Lounsbury: Wolf: On Bush

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June 15, 2004

Wolf: On Bush

This is a rather aged article by Wolf, but I wanted to convey it and comment at the same time. As it is in archives, I will not bother with a link.

I mostly wished to convey it as I rather agree with the reasoning and heartily agree with the point of view.

Bush is not up to the job
The Financial Times
By Martin Wolf
Published: May 11 2004

First, Wolf opens:
I am a huge admirer of the US. Freedom and democracy survived the 20th century only because of American actions and values. Without the US, Hitler or Stalin would have emerged as undisputed winners of the second world war. Thereafter, the US turned defeated enemies into allies and undertook the long - and ultimately successful - task of containing and defeating the Soviet empire.

I am also neither hostile to Republican administrations nor opposed to the use of force. On the contrary, I was heartened by Ronald Reagan�s efforts to liberalise the US economy and oppose the Soviet Union. I preferred Richard Nixon to George McGovern, in 1972, and George H.W. Bush to Michael Dukakis, in 1988. I supported the first Gulf war, though I opposed the one in Vietnam.

For my part I was rather deeply ambivalent towards the First Gulf War, feeling it less-than-necessary although I now think it was largely a positive endeavor. And of course, I myself am "neither hostile to Republican administrations nor opposed to the use of force, although insofar as wars are expensive and often wasteful of resources, I rather prefer they be avoided if possible. If possible. And of course I have voted for a good many Republican administrations (although not the present one).

Wolf then adds:
"This personal history is of no intrinsic importance. But if I find the Bush administratio's foreign policy disturbing, so must the vast majority of humanity. If I feel Tony Blair has
allied the UK too closely, then sympathy for this alliance must be perilously low."

I concur. I very much concur. While no Government should be prisoner to foreign popularity, when one's account is so low with so many otherwise staunch friends, and one's not otherwise inclined to be harshly critical, one has to ask, is there not something wrong? Or another way, to use Machiavelli's observation that it is better to be feared than loved, but one should also not be hated.When one's natural allies fear and begin to loathe you, then one can guess that the remainder of the world may have well passed through fear into hatred, or be on that path.

Wolf then adds:
"So what is wrong with this administration? Put simply, it fails to understand the basis of US power, mis-specifies US objectives and is incompetent in executing its intentions. As a result, the position of the US - and so of the west - is worse, in significant respects, than it was the day after September 11 2001. Then, a huge proportion of humanity viewed the US as the victim of an outrage. Today, after the revelations of the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, it is seen as a perpetrator of them. Then it had the support of all its allies, now it can rely on the public�s sympathy in very few."
Emphasis added.

I rather agree and have argued this, I think, consistently. The revelations now that the current Bush Administration engaged in legalistic searches for justifying the use of torture, in clear contravention of the international accords the American government had long supported further these somewhat aged comments. As some who read my comments on the old "SDMB" message board know, I did not unalterably oppose... recourse to unpleasant methods in case of dire need. However, it has always been my view that this should be exceptional and something that remained shameful and indeed illegal. The current administration, as some commentators (I believe it The Washington Post editorial page) noted, has followed the logic and reasoning of rogue regimes where the rule of law does not obtain but rather the rule of the personal power of the ruler obtains. This is dangerous. Very dangerous, and very damaging to American standing. The revelations in this area have diminished American standing to (rightfully) comment on human rights abuses across the globe, and to further its own agenda for greater democratisation and greater respect for human rights - in short the very values said to be at the core of the country. Clumsy, naive cynicism for clumsily executed short term gain, and utterly unnecessary across a number of fields.

In short, gross incompetence.

Wolf adds then:
Let us start with the administration's faith in the application of US military power. This is a double error. The first lies in its exaggerated belief in force. The US was able to defeat the armies of Saddam Hussein, but a civilised occupying army cannot coerce the obedience of a population. The second error lies in its belief in the irrelevance of allies. A country containing 4 per cent of the world�s population cannot impose its will upon the world. It needs permanent allies, not reluctant stooges, willing acceptance of its leadership, not sullen acquiescence. The contempt shown by leading members of the administration for those who disagree with it is now matched by the hostility of those whipped by their scorn.
Emphasis added:

I have long called this the Napoleonic error. Shining belief in one's own rightness is rarely all that convincing to others, above all foreigners whose values are not in entire congruence with one's own.

Clumsy incompetence.

Wolf amplifies this:
Without military power, victory would not have been achieved in the second world war. Nor would the Soviet tanks have been kept at bay for more than 40 years. But the cold war was won not because the US had a bigger army than the Soviet Union, but because it offered a more attractive model. The more the US plays the unilateral bully, the more its attraction fades.

Precisely, the pole of attraction is a powerful tool.

Turn then to definition of US objectives. Terrorism is a technique of the powerless adapted to the age of mass communications. A war against terrorism is as empty a slogan as one against crime, drugs or disease. But proclaiming a war against terrorism justifies the indefinite suspension of the rule of law, allows every thug on the planet to ally his repressive policies to those of the US, spawns new enemies and foments a war psychosis in the US itself.

I believe this passage rather takes on a great deal of weight in the context of the revelations regarding the legal memoranda on torture, on the strange lawlessness (rather unnecessary as well as self-damaging) in regards to detainees. I note the strange collapsing of the Padilla case, the incident of the arrest of the Oregon lawyer, etc. I would note that this article in The New York Times Commander Swift Objects is instructive and interesting.

"As David Scheffer pointed out in the Financial Times last Thursday, the behaviour of the guards at Abu Ghraib is the natural, almost the inevitable, consequence of the position in which the administration has - in its pursuit of its war on terrorism - put detainees.These are neither prisoners of war nor criminal suspects. Instead, they are in a legal limbo for as long as the US decides that this so-called "war" continues. Interrogators have absolute power and, as Lord Acton pointed out, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nobody, not excluding Americans, is immune to the temptations such power creates."

There is little to add to Wolf's observation than to draw the line to the legal memoranda regarding torture.

Wolf notes re competence:
Now let us turn to the question of competence. In the short history of the war on terrorism, only one institution has shown its effectiveness - the US armed forces in "shock and awe" mode. Almost everything else has been a humiliating shambles. Afghanistan is, once again, in the arms of the war lords whose behaviour led to the Taliban invasion. The outcome in Iraq now looks far worse than that. "

Indeed, and a month has not changed that, other than my feeling that the new Iraqi of the moment probably represents a sureptious slide to re-Baathification, which is to say, not long before one sees a new Iraqi dictatorship, but one dressed up a little better to meet simple minded tastes for the appearance of democracy - Potemkin or Egyptian democracy.

"The decision to wage a war of choice, not of necessity, was a great risk. It could be justified only by discovering the weaponry Mr Hussein was alleged to hold or by leaving the country, if not a Jeffersonian democracy, at least in a reasonably stable condition. Having been so resoundingly wrong on the first point, the US must now succeed on the second. Always difficult, the chances of such an outcome now seem vanishingly small. What will Iraq be a few years from now - a military dictatorship, a theocracy, a divided country, an anarchy, or a permanent US occupation? Any of these, except the last, seems more plausible than stable democracy."

I would lay my bets on a military dictatorship rather like Egypt. A ticking bomb.

"It is impossible to exaggerate the dangers attendant upon a US failure in Iraq: jihadis would conclude that they had now defeated a second superpower; friendly regimes would be shaken; and US prestige would be destroyed. Iraq is not another Vietnam. It is far more dangerous than that. While this venture was never going to be as militarily perilous as that war, this time dominoes could well fall. An incontinent US withdrawal could be a deciding moment in the relationship between the US and the Arab, if not the entire Muslim, world."

I would add that in fact American standing has already been badly, badly damaged by the clear, indeed gross incompetence shown in Iraq to date. No one, not even a cynic such as myself, expected things to go this badly, so quickly. I recall stating on the SDMB that I expected car bombs by Spring. I did not even think by the past Fall that such utter incompetence would have generated what it did.

Wolf adds
"The US has, rightly or wrongly, staked its prestige not just on getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but on leaving behind a thriving country. If, instead, it leaves behind despotism or chaos, it will be a grievous defeat, with huge long-run consequences. Responsibility for such a failure must rest with the White House. It cannot be blamed on any subordinate department, not even the defence department. This is the president's policy and responsibility. The buck stops there."

Precisely, and precisly why this current president must go. Incompetence of this magnitude can not be tolerated.

Crafting a foreign policy for a new era is hard. The last time this had to be done was in the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman more than half a century ago. The
institutions they established and the values they upheld were the foundation of the successful US foreign policy of the postwar era. Now, a task even more complex has fallen on this
president. He is not up to the job. This is not a moral judgment, but a practical one. The world is too complex and dangerous for the pious simplicities and arrogant unilateralism
of George W. Bush.

June 15, 2004

Wolf: On Bush

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