The Weekly Standard Trots Out Some Familiar, False Ideas About Terrorism
By Jesse Singal - Sep 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pmJamie Kirchick’s piece in the current issue of The Weekly Standard is worth responding to, as it perfectly encapsulates much of what’s flawed about the mainline conservative movement’s recent approach to foreign policy. In short, Kirchick echoes some fundamental misunderstandings about terrorism and its root causes–namely, that terrorism is never a reaction to the United States’ foreign policy, but is instead the result of thoroughly irrational, implacable anti-Americanism.
Kirchick’s main goal in the piece is to take a recent Bill Clinton quote–”People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power”–and to both debunk it and show that Clinton himself didn’t really adhere to it during his presidency. But along the way, Kirchick thoroughly mishandles the question of why America is so disliked in much of the world.
The muddling begins right after he introduces the Clinton quote:
This sort of thing–harking back to a lost era when people the world over respected America because we weren’t so mean/imperialist/greedy–is red meat for Democrats. It presumes that, rather than America’s unique position in the world being the prime instigator of anger, it’s instead a discrete set of policies enacted by George W. Bush which have sucked “the power” from “our example.” And from this follows the usual litany of alleged administration misdeeds: the withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, the invasion of Iraq–without sufficiently “consulting of our allies”–Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition, etc. [emphasis mine]
Kirchick seems to be arguing that it is America’s “unique position in the world” which is responsible for much of the world’s resentment of us. This is more or less the same argument that Bush put forth after 9/11, and which many conservatives have since picked up: Our enemies “hate us for our freedom” and are obsessed with us not because of our policies, but because of some unappeasable combination of blind, seething rage and jealousy directed toward the United States, its culture, and its system of democracy. Thus, there’s no real choice but to destroy them as we seek to protect the civilized, rational world at all costs.
Progressives, on the other hand, think that our standing in the world can have an impact on the quantity and attitude of our enemies, and that it’s therefore worth seeking out ways to improve it, even as we work to protect ourselves against future attacks. This is one of the key distinctions between the mainline conservative and progressive takes on foreign policy.
The conservative view is appealing for a couple of reasons. First, it contains at its core a kernel of truth: We really do have some enemies who cannot be bargained with, whose hatred of the U.S. and desire to kill Americans will linger as long as they live. There’s no real way to deal with Osama bin Laden and hardened members of Al Qaeda, for example, that doesn’t eventually involve attempts to capture or kill them (though progressive and conservatives also differ on how best to accomplish these goals, of course).
Second, this view sets up the classic, good-versus-evil, eternal battle narrative that is so innately appealing, that finds its way into most cultures and to which we appear to be cognitively and evolutionarily inclined.
But it’s still wrong. Terrorism and foreign policy experts know for a fact that carving the world into Us and Them, and arguing that They are implacable and simply evil, robs the world of its complexity and ignores the fact that our “enemies” consist of a myriad number of groups with strikingly different motives and origins.
The conservative view, in other words, takes an obvious, basic truth–that there is a small group of people who want simply to kill us and take down the U.S.–and stretches it to ludicrous, unsound lengths.
Key to this philosophy is the idea that our actions don’t really matter, because “they” hate us anyway. In ticking off possible U.S. “instigator[s] of anger” Kirchick lumps in the Iraq war with the Anti-Ballistic Missile and Kyoto treaties–he puts it third in the list, actually. At first, this seems ludicrous, like summing up Christianity by saying that it’s about hunting Easter eggs, stringing up Christmas lights, and Jesus Christ’s resurrection. But in Kirchick’s worldview it’s perfectly sensible to describe these three acts as equally unimportant to our enemies’ perception of us. They hated us anyway and always will, so why should it matter whom we invaded?
Later:
None of this is to say, of course, that the United States cannot behave better either at home or abroad; we’re far from perfect. But we’re closer than most. The alleged lack of “people the world over” who are “impressed” with the United States is the result of factors far more complicated than whether we signed this or that treaty, joined the convention banning landmines, pressed for yet another toothless U.N. resolution on any given issue, or hold terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay or Fort Leavenworth. Much of the world will resent us no matter what we do, at least when venting to pollsters from the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
I’d love to see Kirchick explain why it’s “far more complicated” to say our enemies simply hate us regardless of what we do than it is to suggest that maybe our actions impact their perception of us. It seems much simpler, actually. To say that folks abroad aren’t influenced by images of American brutality is to dehumanize them, to act as though they are incapable of reasoning or having emotional reactions the way we in the civilized world are.
Perhaps most galling–and most indicative of the amount of research Kirchick put into this piece–is the last sentence of the paragraph: “Much of the world will resent us no matter what we do, at least when venting to pollsters from the Pew Global Attitude Project.”
It took me–and would take anyone with an Internet connection–less than ten seconds to debunk this claim. Simply Google “Pew Global Attitude Project” and the first hit below the Project’s site itself is a link to a 2005 article referring to a 16-nation Pew survey of global attitudes about the U.S. Even back then it was clear that U.S. actions very much have an impact on how the world views us.
Looking at the chart, it certainly appears that the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq greatly reduced America’s standing in the world, and particularly in the Muslim world. Now, if Kirchick wants to argue that both those wars were justified, that’s certainly his right, but it’s quite another thing for him blithely claim that foreigners will mouth off to the Pew Global Attitude Project about how much they hate the U.S. regardless of its actions when Pew’s own numbers loudly disagree.
Kirchick’s final paragraph nicely underlines his bluntly unnuanced view of our enemies:
Clinton’s pabulum, however, and its embrace by the Democratic base, betrays a misunderstanding of how terrorists, rogue states, and petty tyrants operate. The “power of our example” means nothing to them; they do not require imperfect American actions to justify authoritarianism, attacks on innocent civilians, or the flouting of all recognized norms of behavior. They will behave in such a fashion whether a Clinton or a Bush is in office. And more often than not it’s only the “example of our power” that will stop them.
Again: Yes, there are some people in the world who are so radical, and who have such hatred of the U.S., that we could never hope to fully understand where they’re coming from. But they seem to be recruiting followers at an alarming rate, and these followers are absolutely influenced by their perceptions of America. On March 19, 2003, there weren’t major surges of jihadist media, sentiment, and recruiting efforts around the world. Today, there are. Kirchick should take a much closer look at how the world has changed since the start of the Iraq invasion if he honestly thinks American actions have nothing to do with this.
I’m not even making any moral claims about the United States’ actions in the Middle East. All I’m saying is that it should be obvious to those with even a passing knowledge of recent history that it’s foolish to say anyone with jihadist sympathies simply hates us for no reason and always will, and that nothing could mollify said sympathizers.
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