Michael Ignatieff’s piece in the New York Times titled Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread? is second on the list of most emailed articles, i.e. high on their Recommended List. While it contains some stuff that is a joy to read, Mr Ignatieff asks several wrong questions which of course lead to wrong answers.
He begins by quoting Jefferson’s letter for the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:
”To some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,” he wrote, the American form of republican self-government would become every nation’s birthright. Democracy’s worldwide triumph was assured, he went on to say, because ”the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion” would soon convince all men that they were born not to be ruled but to rule themselves in freedom.
Powerful words. However, Ignatieff seems to think that W is a “gambler from Texas” who has bet his presidency on the Iraq war:
If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary. If Iraq fails, it will be his Vietnam, and nothing else will matter much about his time in office. For any president, it must be daunting to know already that his reputation depends on what Jefferson once called ”so inscrutable [an] arrangement of causes and consequences in this world.”
Bush will not be remembered as a “plain-speaking visionary” even if peace breaks out all over and the self-satisfied arrogance of this intellectual midget could not be daunted by anything.
Here comes the good part:
The consequences are more likely to be positive if the president begins to show some concern about the gap between his words and his administration’s performance. For he runs an administration with the least care for consistency between what it says and does of any administration in modern times. The real money committed to the promotion of democracy in the Middle East is trifling. The president may have doubled the National Endowment for Democracy’s budget, but it is still only $80 million a year. But even if there were more money, there is such doubt in the Middle East that the president actually means what he says — in the wake of 60 years of American presidents cozying up to tyrants in the region — that every dollar spent on democracy in the Middle East runs the risk of undermining the cause it supports. Actual Arab democrats recoil from the embrace of American good intentions. Just ask a community-affairs officer trying to give American dollars away for the promotion of democracy in Mosul, in northern Iraq, how easy it is to get anyone to even take the money, let alone spend it honestly.
And then there are the prisoners, the hooded man with the wires hanging from his body, the universal icon of the gap between the ideals of American freedom and the sordid — and criminal — realities of American detention and interrogation practice. The fetid example of these abuses makes American talk of democracy sound hollow. It will not be possible to encourage the rule of law in Egypt if America is sending Hosni Mubarak shackled prisoners to torture. It will be impossible to secure democratic change in Morocco or Afghanistan or anywhere else if Muslims believe that American guards desecrated the Koran. The failure to convict anybody higher than a sergeant for these crimes leaves many Americans and a lot of the world wondering whether Jefferson’s vision of America hasn’t degenerated into an ideology of self-congratulation, whose function is no longer to inspire but to lie.
Unfortunately it is pretty much all downhill from here. Later on he dumps all over Germans and Canadians, among others:
Other democratic leaders may suspect Bush is right, but that doesn’t mean they are joining his crusade. Never have there been more democracies. Never has America been more alone in spreading democracy’s promise.
Here his premise is simply flawed, probably because he is wearing blinders. Germany and Canada and all the others “sat out” the Iraq war not because they don’t believe in spreading freedom and democracy, even at the point of a gun (he is right that the point of a gun is often very useful in securing freedom and democracy, Germany and Japan being simply the most prominent examples) but because nations like people don’t enjoy being told to bugger off and then ordered to help with a massively risky and illegal undertaking. In Afghanistan all these countries offered treasure and blood. It is simply unfair to criticize them for wanting no part in an illegal adventure that was clearly not about spreading freedom and democracy after the US administration told them get lost.
Ignatieff then speaks of the retreat of American liberalism from the Jeffersonian ideals:
The fact that many foreigners do not happen to buy into the American version of promoting democracy may not be much of a surprise. What is significant is how many American liberals don’t share the vision, either.
On this issue, there has been a huge reversal of roles in American politics. Once upon a time, liberal Democrats were the custodians of the Jeffersonian message that American democracy should be exported to the world, and conservative Republicans were its realist opponents. Beginning in the late 1940’s, as the political commentator Peter Beinart has rediscovered, liberals like Eleanor Roosevelt, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Adlai Stevenson realized that liberals would have to reinvent themselves. This was partly a matter of principle — they detested Soviet tyranny — and partly a matter of pragmatism. They wanted to avoid being tarred as fellow travelers, the fate that had met Franklin Roosevelt’s former running mate, the radical reformer Henry Wallace. The liberals who founded Americans for Democratic Action refounded liberalism as an anti-Communist internationalism, dedicated to defending freedom and democracy abroad from Communist threat. The missionary Jeffersonianism in this reinvention worried many people — for example, George Kennan, the diplomat and foreign-policy analyst who argued that containment of the Communist menace was all that prudent politics could accomplish.
[snip, unfortunately. It is a good bit.]
It was Reagan who began the realignment of American politics, making the Republicans into internationalist Jeffersonians with his speech in London at the Palace of Westminster in 1982, which led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy and the emergence of democracy promotion as a central goal of United States foreign policy. At the time, many conservative realists argued for detente, risk avoidance and placation of the Soviet bear. Faced with the Republican embrace of Jeffersonian ambitions for America abroad, liberals chose retreat or scorn. Bill Clinton — who took reluctant risks to defend freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo — partly arrested this retreat, yet since his administration, the withdrawal of American liberalism from the defense and promotion of freedom overseas has been startling. The Michael Moore-style left conquered the Democratic Party’s heart; now the view was that America’s only guiding interest overseas was furthering the interests of Halliburton and Exxon. The relentless emphasis on the hidden role of oil makes the promotion of democracy seem like a devious cover or lame excuse. The unseen cost of this pseudo-Marxist realism is that it disconnected the Democratic Party from the patriotic idealism of the very electorate it sought to persuade.
John Kerry’s presidential campaign could not overcome liberal America’s fatal incapacity to connect to the common faith of the American electorate in the Jeffersonian ideal. Instead he ran as the prudent, risk-avoiding realist in 2004 — despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that he had fought in Vietnam. Kerry’s caution was bred in the Mekong. The danger and death he encountered gave him some good reasons to prefer realism to idealism, and risk avoidance to hubris. Faced with a rival who proclaimed that freedom was not just America’s gift to mankind but God’s gift to the world, it was understandable that Kerry would seek to emphasize how complex reality was, how resistant to American purposes it might be and how high the price of American dreams could prove. As it turned out, the American electorate seemed to know only too well how high the price was in Iraq, and it still chose the gambler over the realist. In 2004, the Jefferson dream won decisively over American prudence.
This part is really tricky. There be minefields in here. Was Reagan really talking about promoting democracy? Is that why he supported a covert and dirty war against the Sandinistas? Why are Clinton’s wars called “reluctant risks”? If the interests of Halliburton and Exxon are NOT guiding America’s actions overseas, why was the war in Iraq seemingly designed around Halliburton’s needs and NOT those of our armed forces and of the Iraqi’s we’re there to `liberate’? Did the American electorate have any real idea of how high the price tag for Iraq would eventually be? Did Bush win decisively?
But Iraqi freedom also depends on something whose measurement is equally complex: what price, in soldiers’ bodies and lives, the American people are prepared to pay. The members of the American public are ceaselessly told that stabilizing Iraq will make them more secure. They are told that fighting the terrorists there is better than fighting them at home. [You know what I think of that.] They are told that victory in Iraq will spread democracy and stability in the arc from Algeria to Afghanistan. They are told that when this happens, ”they” won’t hate Americans, or hate them as much as they do now. It’s hard to know what the American people believe about these claims, but one vital test of whether the claims are believed is the number of adolescent men and women prepared to show up at the recruiting posts in the suburban shopping malls and how many already in the service or Guard choose to re-enlist and sign up for another tour in Ramadi or Falluja. The current word is that recruitment is down, and this is a serious sign that someone at least thinks America is paying too high a price for its ideals.
The American public is promised all these wonderful things but is never exhorted to pitch in and help. While we don’t hear much about cakewalks anymore, taxes keep on being cut, the dead are hidden, our leaders do not call upon people to enlist, the war is kept out of sight, as much as possible, and we are urged to go shopping. What is this, the implementation of the phrase `when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping’?
There is nothing worse than believing your son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother died in vain. Even those who have opposed the Iraq war all along, who believe that the hope of planting democracy has lured America into a criminal folly, do not want to tell those who have died that they have given their lives for nothing. This is where Jefferson’s dream must work. Its ultimate task in American life is to redeem loss, to rescue sacrifice from oblivion and futility and to give it shining purpose. The real truth about Iraq is that we just don’t know — yet — whether the dream will do its work this time. This is the somber question that hangs unanswered as Americans approach this Fourth of July.
Indeed. It would help if our leaders started giving us the truth.
[Update] Added poll and crossposted to dKos
even if it is long. Ignatieff does make many good points but his piece suffers from the flaw of not realizing the tragic reality of who he is dealing with.
I think what it mostly is is that Bush has been a sort of ‘code-breaker’. Not by actually breaking the codes himself, but by making use of the old age code words such as “democracy” and “freedom” and “liberty” in such a way that it has completely pulled back the curtain and allowed those who used to be impressed by such rhetoric to see what it really means.
Mind you, people outside of the US have always known. And of course, in some ways and to some people inside and outside of the US, America really was the City on the Hill, the shining light and so on. It was a place of hope and refuge for many, regardless of what the outside policies were. What Bush has done, by his actions and policies, especially the very blatant torture and rendition ones, is destroy the ability of many to view the two things separately.
Foreign imperialistic “democracy building”, continued and even increased support for horrendous regimes, undemocratic rhetoric couched in idealistic words of ‘liberty and freedom’ at home and abroad and a whole host of other things have combined to shatter the illusions of many, I believe.
People like Ignatieff, who is really smart enough to see all of this, are constantly searching for ways to make it not nearly as bad as it is, both in their minds and in the minds of others, it seems to me.
separately.” Formally known as doublethink. Bush is essentially opening the box containing Shroedinger’s Cat and the poor feline is…
Truly excellent comment Nanette.
Thanks! Finally someone thinks I make sense 😉
(What is funny is that is the 2nd (or maybe 3rd) time in as many days that someone has mentioned that cat to me, in unrelated conversations. I finally had to go look it up… and I must say, I am not much the wiser, although I understand the basic idea.)
I think that is why those on the right are sooooo adamant at labeling any dissenters “traitors” and are into the whole clap louder thing. They seem to really believe that if only you think something, then it will be true. Or rather, they prefer the entire facade, rather than having to deal with what is behind it, because doing that would for some reason be a defeat. In these days of instant and international access though, not looking is pretty much an impossibility.
Wouldn’t be surprised if many of them favored China’s method of information control… in a ‘liberty and freedom’ kinda way, of course.
Bush has collapsed the probability field and the cat is dead!
Before America could be both a good place and a source of pain, humiliation and death. Everybody wanted to go to America even if they disagreed with her policies. Now the mirage of Camelot is fading, slowly to be sure (it is a powerful image) and a hooded man with arms outstretched attached to wires is becoming the new icon.
You understand the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that you can know how fast a particle is going or which direction it is going but not both? Basically, in order to know either, you have to ping the particle with another particle, which alters either the direction or the speed of the particle you were checking. Observation itself changes that which is observed. The cat can only be said to be alive or dead after we look inside the box. The vary act of looking determines what is.
Hope that helps. (Had some trouble posting this comment, is the site unstable?)
Okay, that clears the cat up a bit, thanks!
I don’t think the Camelot image will be allowed to fade by the people in general until there is a new one to replace it. Our entire nation is built on myths and big ideas, and just because they are myths doesn’t mean that most will want to give them up.
Madman in the Marketplace had a good essay on that not too long ago. I was trying to find it for you, but LSF has redesigned their site and it’s (the article) not available at the moment. Maybe he’ll repost it here.
Bush’s rhetoric, clumsy as it is, is specifically designed to instill a state of “cognitive dissonance” in the public mind. As another commenter here notes, a form of “doublethink” (thank you Orwell) that destabilizes a persons psychological autonomy by loading them up with contradictory instructions and doctrines that drive the capacity for reason right out of their heads.
This is how the Bush regime has been able to dupe so many people into voting for him in America. His team of propagandists are clever, they know how to exploit peoples’ weaknesses and their strengths, their fears and their virtues. The propaganda is so clever it allows an otherwise intelligent scribe and observer like Ignatieff to stray from the stark reality of things by causing him to believe that if he describes things as not being so bad that somehow they won’t be.
And this is one of the biggest hooks used by con-men, cult leaders and megalomaniacal tyrants throughout history to lure the public into falling under their spell.
It’s always a tragedy when truth and reason are sacrificed to delusion, especially in the political and religious realms, because it always leads to the spilled blood of innocents.
When Bush invokes the terms “democracy”, “freedom” and “liberty”, he debases the concepts these words represent. He can’t even define them.
His premise is also flawed because there’s an assumption that the only way to support the spread of democracy is Bush’s way (“You’re either with us or against us.”). One could make a good case that nations like Canada do more to spread democracy, by acting like adults on the international stage.
and its soft power attraction and then dismisses it because of the recent “no” votes. He is rather too quick to denigrate the most successful political experiment of all time.
Sorry, it’s getting very late and I must go to bed. Talk more tomorrow?
that is such a sloppy misrepresentation of Jefferson’s views.
He didn’t say WE would spread it. He said OTHERS would follow our example and spread it themselves, for themselves, when they were ready. “Exported” doesn’t mean HERE, TAKE IT OR ELSE! He meant the idea would be exported.
Fucking stupid … I started to read that thing online today, and had to stop. I’d buy it if he claimed Bush was picking up on Wilson’s ideas, but NOT Jefferson’s. Jefferson would have been horrified by an Executive with this much power, waging wars by choice.
Michael Ignatieff took Bush’s 5th or 6th reason to go to war and is treating it as legitimate. He’s full of hot air. We’re not there for democracy’s sake… anyone who believes that is a real chump. Basra is ruled by sharia now… strict Islamic law. The poor people get beaten and killed for singing now. Iraq’s police forces are being overrun by religious militias, who the government (they do little without US approval) has now given it’s blessing. Freedom and Democracy my ass.
“Ignatieff then speaks of the retreat of American liberalism from the Jeffersonian ideals:”
This guy is delusional. He totally misses the point. We would do more to promote democracy by living up to liberal ideals for one month than doing things Bush’s way for 100 years. Patriotic idealism has no place in a war of aggression… it smacks of fascism. Ignatieff is not exactly a champion of clear thinking, is he?
When I read this: “For he runs an administration with the least care for consistency between what it says and does of any administration in modern times” I thought, ‘aha, we’re in for a fine rant’ and then he goes and blows it all by buying into what the Administration says and ignoring what it does.
He has occasionally made sense in the past but as Nanette says he clearly is engaging in doublethink.