The Truth at Last?
Michelle Goldberg has a must-read story in today’s Salon about her weekend at a conservative think-tank conference, where heavy hitters like Tom DeLay and Grover Nordquist, and right-braniacs like David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes let their hair down about the Iraq situation and where our policy is really heading. There was a lot of frank talk about the possibility of failure and the impossibility of anything resembling democracy emerging in Iraq. There was even muted criticism of the Great Leader, and principled division over emerging signs that political pressure may drive us out of the region before our work is finished.
Daniel Pipes, the Middle East expert who in any other context could be labeled an extremist, but in this crowd must be considered middle-of-the-road, was quoted giving the most sobering address. According to Goldberg:
Pipes dismissed much of what the White House has said about rationale for the war and the occupation. "However popular the uprooting of Saddam Hussein, they do not want us there," said Pipes.
Before the war, Pipes was a proponent of the democracy domino theory. In February, he published a column titled "Why Stop in Iraq: Here's a Chance to Reform the Entire Arab World." In it, he argued with those who suggested that democracy wouldn't work in Iraq, saying, "Japan had about as much affinity for democracy in 1945 as the Arabs do today, yet democracy took hold there ... A US victory in Iraq and the successful rehabilitation of that country will bring liberals out of the woodwork and generally move the region towards democracy."
Now, though, he's contemptuous of the idealistic case for war, the case that wooed some liberals to Bush's side in the first place. "We have no, no moral responsibility to the Iraqi people," he said. "Our moral responsibility is to ourselves. I very much disagree with the name 'Operation Iraqi Freedom.' It should have been 'Operation American Security.'" This met with applause.
"Our goal is not a free Iraq," Pipes continued. "Our goal is an Iraq that does not endanger us." What we need, he says, is a "democratic-minded strongman."
Some people might find the cynicism of this sentiment chilling. Frankly, I find it refreshing. Installing a “democratic-minded strongman” in Iraq is of course not what America signed up for, and it’s not worth the life of a single American soldier. The war-backers will have to answer for that sooner or later. But first we need an exit strategy that offers us the prospect of some medium-term stability, and somewhere amid Pipes’ tangle of amoral rationalization, there is at least a concept of American interest (if certainly not American values) that is recognizable.
There’s even something encouraging about the callous hypocrisy with which Pipes abandons his pre-war position. It bespeaks a certain perverse intellectual honesty, an ability to adapt a rigid ideological position to a new set of circumstances, which has been notably absent in conservative discourse since at least the dawn of the Bush era. It’s hard to admire the uses to which Pipes puts his brainpower, but in his evil and unprincipled way, Pipes still has the judgment and insight to understand that the strongman scenario is better than a civil war or a failed state, and a hell of a lot more likely than any of the improbable or suicidal democracy flim-flam that Bush is selling.
Pipes’ view – to the extent that it is shared elsewhere in the Administration – is of course too stark and brutal to be put before the American people, especially now that the President is so deeply invested in his delusional architecture of idealism and denial. But it has the virtue of being rooted in facts, not hopes, and indicates a discipline of thought that may yet be mobilized to actually solve our problem. After a year inhaling the cloying perfume of lies that has surrounded every aspect of Bush’s Iraq policy, there’s something about the earthiness of a true stench to clear the senses. One would of course hope for fresh air, but not from this crowd.
As ugly as the realpolitik may be, at least there’s an honesty to it, and a logic. There may even be the basis for a genuine bi-partisan discussion of ways to extricate ourselves from the crisis brought on by misguided idealism if both sides can look at each other at this late date and still see fellow Americans, not members of warring tribes. Having your country run by power-mad cynics is not the best-case scenario, but for some reason, I find it more comforting than the possibility that our leaders are all hopelessly insane or stupid enough to believe their own lies.
