Not a debate as such, but as it references a debate, I think this probably belongs here vs other forums. Mods move if you must.
I’m not a big Paul Wolfowitz fan by any stretch as I think he is one of the primary architects of the Iraq debacle, but this series in Foreign Policy Magazine is interesting because he gets to argue against the Obama Administration’s “realism” stance in foreign policy and (this is the best part) 4 commentators get a crack at commenting on his article.
Interesting that Wolfowitz tries to frame the debate by attempting to put aside Iraq to ostensibly argue the merits of an idealistic foreign policy approach. Sounds like maybe he’s not too sure whether it was a success or whether it was worth the cost. Regardless, you can’t ignore it as a possible consequence of an energetic, idealistic foreign policy. Even with all the “softer” strategies you could employ (such as Reagan publicly denouncing the Soviets as the “evil empire” while continuing diplomacy with them), when you find yourself in the situation the United States found itself in 2002 (lots of wealth burning a hole in our pockets and a desire to boldly kick some ass and make some changes in the Middle East), the danger that our leaders are going to haphazardly drag us into a major commitment such as Iraq is increased.
It’s one thing to actively stand up for your national interests and to persuade and cajole those other nations who don’t meet your standards, but there’s always the danger that the people in charge will lack patience and overestimate our ability to make significant changes in foreign regimes (it’s the difference between deftly and diplomatically supporting the democratic movement in Iran and letting the situation progress organically, and thinking “I bet our military can be in and out within a year, let’s go for it.”).
I try to read it, but every few sentences I am overcome with wonder, a kind of awestruck dyslexia, the sheer galactic neutron density weapons grade chutzpah of this guy, to present himself as a foreign policy thinker who has opinions worth knowing about.
Its dazzling, stunning, I reel away. After a few moments, I can gather my errant wits and press on, for a few more sentences and then it hits me again…
This is Paul Fucking Wolfowitz!!
It is pretty astounding isn’t it? The scariest part is that you have a man who, at a casual glance is very intelligent, erudite, who knows 5 languages, and yet when it comes to common sense judgements of the utility of engaging an enemy, the reaction of a sovereign people to an invasion, and the resources necessary to undertake a war and occupation is an incompetent failure, and yet this man was handed amazing levels of influence and authority within the world’s most powerful nation.
Even after the fact, with all eyes on him at the World Bank, he lacked the common sense to behave himself re his mistress/girlfriend’s pay and finally got booted there.
You guys can’t talk about the chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council like that!
I can understand why you feel that way Mr Wolfowitz, but the families of the several hundred thousand dead might not be quite so willing to brush it so readily under the carpet.
There are even those who, crazy as it sounds, believe that debacle impinges on your personal credibility.
I have always thought that the neo-con support for democracy is basically a sham; a convenient talking point to retroactively justify a war that went deeply wrong. Before the war there was little talk of democracy and the initial neo-con plan appears to have been to promote their crony Chalabi as a leader of Iraq. Sistani insisted on an election and after the failure to find WMD democracy-promotion became a convenient pretext to shore up the rapidly declining popularity of the war in the US.
Also, one of the best ways for the US to promote democracy and human rights is to set a good example itself but this is not something the neo-cons are much interested in. You won't find them worrying about civilian casualties in Iraq or Guantanomo or waterboarding. Apparently the US can promote democracy while at the same time itself violating basic democratic norms. "Democracy" is really just a propaganda stick with which to beat hostile regimes and justify ill-considered wars.Another fundamental problem with the neo-con world view is that they ostensibly want to promote democracy but at the same time they ignore the public opinion which would be empowered by that democracy. For example in the Middle East if the US were serious about promoting democracy it would address Arab public opinion on the Palestinian issue and take reasonable measures to stop settlements, restrain Israeli military actions and the horrendous casualties they cause and take serious steps towards a two-state solution. Of course the neo-cons aren’t interested in any of that. It is the Democrats who put at least some effort in that direction. For example Clinton made a serious push towards a Palestinian state though he didn’t do nearly enough on settlements. Obama has made some limited effort towards curbing settlements though it remains to be seen how much will actually happen.
Wolfowitz is basically saying forget what happened in Iraq, bombing and invading other countries is a surefire way to make them love us and start running their country exactly like America. This is one of the main guys responsible for spending hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of American lives and tens of thousands seriously wounded in order to hand over control of the world’s second-largest oil reserve to the Iranians, a country these dipsticks subsequently claimed were our number one problem in the region, the central banker of terrorism etc.
And the thing is Obama is just continuing that in Afghanistan. There’s not a hope in hell of bombing-them-till-they-love-us working there either. All we’re doing is creating vast amounts of anti-US anger, radicalism etc. which will undoubtedly come back to bite us in the ass in the future.
And when there is an outbreak of democracy in the region we ignore it, we only pay lip service to the actual promote-democracy policy to get the rubes onside for military action. The Palestinians democratically elected a government we don’t like and we respond by allowing Israel to turn Gaza into a giant concentration camp while undermining the democratic will of the Palestinians by recognising and propping up the corrupt regime they were trying to get rid of. Egypt makes a brave stand at the ballot box against Mubarak and we ignore the party they voted almost 100% for in the contituencies it was allowed to stand in and continue to prop up the dictatorship.
People like Wolfowitz, Kristol etc. can’t really believe this crap. They’re just there to put an intellectual facade up (as pathetic as it is) over our real policy, which is to militarily dominate the regions of the world that hold all the oil and gas or that have to have oil and gas pipelines built through them.
He shouldn’t be writing articles in Foreign Policy, he should be wearing headphones :
:dubious: Hello?! Yeltsin?! The man who was midwife at the birth of democracy in Russia, and then strangled it in the cradle?!
Y’know, there was a time when political cartoons appeared only in newspapers, and serious applicants either had to be able to draw or had to present some insight or wit that transcended the artwork. Nowadays, any idiot with GIMP can transmute a mundane observation into a visual harpoon by butchering a classic photograph, and some … person will hunt it down and “publish” it here, that we and discourse may suffer.
So, you like it?
To kill Wolfowitz is of course necessary. And each Neo-Con.
It is not sufficient. To prevent another great crime like the Iraq attack it is necessary to find the aspiration and object of the neo-cons affection. Then liquidate it utterly, so they are forever defeated.
OK Mr. Discourse, do you want to take issue with anything I actually wrote or are you just going to clutch your pearls about the terrible photograph I posted? I’m more than happy to debate the substance of the thread with you. Discourse away.
Yes, about a million people I missed. And four million living in refugee camps or exiled.