Those on the Left felt that American democracy and global capitalism did not necessarily offer the rest of the world a much better alternative than either Soviet-sponsored Communism or third-world thuggery. Instead, in this view, American realism favored order, but not spreading liberty or social justice abroad and only managed to promote overseas more of the unfairness and racism that we supposedly suffered from at home.
Everything from Vietnam to Nicaragua was seen through this reductionist prism, assuming a haughty United States at odds with indigenous reformers the world over. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the capitalist juggernauts China and India, the globalization of the world economy, radical social and economic changes here at home, and the spread of Islamic fascism, none of those old views makes sense anymore.
Growing up in the `70s and coming to political awareness during the `80s, I was acutely aware of this political position since I was on the Left. I felt our actions in Central America bordered on criminal. Hell, I thought of them as War Crimes. The United State's track record in our own hemisphere has been questionable at best. Everything from Guatemala in the 1950s (leading to 36 years of bloodshed) to Chile in the 1970s. I won't even bring up Panama's creation with Theodore Roosvelt's vision of a canal.
Being in California and attending college during the early 1980's, I was very aware of our actions in ALL of Central America. I thought Reagan was the anti-Christ!!! It was so bad I took Russian in high school in anticipation of the inevitable.
So, I understand what VDH is saying and I agree with him 100%!!! The Old Democratic View is archaic and must be revised. After all what have the entrenched Old Left accomplished in this New World?
President Bush was criticized by many Democrats on both practical and political grounds for ostracizing Yasser Arafat, the past beneficiary of a rigged vote. Yet most are silent now about the news that local elections are now taking place for the first time in nearly a decade. Why voting all of a sudden now? Was the president right in seeing the removal of this so-called national liberationist as a key to democratic change on the West Bank?
Where is the Left? Are they still backing the UN, who are anti-Semitic and whose Under-Sec Brahimi recently attacked Israel, again? They remind me of little Pomeranians, big bark and a bigger id.
All this reminds me of Norman Podhoretz's article I thought I blogged about last fall but can't seem to find it... It's a rather lengthy article, but man is it good.
John Maynard Keynes once said that "Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." Keynes was referring specifically to businessmen. But practical functionaries like bureaucrats and administrators are subject to the same rule, though they tend to be the slaves not of economists but of historians and sociologists and philosophers and novelists who are very much alive even when their ideas have, or should have, become defunct. Nor is it necessary for the "practical men" to have studied the works in question, or even ever to have heard of their authors. All they need do is read the New York Times, or switch on their television sets, or go to the movies and, drip by drip, a more easily assimilable form of the original material is absorbed into their heads and their nervous systems.
Wow, that pretty much says what's going on with our pseudo intellectuals. It's 'let's see what the NY Times says' before they use their own gray matter.
Where was the "petro-imperialism", we hear as a mantra from the Old Left, when freed the Kosovars and Afghans asks VDH:
Consider further: The United States runs staggering trade deficits with most of the world. Its dollar is at an all-time low. Its postwar international protocols from the World Trade Organization to the United Nations either favor the non-West or look unkindly toward the United States. The American military, at great risk and cost, alone in the world saved Kosovars, Afghans, and Iraqis from tyranny. For all the Vietnam-era rhetoric about American meddling, the elected Karzai and the provisional Allawi are a far cry from the Shah, Pinochet, or Somoza. We are doing things in the Middle East that make no sense in terms of traditional economic or political advantage and yet still bring out 1960s-era stegosauruses alleging imperialism and hegemony.
VDH sums it up with some suggestions:
1. Remember that multilateral inaction whether in the Balkans, Rwanda, or Darfur - is often calculated, selfish, and far more lethal to millions than risky interventions like removing the Taliban and Saddam.
2. Quit idolizing Europe. It was a far larger arms merchant to Saddam than was the United States; it supplied most of Dr. Khans nuclear laboratory; it financed much of the Oil-for-Food scandal; and it helped to create and tolerate the Balkans genocide. It has never freed any country or intervened to remove fascism and leave behind democracy silly American notions that are to be caricatured except when it is a matter of saving Europeans.
3. Stop seeing an all-powerful United States behind every global problem. China is on the move and far more likely to disrupt environmental protocols, cheat on trade accords, and bully neighbors. The newly expanded Europe has a larger population and aggregate economy, stronger currency, and far less in trade and budget debts than does the United States and is already using that economic clout for its own interests, not global freedom from dictators and autocrats.
4. Don't believe much of what the U.N. says anymore. Its secretary general is guilty of either malfeasance or incompetence, its soldiers are often hired thugs who terrorize those they are supposed to protect, and its resolutions are likely to be anti-democratic and anti-Semitic. Its members include dozens of nations whose odious representatives we would not let walk inside the doors of the U.S. Congress. The old idea of a United Nations was inspiring, the current reality chilling.
5. Stop seeing socialists and anti-Americans as Democrats. When a Michael Moore compares beheaders to our own Minutemen and laments that too many Democrats were in the World Trade Center, he deserves no platform alongside Wesley Clark or a seat next to Jimmy Carter or praise for his pseudo-dramas from high Democrats. Firebrands like Al Sharpton and Michael Moore are the current leftist equivalents of 1950s right-wing extremists like the John Birchers. They should suffer the same fate of ostracism, not bemused and tacit approval.
6. Ignore most grim international reports that show the United States as stingy, greedy, or uncaring based on some esoteric formula that makes a Sweden or Denmark out as the world's savior. Such "studies" always ignore aggregate dollars and look at per capita public giving, and yet somehow ignore things like over $100 billion to Afghanistan and Iraq or $15 billion pledged to fight AIDS in Africa. These academic white papers likewise forget private donations, because most of the American billionaires who give to global causes of various sorts do so as either individuals or through foundations. No mention is made of the hundred of millions that are handled by American Christian charities. And the idea of a stingy America never mentions about $200 billion of the Pentagon's budget, which does things like keeping the Persian Gulf open to world commerce; protecting Europe; ensuring that the Aegean is free of shooting and that the waters between China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are relatively tranquil; and stopping nasty folk like the Taliban and Saddam from blowing up more Buddha monuments, desecrating Babylon, or ruining the ecology of the Tigris-Euphrates wetlands.
Wasn't it Churchill who said democracy was the worst form of government, but better than all the rest? That goes for capitalism as well. Sure you're going to find sleeze balls taking advantage of others, but where is most of the money coming from to help those in South Asia? From those of us who are free. We can only hope the entrenched Liberal Democrats can evolve into a viable party to off set the dinosaurs in the Republican party. After all, dinosaurs are every where!!!
