What We Got Right in the War on Terror

I was hoping to do some big analysis of Abe Greenwald's masterful essay, at Commentary, but never got around to it. This is simply the best piece I've read on the war on terror:

Over the course of the 10 years, American authorities foiled more than two dozen al-Qaeda plots. Those averted tragedies were not foremost on the minds of revelers who gathered to celebrate Bin Laden’s demise on May 1 at Ground Zero, Times Square, and in front of the White House. But if a mere few of the plots had materialized, those spaces might not even have been open to public assembly.

Not only have U.S. authorities managed to keep America safe from al-Qaeda for a decade; by the time he was killed, Osama bin Laden was barely a leader. Among the items recovered at his compound in Abbottabad were some recent writings, in which the former icon lamented al-Qaeda’s dramatically sinking stock and pondered organizational rebranding as a possible antidote.

His growing insignificance as a global player was not the product of chance. The marginalization of the world’s principal jihadist was the result of audacious American policy—indeed, the most controversial and hotly debated policy undertaken in the wake of 9/11. In the words of Reuel Marc Gerecht writing in the Wall Street Journal, “the war in Iraq was Bin Laden’s great moral undoing.” In his desperate attempt to drive American fighting forces out of Mesopotamia, Bin Laden sanctioned a bloody civil war in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. The carnage failed to repel the United States, but in the end, the countrywide slaughter of Muslims proved too much to bear for al-Qaeda’s own one-time and would-be supporters. The “Sunni awakening” that helped transform Iraq was an awakening out of al-Qaeda jihadism, and the blow it delivered to Bin Laden’s ambitions was stunning.

After the turnaround in Iraq, the landscape of the Muslim world suffered even greater changes—with ordinary Muslims rising to revolt against Persian and Arab tyranny, not against American hegemony. As Fouad Ajami has written: “The Arab Spring has simply overwhelmed the world of the jihadists. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, younger people—hurled into politics by the economic and political failures all around them—are attempting to create a new political framework, to see if a way could be found out of the wreckage that the authoritarian states have bequeathed them.”

It was the Freedom Agenda of the George W. Bush administration—delineated and formulated as a conscious alternative to jihadism—that showed the way. Indeed, the costly American nation-building in Iraq has now led to the creation of the world’s first and only functioning democratic Arab state. One popular indictment of Bush maintains that he settled on the Freedom Agenda as justification for war after U.S. forces and inspectors found no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The record shows otherwise. “A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East,” he said before the invasion, in February 2003. “Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both.”

And something of the kind has come to pass. “One despot fell in 2003,” Ajami has said. “We decapitated him. Two despots, in Tunisia and Egypt, fell, and there is absolutely a direct connection between what happened in Iraq in 2003 and what’s happening today throughout the rest of the Arab world.”

Thus, there are three intertwined achievements that have proved to be the dispositive features of American success in the war on terror: formulating the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East, reversing the course of the war in Iraq, and establishing a national-security apparatus to foil multiple terrorist attacks. It is no coincidence that they are also the most controversial foreign policies America has implemented since the Vietnam War.

September 11 was a hinge moment in American history. The attacks plunged the nation into a full-scale war against non-state entities. Any adequate American response had to break with previous approaches in previous conflicts. War could not be waged on parties inside states in the same way it had been waged on states themselves. Prisoners captured on a battlefield in a country not their own and with no interest in following the rules of conventional war could not be handled as they had been. Getting the edge on Islamist terror would mean fundamentally rethinking our approach to both the blunting of deadly threats and the shuttering of the political hothouses of the Middle East in which such threats thrive.

The adoption of these unprecedented and uncompromising means of war inspired animated debate in the United States. In fighting the war on terror, we have been told, America has become—depending on the accuser—either too dismissive or too enamored of democracy. Some on the left think our national-security apparatus undermines our defining ideals. On the right, outraged voices condemn our naive enthusiasm for helping to secure liberty for Muslims abroad, calling it a form of multicultural self-sabotage. After civil war seized post-invasion Iraq, critics from across the ideological spectrum denounced our misguided effort. The fits and starts and frustrations of the war decade have this one thing in common: we have done battle in an age when spectacular setbacks appear to provide irrefutable evidence of our own baseness and incompetence—a few years before drab good news arrives to refute both expert opinion and common knowledge.

The arguments that we have prosecuted the war on terror immorally and ineffectually are important, and deserve the respectful hearing they have received, even if many of those arguing these points have resorted to launching the most abject slanders and accusations toward those who believe the war on terror is just and has been fought honorably. To be sure, not everything the United States has done in the war on terror has been correct. Far from it. As Winston Churchill said, “War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.” In the fight against Islamist terrorism, American blunders have come in all shapes and sizes, and in truth there are few small wartime miscalculations. This is especially so in an age of instant global headlines.

We continue to suffer for our biggest mistakes. Concerning the failure to catch Bin Laden and make serious efforts to nation-build early in the Afghanistan war, inaccurate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons, and the Pentagon’s ill-preparedness for the Iraqi insurgency, there can be no absolution. These errors have cost the country tragic sums in money, credibility, and life. They also set our efforts back precious years.

But these blunders, great as they are, have not undone America’s outstanding accomplishments. Ten years ago, the most delusional optimist among us would not have predicted the irrelevancy of Osama bin Laden or a decade without another al-Qaeda attack, let alone a democratic Iraq and a transformative explosion of antiauthoritarianism in the Middle East.

Nor do American achievements in this war mean we are in a position to quit the fight. The notion that America achieved closure with Bin Laden’s killing suggests to some, perhaps even the occupant of the White House, that the war on terror has had its decade and the United States can now move on. “America, it is time to focus on nation-building here at home,” said Barack Obama this summer as he announced a sizable drawdown of troops in Afghanistan for the fall of 2012. The suggestion that our work is done has traction only because resolute American action at home and abroad have provided a sense of security so pervasive it now goes unquestioned.

The United States has fallen prey to false comfort in the past. So before we submit to the siren song of closure, we would do well to recall that that is exactly where this war began—and our retaining some genuine measure of security has been the result of thinking and acting more boldly than we have in generations.

Now go read the whole thing.

NASA Aerial Video of 9/11

Via Israel Matzav:

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Paul Simon Sings 'Sounds of Silence' at New York 9/11 Ceremony

Via Blazing Cat Fur:

President Bush Reads Lincoln Letter at 9/11 Memorial Service in New York

Via Althouse, who publishes the text of Lincoln's letter:

September 11 Memorial Ceremony in New York

Bloomberg took heat for excluding clergy and firemen, but I'm sad I wasn't able to attend.

At New York Times, "Bush and Obama: Side by Side at Ground Zero":

For the first time on Sunday, President Obama and former President George W. Bush stood together at the site of the Sept. 11 attacks, listening as family members read the names of lost love ones and bowing their heads in silence to mark the moment the planes hit.

In May, Mr. Bush declined Mr. Obama’s invitation to join him at ground zero after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. But on this morning, they stood shoulder to shoulder — commanders in chief whose terms in office are bookends for exploring how the United States has changed since Sept. 11, 2001, particularly in its response to terrorism.

The tableau was striking: the president who spent years hunting Bin Laden next to the one who finally got him. The president defined by his response to Sept. 11 standing alongside the one who has tried to take America beyond the lingering, complicated legacy of that day.

Mr. Obama read from Psalm 46: “God is our refuge and strength,” which an aide said he chose because it spoke of perseverance. Mr. Bush, the wartime leader, read a letter from Abraham Lincoln to a widow who was believed to have lost five sons in the Civil War.

More at that link above, and at Memeorandum.

And at Althouse, "President Bush, reading Lincoln's letter at the 9/11 ceremony in NYC."

George W. Bush, National Geographic Interview: Remembering 9/11

I've been thinking about President Bush. I love him. Not a perfect president, especially on limiting the size of government, but he was the right president to lead the country in the war on terror. And for that he has my enduring gratitude.

This is a surprisingly comprehensive and fascinating interview. Watching the footage and photos from that day, I am reminded just how blessed our country was to have him during this time of tragedy and grief. It's difficult for some to admit, but his leadership and calm helped move us through one of the most difficult times in our country's history.

Ari Fleischer Remembers 9/11

This is an extremely fascinating discussion, from Alexis Garcia, at Pajamas Media, "PJTV: Ari Fleischer on 9/11 and the Fog of War." I'm struck by Fleischer's discussion of signalling to President Bush, upon first learning of the attacks, when he was still at the Florida elementary school, that he wasn't to go public with announcements or statements that the U.S. was under attack:

We Didn't Overreact to 9/11

At the video, an interesting clip featuring Ann Coulter and Matt Welch.

And see Charles Krauthammer, at Washington Post, "The 9/11 ‘overreaction’? Nonsense":

9/11 was our Pearl Harbor. This time, however, the enemy had no home address. No Tokyo. Which is why today’s war could not be wrapped up in a mere four years. It was unconventional war by an unconventional enemy embedded within a worldwide religious community. Yet in a decade, we largely disarmed and defeated it, and developed the means to continue to pursue its remnants at rapidly decreasing cost. That is a historic achievement.

Our current difficulties and gloom are almost entirely economic in origin, the bitter fruit of misguided fiscal, regulatory and monetary policies that had nothing to do with 9/11. America’s current demoralization is not a result of the war on terror. On the contrary. The denigration of the war on terror is the result of our current demoralization, of retroactively reading today’s malaise into the real — and successful — history of our 9/11 response.

I love Krauthammer. Read it all.

Ten Years Without an Attack

From John Yoo, at Wall Street Journal (alternative link). Discussing President George W. Bush's leadership, Yoo writes:

Looking back over the decade, the first clear lesson is the critical importance of Mr. Bush’s decision to consider the struggle with al Qaeda a war. Unlike past administrations, his chose not to view al Qaeda as a Middle Eastern version of the mafia, if on a grander scale. The 9/11 attacks constituted an act of war—they were a decapitation strike, an effort to eliminate our nation’s leadership in a single blow. If the Soviet Union had carried out the same attacks, no one would have doubted that the United States was at war.

Al Qaeda’s independence from any nation state would not shield it from the American military and leave it solely to the more tender mercies of the FBI and the courts.

Choosing war opened the arsenal that has decimated al Qaeda’s leadership and blunted its plan of attack. A nation at war need not wait for a suicide bombing to arrest the “suspects” who remain. Instead, it can fire missiles or send in covert teams to pre-emptively capture or kill the enemy. Our government doesn’t need a judge’s permission before tapping an al Qaeda operative’s phones, intercepting his emails, or arresting him.

We need not provide terrorists with Miranda warnings, lawyers and jury trials. A nation at war can detain the enemy without lawyers or civilian trials and interrogate them for information to prevent future attacks.

In its second critical decision, the Bush administration pushed to translate knowledge into action. Winning the war requires, above all, the gathering, analysis and exploitation of intelligence. Before 9/11 our national security bureaucracies, prodded by the civil liberties worries of the courts and Congress, had deliberately handicapped their ability to pull all intelligence into a single mosaic. Passage of the Patriot Act, the expanded interception of international terrorist emails and phone calls, and the tough interrogation of a few high-ranking al Qaeda leaders broadened and deepened the pool of information on our enemy.

At the same time, the intelligence community and the U.S. Armed Forces have honed the integration of tactical intelligence and operations to a deadly knife’s-edge. Bin Laden’s killing this summer was not a one-off lucky shot, but the culmination of a decade of work combining intelligence-gathering, analysis and rapid strike teams. American presidents did not have such reliable options in the past—witness Jimmy Carter’s disastrous attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages or Bill Clinton’s failure to kill or capture bin Laden.

RELATED: "John Yoo at David Horowitz's West Coast Retreat, April 3, 2011."

Just War Theory

A cool discussion, with Michael Walzer:

RELATED: At Dissent, from 2006, "Regime Change and Just War," by Michael Walzer. And the response, which destroys Walzer's argument, from Jean Bethke Elshtain: "Jean Bethke Elshtain Responds."



And more Walzer, more recently, at New Republic, "The Case Against Our Attack on Libya."

'I Didn't Change. The World Changed'

From Daniel Henninger, at Wall Street Journal, "In an interview, Dick Cheney says 'It's important to have people at the helm who are prepared to be unpopular'."



I think Dick Cheney's been the rock of American public life for the last 10 years. He's unruffled in his convictions, more impressive as he got older.



RELATED: The left's revulsion of the former V.P. is picking up over at Memeorandum. See especially, ABC News, "Former Powell Chief of Staff: Cheney “Fears Being Tried as a War Criminal”." And click through at Memeorandum for Conor Friedersdorf's attack on Cheney. Friedersdorf's an airhead.

Presidential War Powers

Harry Reid's a blithering idiot. I have no idea how he was ever elected to public office. It's not so much his position on the War Powers Resolution, but that it's at odds with his claim that the public wants the troops home from Afghanistan. Frankly, Americans are weary of overseas commitments altogether, but at least the Afghan deployment enjoyed broad bipartisan support to begin with, back in the day. With Libya, the administration took the easiest route to do something --- anything --- in North Africa and the Middle East amid the wave of revolutions taking place in the "Arab Spring." And there's been little public consensus on major U.S. role in Libya.

This guy sucks:

Unfortunately, a Ron Paul wing in the GOP is joining with the Dennis Kucinich Demo-nuts to push for action on the Resolution. A lot of folks in the right blogosphere have made something out of this as well, and it goes to the lack of vital national interests at stake, and that's understandable. That said, John Yoo's got a new piece up on the Commander-in-Chief's authority on the use of force, "The GOP Plays Politics With the War Powers Resolution," and Yoo's the man:

Congressional Republicans should not try to outdo Mr. Obama in a game of unprincipled one-upmanship. But that's precisely what key GOP leaders have done. Earlier this week, House Speaker John Boehner sent a letter to the White House accusing Mr. Obama of violating the War Powers Resolution. "The Constitution requires the president to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'" he wrote, quoting the president's responsibilities under Article II of the Constitution. "And one of those laws is the War Powers Resolution, which requires an approving action by Congress or withdrawal within 90 days from the notification of a military operation."

Mr. Boehner's claim ignores the Constitution's fundamental nature as supreme law. As Chief Justice John Marshall declared in the foundational case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Constitution is "a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means," and any act of Congress "contrary to the constitution is not law." If the Constitution gives the president the executive authority to use force abroad, Congress cannot take it away. Surely Mr. Boehner agreed with this proposition before the current president took office. He, for instance, never claimed that President George W. Bush's exercise of broad executive powers in the war on terror violated the Constitution. Nor does he appear to have thought that legislative authorization of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was constitutionally necessary in 2001 and 2002.

Not to be outdone, House Republicans Roscoe Bartlett, Dan Burton, Howard Coble, John Duncan, Tim Johnson, Walter Jones and Ron Paul joined with Dennis Kucinich and other Democrats this week and filed suit in a D.C. federal court seeking to halt U.S. military operations in Libya. They may see themselves as purists, but they are not demonstrating fidelity to the Constitution by launching a legal effort that they know to be utterly futile ....

RTWT.

Added: See Allahpundit's write up on the New York Times' story, "NYT: Obama overruled top Pentagon, DOJ lawyers on Libya war powers" (via Memeorandum). And check JustOneMinute, "Obama Goes Shopping For Legal Advice." It's the hypocrisy that's stunning.

Bush White House Sought CIA Probe for 'Damaging Personal Information' on Leftist Professor Juan Cole?

Wow.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Honestly, though, arrest him if there's evidence of aiding and abetting terrorism. But don't just smear the guy using the CIA. Sounds like something from the Nixon years.

At New York Times, "Ex-Spy Alleges Bush White House Sought to Discredit Critic":

WASHINGTON — A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

It is not clear whether the White House received any damaging material about Professor Cole or whether the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies ever provided any information or spied on him. Mr. Carle said that a memorandum written by his supervisor included derogatory details about Professor Cole, but that it may have been deleted before reaching the White House. Mr. Carle also said he did not know the origins of that information or who at the White House had requested it.

Intelligence officials disputed Mr. Carle’s account, saying that White House officials did ask about Professor Cole in 2006, but only to find out why he had been invited to C.I.A.-sponsored conferences on the Middle East. The officials said that the White House did not ask for sensitive personal information, and that the agency did not provide it.

“We’ve thoroughly researched our records, and any allegation that the C.I.A. provided private or derogatory information on Professor Cole to anyone is simply wrong,” said George Little, an agency spokesman.

More at that link at top.

And what the heck? Check over at Juan Cole's, the freak: "Ret’d. CIA Official Alleges Bush White House Used Agency to “Get” Cole," and "Cole on Goodman & CIA Surveillance."

And, "Repeal the PATRIOT Act is the Lesson of Bush White House Spying."

Nope, not going that far. Patriot Act does not authorize CIA spying domestically. It simply allows coordination of intelligence gathering activities. Longstanding bureaucratic norms would still drive domestic surveillance operations, and frankly, the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s still contributes to a culture of legal safeguards that obviously make cases of spying --- like that alleged against Professor Juan Cole --- beyond the pale. Bust him if he's a treasonous dirtbag. Otherwise, let him spew his bilious hatred. No doubt he's earned some enemies on that basis alone.

Waterboarding Works!

Rep. Peter King makes the case at the video.

And Andrew Malcolm notes:

The trail to Monday morning's assault on Osama's Pakistan compound began during someone else's presidency. That previous president authorized enhanced interrogation techniques which convinced folks like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to give up, among many other things, the name of their top-secret courier, now deceased. His travels ultimately led the CIA back to Osama's six-year-old suburban home.

And the New York Times has the background, "Detective Work on Courier Led to Breakthrough on Bin Laden." Also, at ABC News, "Phone Call by Kuwaiti Courier Led to Bin Laden."

RELATED: Last night David Beamer, whose son Todd Beamer died fighting terrorists on Flight 93 on 9/11, told Sean Hannity that the U.S. government should continue to do what works in fighting our mortal enemies. And he's quoted, with video, at Freedom's Lighthouse:

I really wish I could have seen the look on Osama Bin Laden’s face when he realized, ‘Uh-oh – these are the Navy SEALs, and they’re right here.’ . . . He got American justice delivered by U.S. Navy SEALs. Moments thereafter, he received Divine Justice by God Almighty. . . . There’s a heaven and there’s a hell. Osama Bin Laden knows all about that now.

All of this is really driving progressives crazy, like McJoan at Daily Kos, "Waterboarding did not reveal Osama bin Laden trail." Check the post for a really, er, tortured attempt to tamp down the waterboarding worked meme. Seriously. The fact that this president is simply completing the job of his predecessor drives progressives nuts.

Do American Students Study Too Hard?

My students don't. I wish I could get them to study more, a lot more, and to study better and more effectively. But after 11 years I've unfortunately become a bit less optimistic that I can motivate all of my students to outstanding academic achievement. The measurement of success for a great many of my students --- if not the majority --- is simply course completion. What the movie "Race to Nowhere" is looking at, in part, is the culture of achievement among middle class families with college expectations. There are two worlds out there when it comes to "making it" in America through higher education today. But it's completely politically incorrect to discuss, much less address, the debilitating disadvantages that are holding back large numbers of students, especially those from minority and poor backgrounds. Keep all this in mind while reading James Freeman's essay on the this, at Wall Street Journal:

Bergen County, N.J.

Young moviegoers have driven "Rio" to the top of the box office, but the film generating buzz among New Jersey parents is "Race to Nowhere." It's a response of sorts to last year's buzzed-about documentary "Waiting for 'Superman,'" which argued that ineffective schools and intransigent teachers unions are what's wrong with American education.

The new film may have arrived just in time for the New Jersey Education Association, the giant state teachers union locked in a continuing battle with Gov. Chris Christie over the cost of teachers' benefit plans. Directed by parent and first-time filmmaker Vicki Abeles, "Race to Nowhere" is marketed through a kind of partnership with local schools. The film suggests that if there are problems in American education, they are largely due to standardized tests, overambitious parents, insufficient funding, and George W. Bush. It also offers possible solutions, which include abandoning testing and grading and giving teachers more autonomy.

Ms. Abeles reports that she has been screening the film nationwide and even in numerous foreign countries. But few places have embraced it as enthusiastically as the Garden State. While in many states there are no showings currently scheduled, according to the film's website, New Jersey has 13 in the next month ...

The movie's recurring theme is that American kids are under intense pressure to succeed, forced to complete up to six hours of homework each night and therefore increasingly driven to mental illness. The movie is promoted with the tagline, "The Dark Side of America's Achievement Culture."

The dark side is illuminated with powerful anecdotes—we learn of one young California girl who, we are told, committed suicide after a disappointing grade in math. But the achievement is tougher to spot. The film reports that as hard as kids compete to win acceptance to name-brand colleges, they come out of high school without knowing much. The University of California at Berkeley, we are told, has to provide remedial education for close to half of incoming freshmen before they can handle a college course load. The film notes that American kids score poorly in international tests. If they work so hard, how do they learn so little?

More at the link.

Teachers love to bash the Bush administration's education agenda, and while conservatives despised the expansion of federal power in education, I've always supported more attention to standards. The problem is tying teacher and school accountability to student performance, because teachers will ultimately get blamed for things over which they have little control --- especially the culture and degree of educational attainment at the family, household level. It's generally not as high among lower income communities and minority households (lots of books on this, discussed here previously), and thus we can see why addressing the cultural roots of academic failure is pure taboo in progressive education circles.

By the way, the movies to watch are "Waiting for Superman" and "The Providence Effect." Folks know what needs to happen. And we know that disadvantaged communities can excel. It makes you think sometimes: What is it exactly that's holding folks back? Maybe it's progressive education shibboleths and the destructive power of teachers unions. Er, well, better not talk about that. I've got to work with these people ...

UPDATE: And the timing couldn't have been better. At Boston Globe, "Discord in Harvard’s education school: Protesters want more focus on social issues."

Glenn Reynolds summarizes:

Protesters demand more emphasis on community organizing and “social justice,” less on practical training. I guess the higher education bubble news hasn’t gotten there yet ...

John Yoo at David Horowitz's West Coast Retreat, April 3, 2011

I have a new essay at NewsReal Blog, "John Yoo at West Coast Retreat: Obama Has Made Us Less Safe."

Professor Yoo hammered the Obama administration’s foreign policy. President Obama has, he said, in attempting to dismantle the legal framework of the Bush administration’s anti-terror program, made Americans less safe. Not only did Obama attempt to shutter Guantanamo, but under his watch more than a quarter of the enemy combatants released from detention have returned to the field of battle. Professor Yoo indicated that the nature of the war on terror has changed significantly since the first few years after September 11. Al Qaeda has become increasingly decentralized as a terrorist organization, and transnational recruitment in the U.S. and Europe is a growing source of combatants for the next wave of operations. There are less likely to be large-scale attacks along the lines of 9/11, and more like that of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner two Christmases ago.

More later ...

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 9/11 Mastermind, to Face Trial in Guantanamo

At Michelle's, "Obama administration retreats (again) on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed civilian trial; Holder blames Congress."

Also at LAT, "9/11 suspects will be tried at Guantanamo, not in New York, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder announces." And Fox News, "Holder Blames Congress for Forcing Hand on Military Commissions for 9/11 Detainees" (via Memorandum).

John Yoo spoke at the Horowitz West Coast Retreat. He mentioned the need to keep Guantanamo open, and this administration keeps proving it.

Libya and the Anti-Intervention Left

From Jamie Kirchick, at World Affairs Journal:

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson argues that the campaign against Muammar Qaddafi represents the height of hypocrisy. Because the United States is abstaining from taking military action against other regimes in the region that are also using force to quell domestic uprisings—namely, Bahrain and Yemen—“all the homilies about universal rights and freedoms” are bunk. The war in Libya “isn’t about justice,” Robinson says, “it’s about power.” Far from arising out of some neoconservative impulse to spread democracy, he argues, the military action against the Libyan regime is rather an example of “realism” ...

The guiding principle of American foreign policy should be to support freedom overseas, when we can, where we can, and however we can. There are no firm rules by which this principle can be implemented. Libya, however, presented a rather obvious case: a murderous dictator who had the blood of many thousands of innocent people—including American citizens—on his hands, who had fomented instability in his region, and who had for many years been a leading sponsor of international terrorism, was suddenly confronted by a mass domestic insurgency. He reacted violently, in a way that rendered moot whatever economic benefit he was providing to the West. He all but announced his intention to commit genocide against his own people, stating that he would “cleanse Libya house by house,” practically rendering international intervention a legal imperative due to the stipulations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which the United States is a signatory. Furthermore, from a basic practical standpoint, and unlike in Yemen and Bahrain, Libya is located on the periphery of Europe, meaning that continued strife would have resulted in a mass refugee exodus onto the shores of NATO states. By assisting an indigenous revolt, and not partaking in the dread warfare of the sort that liberals like Robinson so fervently opposed in Iraq, the United States and its allies were given a prime opportunity, the sort of opportunity that arrives once in a blue moon, to overthrow a despicable regime and implement something better in its stead.

More at the link.

Kirchik is a great writer.

Botched Neocon Wars? Hardly

Ideological simplification is one of the biggest problems we're seeing with all the intense debate over Libya and the wider "Arab Spring." One example is Andrew Sullivan's little piece that stops just short of slamming neocons as fascist. Sully draws on C. Bradley Thompson's recent book on neoconservatism, but amplifies the implications without the theoretical context. For background, see Thompson's recent piece, "Neoconservatism Unmasked." It's pretty abstract, but if Thompson's right, there's a lot in my personal philosophy that's at odds with the neoconservative program hypothesized there. That said, much of the current debate over intervention in Libya hinges on the argument that the Iraq war was a colossal blunder of world historical proportions. It's the progressive meme that the Bush administration blew the mission after the initial post-conflict phase of operations. The photo-op on the USS Abraham Lincoln came to symbolize the hubris of an administration many argued was hell-bent on war and profanely dismissive of international norms. There's no convincing ideological partisans otherwise, of course, so it's probably not worth it to make the effort. Yet real-world events have repeatedly shown that the Bush administration's foreign policy was frequently masterful and often quite successful. There's been a long slide in Afghanistan's political efficacy, which is why we're still there today, after ten years of war. But in Iraq, the lodestar for progressive attacks on the "Bush-Cheney cabal," the revolutionary changes in the Middle East have elevated Baghdad to regional diplomatic prominence. See New York Times, "Ready or Not, Iraq Ascends to Take Helm of Arab Bloc":

BAGHDAD — After Libya was suspended from the Arab League last month, de facto leadership ended up coincidentally in the hands of Iraq, the Arab nation with the most experience — much of it painful — with a foreign-led military campaign against an unpopular dictator.



For all of that still unsettled pain, the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari — in his new capacity as head of the Arab League — rushed off to Paris last Friday evening to join Western and Arab allies, where he argued passionately in favor of action against Libya, citing the American no-fly zone in northern Iraq that protected the Kurdish population from Saddam Hussein in the years before the American invasion here, according to a senior official who took part in the Paris deliberations.



And soon, Iraqi leaders, who are facing their own protest movement, plan to use their own troublesome democracy, still bloody and inchoate, as a showcase for Middle East countries. Iraq is taking on a larger diplomatic role in regional affairs as host of the group’s annual summit meeting — while assuming the rotating presidency of the league — in May.



“If there’s a political message, it’s that Iraq is back to play a major and positive role in the Arab region,” said Labid Abawi, the deputy foreign minister who has led a committee to prepare Baghdad for the summit meeting.



“We take pride in that Iraq has already exceeded all these other Arab countries in establishing a democratic regime,” he said. “Now, we can say yes, we are on the right track, and other Arab countries can follow suit in establishing a democratic regime.”

There's more at the link, but I want to reiterate the point above: No amount of evidence, not even Iraqi testimony on the country's democratic consolidation, will wrest from idiot progressives the claim that toppling Saddam Hussein was a debacle. It's all they have, along with endless allegations of racism and the demonization of Israel. And to respond to simpleton Mike Tuggle, who asked if I'd lost my "'neo-conservative illusions' as a result of the botched Neocon Wars?," the answer is no --- because I don't have any illusions to lose.

Conservatives and the Libyan War

One thing I believe in firmly is the universal desire for human freedom. It's an American thing, you could say, univeralistic in the Jeffersonian sense of "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." Believing in universal principles doesn't mean we throw off our more studied inclinations toward realism. And by this I don't mean the perverted realism of Stephen Walt and the neo-isolationist Israel-bashers. No, it's the realism for holding up interests to the light of pragmatism over idealism. With the Egyptian revolution, for example, the hopes for liberation engendered powerful emotions of solidarity with people breaking the chains of their poverty and oppression. The problem, of course, is that the nature of the Mubarak regime was to elevate the most extreme forces in society as the bogeyman to justify authoritarian rule. At the same time the tempering forces of civil society were suppressed to prevent pluralistic impulses that might threaten the regime. And when the spontaneous outpouring of revolt hit the streets the Obama administration's incompetence and indifference worked to let slip the opportunity for shaping a pro-democratic wave that might have limited the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. Attention has moved away from Cairo as new developments elsewhere have captured the news. But Egypt's election on constitutional reform a few days ago was said to favor Islamist forces in the country. And because those same forces will be less committed to peace with Israel, and perhaps to an extreme fundamentalism domestically, it's clear that democratic change in Egypt hasn't seen the coming of a freedom-producing utopia.

I'm reflecting here in light of David Horowitz's essay, "Why I Am Not a Neo-Conservative." Folks should read it all. There's little I disagree with, especially on the dangers of democratic elections in totalitarian cultures. It's hard to be bullish on democratic change when the key principles of constitutional order include the extermination of the Jews, as it is with the Hamas Charter. But there's more to neoconservatism than foreign policy and war, which is a point that I keep stressing, since it's getting lost in the fog of Obama's foreign policy. Horowitz even calls for folks to abandon the "neo" and return to being just conservatives. To do that, of course, is to abandon the long tradition of moral-based conservatism that been shaping cultural debates in the U.S. since at least the 1960s. A larger understanding is required. It's appropriate to recall that neoconservatives aren't currently unified on change in the Middle East. Refer to Matt Lewis' recent article as well, "Abusing and Misusing The ‘Neo-Con’ Label," where he notes how the term's been bastardized by critics.

In any case, Victor Davis Hanson ---whose work was extremely influential in the top circles of the Bush administration during the runup to the Iraq war and beyond --- puts things in perspective at National Review, "Let Us Count the Ways ...":

Why are many conservatives against the Libyan war? Is it, as alleged, political opportunism — given their prior support for the 2001 and 2003 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

No. Most of us support wholeheartedly our troops now that we are in, but opposed the intervention for reasons that were clear before we attacked, and are even clearer now. Among them ...

Be sure to read it all.