 percent higher. The latter figure is particularly relevant because some 70 percent of the people in poor countries live in the countryside. Higher levels of agricultural productivity mean more employment, capital, and food. Poor democracies also suffer 20 percent fewer infant deaths than poor autocracies. Development practitioners should pay particularly close attention to these figures because infant-mortality rates capture many features of social well-being, such as prenatal health care for women, nutrition, quality of drinking water, and girls' education.

More integral to the point I'm trying to make is the link between authoritarian states and mass death. R.J. Rummell, Professor at the University of Hawaii, compiled the statistics and found that:
While 36 million people have been killed in battle in all foreign and domestic wars in [the 20th] century, at least 119 million more have been killed by government genocide, massacres, and other mass killing. And about 115 million of these were killed by totalitarian governments... There is no case of democracies killing en-masse their own citizens. The inverse relationship between democracy and foreign violence, collective domestic violence, or government genocide is not simply a correlation, but a cause and effect...[T]he more democratic freedom a nation has, the less likely its government will commit foreign or domestic democide...through democratic institutions social conflicts that might become violent are resolved by voting, negotiation, compromise, and mediation. The success of these procedures is enhanced and supported by the restraints on decision makers of competitive elections, the cross-pressures resulting from the natural pluralism of democratic--spontaneous--societies, and the development of a democratic culture and norms that emphasizes rational debate, toleration, negotiation of differences, conciliation, and conflict resolution. Moreover, democratic leaders see others, even political opponents, as within the same moral universe, as equally nonviolent, as disposed to negotiate differences peacefully."

That comparison should be astounding. In the 20th century, totalitarian governments beat democratic governments in terms of democidal deaths by a total of 115 million to 4 million. Given that reality, the argument that Iraqis won't immediately vote for gay rights pales.

As to the argument that democracies can't be established via military force, this is factually inaccurate. Just ask the folks in Germany, Japan, and Kosovo, where we did(/are doing) just that. University of Chicago Political Scientist Daniel Drezner notes that
But what of governments imposed via military occupation? Surely they're the exception to this optimistic rule. Actually, the empirical evidence of the last 50 years is rather evenly split on the question. Postwar Germany, Japan, Bosnia, and Kosovo are all, to varying degrees, democratic success stories; Somalia and Haiti are probably safely considered failures. (Let's be generous and say the jury is still out on Afghanistan.) Still, the more relevant point is that the key difference between the democratic haves and have-nots is not the conditions that prevailed prior to war; it's the occupiers' commitment to the democratization process once the fighting ends. In the words of a compelling new RAND Corporation study, America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq...:
'What principally distinguishes [successes from failures] are not their levels of Western culture, economic development, or cultural homogeneity. Rather, it is the level of effort the United States and the international community have put into their democratic transformations. In Germany and Japan, for example, substantial American aid reduced social, political, and other obstacles to the reconstitution of parliamentary politics and facilitated a transition to democracy.

Military force may not be ideal for creating democracies, but it certainly isn't antithetical to it. And even if it were true that totalitarian states will naturally evolve into democracies (something I'm skeptical of and in any event contradicts Jazz's earlier claim that dictatorship is a deliberate and happy "choice"), I really wouldn't care all that much, because waiting for dictatorships to squeeze every last murder, torture, rape, and robbery they can out of their state before they are overthrown doesn't strike as a particularly moral(/liberal) way to conduct foreign policy. Being a liberal means aiding the oppressed now (or as soon as is reasonably feasible), not letting history take it's whim and hoping for the best.

Not that I expect this post to matter. If it even gets a response, it will be yet another sad attempt to force me inside a neo-conservative box, where I can be slapped around like Rummy and Wolfie and all the other folks who have destroyed the credibility of Wilsonian Foreign Policy for generations to come. Oh well.

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