"Last
time, this nation entered a war to make the world safe
for democracy and establish permanent peace; it was betrayed
in the event because its aims were not embodied in the
peace settlement. Do we now risk such a betrayal again?"
Looking back to World War I, this journal asked that question
on August 25, 1941, in an editorial called "For a
Declaration of War." And that is the question again
today.
Today's
war debate also occurs against the backdrop of a past
betrayal. The first Bush administration rallied the country
behind war in the Gulf with impassioned denunciations
of Saddam Hussein's cruelty. And that moralistic language
helped win over the small contingent of hawkish liberals--people
like Al Gore, Joseph Lieberman, Bob Graham, and the editors
of this magazine--who gave the war its bipartisan veneer.
But, when the Shia and Kurds rose up against Saddam, in
the naive belief that the United States cared more about
their freedom than Riyadh's displeasure, Saddam slaughtered
them as America's nearby army watched.
In
the ensuing decade, however, several factors have conspired
to dim the memory of that betrayal. First, while the Gulf
war should have induced cynicism about the use of American
power for liberal ends, it fostered optimism about American
power itself. It showed just how awesome America's post-cold-war
military really was. And that new awareness of the effectiveness
of U.S. military actions created a new Democratic awareness
of the political risks of opposing them.
Second,
the Gulf war was followed by a succession of wars that
were undeniably liberal in spirit. Bosnia, Haiti, and
Kosovo conditioned liberals to see altruistic intervention
as the post-cold-war U.S. norm. Led by an anti-Vietnam
president and scorned by conservative realists as "social
work," these were our wars. Even Afghanistan, although
fought in self-defense, ended one of the most sinister
regimes in modern memory.
For
many liberals, none of this justifies war with Iraq. Suspicion
about George W. Bush's motives, combined with vehement
international opposition and the lack of an imminent threat,
has produced nervous opposition on much of the moderate
left. That opposition is hardly surprising--it is the
logical product of American liberalism's post-Vietnam
inclinations. What is surprising is the willingness of
so many liberals to turn against that tradition; the fraternity
of liberal hawks is far greater today than during the
Gulf war. The '90s created a historic opening in the liberal
psyche. And the Bush administration has exploited it.
Its suggestion that war might not only free the people
of Iraq but also set off a democratic chain reaction throughout
the Middle East is tailor-made to appeal to liberals newly
hopeful about American power. The national security argument
for this war may be based on pessimism about the inevitable
spread of weapons of mass destruction, but the political
argument is based on post-1989 optimism about America's
ability to bring liberal government to every corner of
the globe.
It
is just this kind of liberal optimism that historically
precedes liberal betrayal. Liberals support this war because
they hope it will bring certain political results, but
they have limited influence over whether it will be prosecuted
with those results in mind. The Bush administration at
times frames the war in liberal terms, but, then, it frames
its education and budgetary policies in liberal terms
too. And its record on democratic postwar reconstruction
is not encouraging.
In
Afghanistan, the Pentagon's dogged resistance to a nationwide
peacekeeping force has condemned large swaths of the country
to warlordism. In Iraq, the Bush team says it is committed
to turning post-Saddam Iraq into a model for the Arab
world. But its new budget allocates not one cent for the
effort. The justification, as Undersecretary of Defense
for Policy Douglas Feith recently testified, is that the
cost of post-Saddam nation-building is "unknowable."
(Someone forgot to tell the United Nations and the Congressional
Budget Office, which have both recently published estimates.)
The truth is that making Iraq a template for Arab liberalism
will be expensive and protracted. And the Bush administration
won't say so for fear of undermining public support for
the war.
Indeed,
the best-case scenario is that the Bush team is misleading
the American people about the intensive political effort
they have in mind once Saddam is gone. The worst-case
scenario is that no such effort is even planned and that,
in the name of stability, Riyadh and Foggy Bottom will
settle on an Iraqi Pervez Musharaf. It is not a good sign,
as Janine Zacharia recently reported in these pages (see
"Exiled," February 17), that the closer we get
to war, the more despondent the genuine Iraqi democrats
sound.
The
unhappy truth is that, if the Bush administration wins
the war but betrays the peace, the political consequences
for the president will be small. Once the fighting is
over, the American press will turn its attention elsewhere,
just as it has in post-Taliban Afghanistan. But the consequences
for hawkish liberalism will be great. Having been played
for fools, most liberal hawks will retreat to a deep skepticism
of American power. They will end up on the decent, feckless
left--in the company of those who sincerely condemn men
such as Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam but have no strategy
for toppling them except empty exhortations to people
power. And that soft isolationism will likely retake the
Democratic Party. On the right, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick
Cheney won't lose sleep if Chevron and Crown Prince Abdullah
run things in post-Saddam Baghdad rather than Kanan Makiya.
Paul Wolfowitz will either shut up or resign.
Many
people would consider this ideological reshuffling an
improvement. At home, liberals could reclaim the language
of human rights for themselves, secure in the knowledge
that it, and they, would no longer be sullied by an association
with the 82nd Airborne. The collapse of hawkish liberalism
might actually diminish anti-Americanism abroad since,
absent their liberal allies, Rumsfeld and Cheney would
be less likely to drape their actions in the moralistic
talk Europeans find so grating. After all, no one protests
Russia's intervention in Chechnya on the streets of Paris
and Rome.
But,
when the next Bosnia did come along, its leaders wouldn't
find America's new separation between liberalism and power
nearly so refreshing; between the realist left and the
McGovernite left, they would have nowhere to turn. The
truth is that liberalism has to try to harness American
military power for its purposes because American tanks
and bombs are often the only things that bring evil to
heel. Opposing this war might have helped liberals retain
their purity, but it would have done nothing for the people
suffering under Saddam. If liberals are betrayed a second
time in the Gulf, hawkish liberalism may well go into
temporary eclipse. But one day we, and they, will need
it again.
