Objectivist Factions in World War IV

Norman Podhoretz, who describes the "War on Terror" more accurately as "World War IV," has now written a companion piece titled, "The War Against World War IV." I would encourage anyone who favors engaging the enemy in this war, and especially fellow Objectivists, to read this (and, if you haven't, to read his earlier analysis). Both pieces describe important aspects of Bush's "forward strategy of freedom" and the second details several schools of thought on foreign policy that are shaping the current debate on the challenge forced upon us by Islamofascism.

To Objectivists in particular, the latter piece may be of interest as it specifically addresses objections to the current prosecution of the war from those who might want it fought more ruthlessly. I personally fall between supporting the forward strategy and wanting more ruthlessness, but will quickly admit that I am not privy to everything our President is. My concerns stem partly from the fact that Bush has been inconsistent in some respects. He has apologized too much for such sad realities of war as civilian casualties, has made unnecessary concessions to multiculturalism (If Moslems are offended by what we call our military operations, perhaps they should quit making it necessary for us to engage them militarily. Hmmm?), and has allowed our troops to be too constrained by some pretty absurd rules of engagement.

Also, there are many other instances in which I fear that -- but don't really know whether -- Bush has been inconsistent. I am ignorant of either some of the facts about our geopolitical and military circumstances or of Bush's strategy, and so can only watch anxiously. Here are just a few examples. (1) Why did Bush make such a big deal out of WMD on his invasion of Iraq? Why not forthrightly proclaim that this was part of the forward strategy of freedom? Was this a symptom of moral cowardice? Or was this a way to lull the enemy into thinking we were not planning long-range? (2) Why did we not simply tack Bathist Syria on to our war against Iraq or let Israel take them out? Was Bush hoping Syria would cave as Libya apparently has? Or did this reflect a concern that an unmanageable chaos could result in the region, causing Bush to place Syria onto the backburner? (3) Why haven't we already destroyed Iran's capability to make nuclear weaponry? Is Bush so brain-dead that he thinks diplomatic efforts are worth even so much as a hill of beans? Or is he buying time or hoping to catch the theocracy off-guard? I don't know, but for all the naysayers and doubters (of which I was one) that democracy could take root at all in the Moslem world, Afghanistan has been a notable success. As Charles Krauthammer puts it:

Within 100 days, al Qaeda is routed and the Taliban overthrown. Then the first election in Afghanistan's history. Now the inauguration of a deeply respected democrat who, upon being sworn in as the legitimate president of his country, thanks America for its liberation.

This in Afghanistan, which only three years ago was not just hostile but untouchable.

I am still concerned that the tenets of Islam provide poor soil for democracy, but then there is the fact that those who live under the boot of tyranny learn to detest it the most. Our civilization successfully emerged from its dark ages, and not all at once. Change has to start from somewhere.

So why do I think this piece is of particular interest to Objectivists? Contrary to various knee-jerk characterizations of the Objectivist movement as some sort of church marching in lock-step to the dictates of Leonard Peikoff (or anyone else), there was vigorous disagreement about whom to support for president in 2004. Lest I be seen as some sort of Libertarian apologist or David Kelly shill, let me put it this way. There can be total agreement on fundamental principles, but disagreement on factual matters. This is what we saw in the weeks leading to the presidential election. I think this pair of articles can offer additional facts and analysis to anyone considering the complicated question of how to defend our country in this time of war.

The two Objectivist factions resembled two schools of foreign policy cited by Podhoretz: those who favored the forward strategy of freedom as it was (often poorly and inconsistently) articulated by Bush on the one hand and what Podhoretz calls "superhawks" on the other. I would have to say that Podhoretz puts it best when he says the following.

Of all the attacks on the Bush Doctrine, this set of arguments is the only one that resonates with me, at least on the issue of how to wage war [emphasis added]. I have no objection in principle to the ruthlessness the superhawks advocate, and I agree that it would likely be very effective. The trouble is that the more closely I look at their position, the more clearly does it emerge as fatally infected by the disease of utopianism—the very disease that usually fills critics of this stripe with revulsion and fear.

When these critics prescribe all-out war—total mobilization at home, total ruthlessness on the battlefield—they posit a world that does not exist, at least not in America or in any other democratic country. To the extent that they bother taking account of the America that actually does exist, it is only its imperfections and deficiencies they notice; and these, along with the constraints imposed by the character of the nation on its elected leaders, they wave off with derisive language [emphasis added], as when Codevilla refers sarcastically to "the lowest common denominator among domestic American political forces."

Yet while Codevilla, writing in his study, is free to advise ruthless suppression of these limiting conditions, no one sitting in the Oval Office can possibly do so. And even so, the wonder is not, contrary to Mark Helprin, how "irresolute" and "inept" Bush has been but how far he has managed to go and how much he has already accomplished while working within those constraints and around those imperfections.

Podhoretz has a valid point here. Here is how I'd put it: "Would an Objectivist be able to get elected President today?" Probably not. Had Bush, say, preemptively nuked Iran, would he have been reelected? I doubt it. Though nuking Iran's nuclear facilities would within our rights as a free society and might be perfectly rational, especially if conventional weapons could not do the job, I wonder how such an action would have been judged by the American electorate as it is today.

The short list of ways to emasculate our Islamofascist enemy after the September 2001 atrocities would include (1) obliterating as many capitals, large cities, and military installations in hostile Islamic countries as deemed militarily necessary, or necessary to serve as an example of what any survivors could expect if they continued to tolerate Islamofascism in their midst; (2) military takeover of any important facilities, such as oil fields (and in the latter case auctioning them off to American companies whenever impossible to show ownership prior to their nationalization by these states); (3) total blockade (If they don't need "infidels", they don't need their wheat, either, do they?); (5) prohibition of travel into America by anyone from a hostile Moslem nation; and (6) deportation of anyone from such a nation. The proper way to deal with the suicide cult of Islamofascism is to give its followers what they would get without us in the world to shield them from their own irrationality: death. The infidel Atlas should shrug.

Sadly, as Leonard Peikoff points out in "End States Who Sponsor Terrorism":

Fifty years of increasing American appeasement in the Mideast have led to fifty years of increasing contempt in the Muslim world for the U.S. The climax was September 11, 2001.

Fifty years ago, Truman and Eisenhower surrendered the West's property rights in oil, although that oil rightfully belonged to those in the West whose science, technology, and capital made its discovery and use possible....

After property came liberty. "The Muslim fundamentalist movement," writes Yale historian Lamin Sanneh, "began in 1979 with the Iranian [theocratic] revolution . . ." (NYT, 9/23/01). During his first year as its leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, urging a Jihad against "the Great Satan," kidnapped 52 U.S. diplomatic personnel and held them hostage; Carter's reaction was fumbling paralysis. ...

After liberty came American life itself. The first killers were the Palestinian hijackers of the late 1960s. But the killing spree which has now shattered our soaring landmarks, our daily routine, and our souls, began in earnest only after the license granted by Carter and Bush Sr.

Our nation woke up after September 11, 2001, but we seem to be a bit groggy still. For one thing, were's the anger? Sometimes, I think I'm the only person in this country who remains extremely upset by what happened on that terrible day. For another, I outlined above what I regard as the most proper and effective response to Islamofascism. But if we had a nation and a leader who would follow such a plan, would we have gotten ourselves into today's predicament in the first place? Would we have sat on our hands for fifty years while savages gradually chipped away at us? No. Our nation is still in a moral haze about the terrorist attacks. And that is why I favor the "forward strategy of freedom," though I will always urge Bush to act more boldly and argue for the more proper response. Our cultural and political milieu will, in the near term, not permit a more vigorous prosecution of this war. As Rumsfeld might put it: fight with the (mostly Christian) army you've got. I once heard that the Romans would chase down and kill any foreigner who would so much as harm a hair of a Roman citizen. We should be doing that sort of thing, but we aren't, and won't for awhile. How do we survive to fight another day, if we are in this predicament?

In practice, this means holding Bush to the plan Podhoretz describes, while advocating better philosophical ideas and while advocating more aggressive action against the Islamofascists. This is the tack urged by Robert Tracinski in his essay, "Anti-Bushites for Bush."

Readers of TIA know my frustrations with George W. Bush, from his diplomatic efforts to save Yasser Arafat in the Spring of 2002, through his elaborate year-long charade of seeking UN resolutions to justify the invasion of Iraq, to the most disheartening events of all: his endorsement of disastrous deals that let insurgent leaders off the hook in Fallujah and Najaf. If Bush faced a pro-war opponent, someone who promised to fight the war more vigorously, ..., then I would gladly vote for that opponent, [emphasis added] no matter what his party.

The Democratic Party was unable to produce such a candidate. They were unable to do it, because the moral base of the party still lies in the anti-American New Left, which took over the party in 1972. The New Left believes that America--as the armed defender of capitalism--is a force for evil in the world that must be restrained. The New Left's grip on the Democratic Party was tested in this year's primaries, and it could not be broken.

He goes on to add:

So why would Bush be better than Kerry?

He is better because of the "forward strategy of freedom."

The "forward strategy of freedom" is the name Bush has given to his grand strategy--the administration's highest-level plan of action--in the War on Terrorism. It is a grand strategy that necessarily puts America on the offensive, committing us to spreading representative government and free institutions to overhaul the political system of the Middle East.

September 11 demonstrated that it is necessary to topple and destroy the Middle Eastern regimes that use terrorism as a weapon against the West--the principle behind the Bush Doctrine. The administration has applied that doctrine to two regimes, and they deserve credit for it. But even that is not enough, over the long term. Even if our leaders applied the Bush doctrine consistently (against Iran and Syria, for example) and backed it up with the maximum force available, that would still leave the question: then what? What would prevent the re-emergence of new terrorist regimes to replace the old ones?

The only long-term answer is that the Arab and Muslim worlds must be civilized [emphasis added]. They must have imposed on them a better system of government, one that allows, for the first time in the Arab world, the material vibrancy of a relatively free economy and the spiritual vibrancy of the free exchange of ideas. This would do exactly what the clashing examples of East Berlin and West Berlin did in the Cold War: it would provide an unanswerable demonstration of the benefits of a free society on one side, contrasted to misery and oppression on the other side

I do not know whether Tracinski would agree with me on how I personally would wage the war against the Islamofascists. However, according to Islam, an infidel (That means you, gentle reader!) must be either killed, converted, or made to live in dhimmitude, that is, as a second-class citizen under Islamic law. Either we have to kill or imprison practicioners of this faith, or they have to abandon this doctrine. This latter alternative is part of what Tracinski means when he says that the Islamic world must be civilized. Given the fact that neither our leaders nor our nation would support the kind of campaign I described above, the process of civilizing the Islamic world is the only viable alternative. At least, if we take Afghanistan as an example, it seems to be working.

But what of the Objectivists who supported Kerry? Paul Blair is one of their leading spokesmen. Here's the essence of his take on the election.

To start with, I reject Bush's "forward strategy of freedom." War means deciding that a threat is such that one no longer gives a damn about the enemy or its civilians; it means unleashing as much destruction as necessary so that an enemy pose no threat whatever. If one is unwilling to wreak such destruction, one has no business fighting a war.

A real defense against terrorism would have involved raining massive destruction on the prime state sponsor of terror--Iran--then announcing: "Another peep out of you, or anyone else, and we'll do it again," leaving the enemy to deal with the wreckage it had brought on itself. Forget nation-building and "spreading liberty." Freedom is a value, and like any other value it must be earned by those who benefit from it. Even had Iraq been the primary terrorist threat, liberating it has just meant granting that country an unearned benefit; it's just one more altruistic welfare program.

He goes on to elaborate further.

Bush's altruism is precisely what makes it impossible for him to take any further military action, and leaves us instead waging diplomacy against Iran and North Korea. In fact, because we need China's help against North Korea, we are now gradually abandoning Taiwan, as evidenced by Colin Powell's blunder last week. So much for supporting freedom across the globe.

This is indeed the main danger with Bush in charge: that he is not, as Podhoretz asserts, fully behind the forward strategy, but is in fact severely crippled by altruism. Craig Biddle, another Kerry-voting Objectivist, adds the following:

Here, in essence, is what Bush has done. By packaging a permission-seeking, capitulating, restrained, dovish foreign policy with lip service to an independent, firm, do-what-needs-to-be-done, hawkish one—he has removed the concept of the latter from the foreign policy debate. Kerry, unwittingly, would put it back on the table; this is why I will vote for him.

But has he? I don't think so. The question in this election was, as Tracinski put it elsewhere, "Will we fight at all?" This is because Kerry was seen correctly as an anti-war candidate. The American people chose to fight. If, indeed, as Blair put it, there is "little to favor Bush over Kerry in foreign policy," the only thing that could have been said in favor of electing Kerry would be what Biddle said.

With Bush in the White House, the debate is between his half-battle, with which the Right is content—and something less, which is what the Left would prefer. With Kerry in the White House, the debate would be between his half-battle, which is the least that America would let him get away with—and something more, which is what the Right would demand no matter what Kerry were to do. ... [R]egardless of what Kerry were to do—even if he somehow were to get away with doing less than Bush has done or nothing at all—at least his actions or non-actions would not be called hawkish.

This argument simplistically ignores quite a bit. What of criticism, like that already cited above, that has been leveled at Bush for not being hawkish enough? And just imagine a President Kerry, forced to actually wage a battle, and then saying, "I told you so!" when his flaccid leadership results in a defeat! Blair and Biddle seem to want a perfect candidate to emerge, even if they might be murdered by Islamofascists while waiting for one. While the Islamic world needs to make some radical changes, so must the West. We may have to fight with the army we have for awhile, while trying to improve it in the meantime.

Podhoretz's analysis examines the various arguments that have been proffered as to why Bush might back down from the grand strategy he has put forward to deal with Islamofascism, and examines each of these in turn. In some cases, he shows that the arguments (like those put forth by the likes of Pat Buchanan or Noam Chomsky) are based more on the hope that Bush will retreat. In other cases, he examines valid reasons for fearing that Bush will back down and addresses these concerns by checking them against Bush's past behavior. He concludes that Bush will not back down.

Except for an occasional twinge brought on by paying too much attention to the antiwar forces, and to certain aspects of our culture, both low and high, I did not share these doubts and fears before the verdict of November 2, and they have been quite banished by what I am persuaded the American people were saying when they voted to keep George W. Bush in the White House for another four years.

Which is why I think (to say it one last time) that the amazing leader this President has amazingly turned out to be will—like the comparably amazing Harry Truman before him when he took on the Communist world—have the wind at his back as he continues the struggle against Islamist radicalism and its vicious terrorist armory: a struggle whose objective is the spread of liberty and whose success will bring greater security and greater prosperity not only to the people of this country, and not only to the people of the greater Middle East, but also to the people of Europe and beyond, in spite of the sorry fact that so many of them do not wish to know it yet.

I hope he is right. For the reasons I have stated earlier, I am afraid that our nation as it is today would not elect a leader who would conduct the kind of ruthless war that is the only alternative to the civilizing process known as the forward strategy of freedom. While further adverse events might make a more forceful approach palatable to our public, our current political system and cultural milieu might still militate against such a candidate winning the election. This is why Podhoretz regards the "super-hawk" position as unfeasible in today's foreign policy debate. And I think that the Kerry faction of Objectivists made the same error as they. To reiterate Podhoretz, "To the extent that they bother taking account of the America that actually does exist, it is only its imperfections and deficiencies they notice; and these, along with the constraints imposed by the character of the nation on its elected leaders, they wave off with derisive language."

I disagree with this faction. We will have to make do with the army we've got now and fight to improve it in the meantime. If Podhoretz is right about Bush, we may have lucked out this time in that we got the best leader our culture can currently produce. This, I hope, will buy us time. Regardless, we all need to keep fighting the good fight -- in the war of ideas.

-- CAV

P.S. 1-19-05: One thing Tracinski points out that I could have elaborated upon more is his question of what we'd do next after fighting the war. This is another point in favor of a more aggressive version of a forward strategy, though I suspect that in a better world, it would lead to colonialism. (And so long as the colonial power imposed a government that respected individual rights, I see no problem with this.)

Updates

1-17-05: Fixed spacing between paragraphs. Fixed one typo. Added a link to a later post.
1-19-05: (1) Removed facetious term "Pope" from post. (See comments below.) (2) Corrected "Tim Blair to read "Paul Blair". (3) Added postscript.