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| What should be the U.S. goal in Iraq? |
| 2004-04-28 |
| Well I guess that marks me out as a nationalist. The American government is clear on this point: it is âa free and peaceful Iraq,â which it presents as critical to the stability of the Middle East, which in turn âis critical to the security of the American people.â A free and peaceful Iraq is one in the American image â democratic, liberal, capitalist, under the rule of law. While completely sympathetic to this vision â who could not be? â I worry both that Iraqis do not welcome U.S. guidance and that such an ambition ultimately is unrealistic. My thoughts on the second of these worries are clarified by Samuel P. Huntingtonâs remarkable new book, Who Are We: The Challenges to Americaâs National Identity, forthcoming in May. In it, the Harvard professor analyses the impact other civilizations are having on the United States â via immigration, bilingualism, multiculturalism, the devaluation of citizenship, and the denationalization of American elites. He argues eloquently for the need to reassert core American values in the face of this challenge. Along the way, Huntington observes that Americans can choose among three broad visions for their country in relation to the outside world. · Cosmopolitan: America âwelcomes the world, its ideas, its goods, and, most importantly, its people.â In this vision, the country strives to become multiethnic, multiracial, and multicultural. The United Nations and other international organizations increasingly influence American life. Diversity is an end in itself; national identity declines in importance. In brief, the world reshapes America. · Imperial: America reshapes the world. This impulse is fueled by a belief in âthe supremacy of American power and the universality of American values.â Americaâs unique military, economic, and cultural might bestows on it the responsibility to confront evil and to order the world. Other peoples are assumed basically to share the same values as Americans; Americans should help them attain those values. America is less a nation than âthe dominant component of a supranational empire.â · National: âAmerica is differentâ and its people recognize and accept what distinguishes them from others. That difference results in large part from the countryâs religious commitment and its Anglo-Protestant culture. The nationalist outlook preserves and enhances those qualities that have defined America from its inception. As for people who are not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, they âbecome Americans by adopting its Anglo-Protestant culture and political values.â Huntington sums up this triad of choices: âAmerica becomes the world. The world becomes America. America remains America.â The left tends to the cosmopolitan vision; the right divides among imperialists and nationalists. Personally, I have wavered between the latter two, sometimes wanting the United States to export its humane political message and at other times fearful that such efforts, however desirable, will overextend the American reach and end in disaster. Which brings us back to Iraq and the choices at hand. Cosmopolitans reject the unilateralism of the Iraq campaign, despise the notion of guiding the Iraqis to âa free and peacefulâ country, and deeply suspect the Bush administrationâs motives. They demonstrate on the streets and hurl invectives from television studios. Imperialists are guiding U.S. policy toward Iraq, where they see a unique opportunity not just to rehabilitate that country but to spread American ways through the Middle East. And nationalists find themselves, as usual, somewhere in between. They sympathize with the imperial vision but worry about its practicalities and consequences. As patriots, they take pride in American accomplishments and hope U.S. influence will spread. But they have two worries: that the outside world is not ready to Americanize and Americans are unwilling to spend the blood and treasure to carry off an imperial mission. Huntington is clearly a nationalist. Less clearly, so am I. I believe the U.S. goal in Iraq should be more narrowly restricted to protecting American interests. I hope the Iraqi population benefits from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and can make a fresh start, while rejecting the rehabilitation of Iraq as the standard by which to judge the American venture there. The U.S. military machine is not an instrument for social work, nor for remaking the world. It is, rather, the primary means by which Americans protect themselves from external violent threats. The U.S. goal cannot be a free Iraq, but an Iraq that does not endanger Americans. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #7 Glad we have a house optimist. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-04-28 5:28:57 PM |
| #6 Imperial: America reshapes the world. This impulse is fueled by a belief in âthe supremacy of American power and the universality of American values.â Americaâs unique military, economic, and cultural might bestows on it the responsibility to confront evil and to order the world. Other peoples are assumed basically to share the same values as Americans; No - they differ on many values, but DO share certain universal aspirations. Americans should help them attain those values. America is less a nation than âthe dominant component of a supranational empire.â No - America is a nation that is endangered in a global world, when many nations lag behind. · National: âAmerica is differentâ and its people recognize and accept what distinguishes them from others. That difference results in large part from the countryâs religious commitment and its Anglo-Protestant culture. The nationalist outlook preserves and enhances those qualities that have defined America from its inception. As for people who are not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, they âbecome Americans by adopting its Anglo-Protestant culture and political values.â The anglo Protestant culture has been shaped and reformed in many ways, to some extent by the cultures of immigrants, but in larger ways by the land itself, and the unique experience of living in this land. So more properly we should speak of adopting to the broader American culture, and dont need to focus on the anglo protestant aspects of it, though theyre certainly there. And of course immigrants today ARE adapting to American culture - well hispanic immigrants certainly are (i wont touch at this point on the hot button of Muslim immigration) And the most important point, for strategy, is that the POLITICAL VALUES we espouse are widely held beyond the anglo Protestant world. Sam Huntington, IIRC, was skeptical of democracy succeeding in Mediterranean Europe, for crying out loud (anyone else have the "privilege" of reading him in the 1970's?) Democracy wont work in Latin America, in the Eastern Orthodox world, etc. Anyone who thinks Sam is an advocate for the view that "the muslim world is uniquely unequipped for democracy" has it wrong. He things anyplace outside the western european civ (although now im getting confused, i thought France and Germany and Norway and so forth WERENT anglo, and France and Italy werent Protestant) is incapable of democracy. Of course when youre propounding a "realist" view of Latin American politics, or raising alarums about Hispanic immmigration, I suppose you need to blur some of those "civilizational" definitions. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-04-28 4:04:38 PM |
| #5 "The U.S. goal cannot be a free Iraq, but an Iraq that does not endanger Americans." That's a reasonable fall-back position. A bare minimum goal. Why not aim higher, why not make sure the entire region does not endanger Americans? |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-04-28 1:15:21 PM |
| #4 "The U.S. goal cannot be a free Iraq, but an Iraq that does not endanger Americans." This is a narrow view of the goal. The ultimate goal is to defeat the radical Islamists who are the purveyors of world wide terrorism. Sure, one more immediate goal of the Iraq operation was to remove the threat posed by Traq through Saddam. But a free Iraq is poison to the radical Islamists, and the tenacity of their current insurging in Iraq is because they know what a free Iraq will mean to their movement. Their efforts to abort a free Iraq before it happens is testament that the Bush strategy is correct. So the goal should be a free Iraq, because this facilitates the defeat of the radical Islamists which will make all of us more secure. |
| Posted by: Sam 2004-04-28 12:29:02 PM |
| #3 I think the later two are Rantburgian. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2004-04-28 12:06:31 PM |
| #2 I also find myself between the later two. The experience in Iraq will probably tip the scales one way or the other on whether the world is worth saving from itself. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-04-28 10:02:09 AM |
| #1 whoa! He's from Harvard? How'd he slip through the cracks? |
| Posted by: B 2004-04-28 8:54:15 AM |