Must Reads:
“Imperial Hubris
(Why the West is Losing the war on Terror)
by Anonymous from Brassey's Inc.
Will They Ever trust Us Again?
(Letters From The War Zone)
by Michael Moore from Simon and Schuster
Chain of Command
by Seymour Hersh from HarperCollins”
And I Must Speak
Is everything the media tells us about Al Qaeda and Bin Ladin wrong?
Probably.
Is Iraq destroying our troops morale?
Certainly.
Does responsibility go far beyond a few enlisted personnel?
Absolutely.
The author of ‘Imperial Hubris’ quotes John Quincy Adams when he was secretary of State —
“Whenever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America's heart, her benedictions and her prayers. But she does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the wellwisher to freedom and independence for all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She well knows that by once enlisting other banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extridition, in all wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom....She might become the dictress of the world but would no longer be ruler of her own spirit....Americans should not go abroad to slay dragons they do not understand in the name of spreading democracy.”
We heard the opposite yesterday, from an administration that wants to pick and choose which dragons, or is it tyrants, to cozy up to and which to slay.
I think the interesting thing about the president's speech is the words he used throughout. Twenty-seven times he invoked the word "freedom," 15 times he invoked the word "liberty," and only once did he invoke the word "democracy." They're not all the same concepts. In some sense, liberty and freedom are negative. They're about the absence of something, the absence of constraint, the absence of tyranny. Democracy is a positive concept. It presumes creating certain kinds of processes, institutions, norms, and behavior. What we learned in Iraq is that it can be very easy to remove the constraint or remove the dictator, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to produce democracy. Looking at the president's speech, you seldom see a detailed argument about how the United States can best promote democracy.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a real challenge. What we're seeing in Iraq is that, even though the bad guys are removed, it doesn't mean democracy will spontaneously take root, in part because it requires all people agreeing to certain types of behavior. And if significant portions of the population refuse to do so, it can make it very, very difficult. Which is why, as you look ahead to the elections in Iraq coming up, the tendency has been to treat them as the destination as opposed to just another marker along the road.
This is from James M. Lindsay
http://www.cfr.org/pub7617/james_m_lindsay_bernard_gwertzman/lindsay_inauguration_speech_marks_a_second_bush_doctrine.php