Trying to get through 330 e-mails from the last few days (I’ve been having some trouble with Outlook) before starting my Sunday column, I ran across this one that came in on Saturday. Since I spontaneously responded, and I’m trying not to say anything to readers as individuals that I don’t share on the blog, I will now do so. Share, I mean. Here is the e-mail:
From: C Hugh Campbell
To: stateeditor@thestate.com
Cc: bwarthen@thestate.com
Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2006 10:59 AM
Subject: Letter to the EditorAfter innumerable columns proclaiming, and straining to justify, the vital importance to the U.S. of democratizing the Middle East, Thomas Friedman has finally run out of rationalizations and is forthright enough to suggest what should have been obvious from day one: "It may be the skeptics are right: Maybe democracy can’t be implemented everywhere." Because of Brad Warthen’s deep regard for Friedman I hope that he, too, will face up to this reality.
C. Hugh Campbell, Jr.
Here’s my response:
He’s right. It "may be." It also may be — and this is more likely —
that if the world’s most powerful nation says to itself "We’re gonna
fail! We’re gonna fail! We’re gonna fail!" about a million times, it
just might fail to accomplish that which it was perfectly capable of
accomplishing at the start.
Oh, and here’s what Mr. Friedman actually wrote:
It may be the skeptics are right: maybe democracy, while it is the most powerful form of legitimate government, simply can’t be implemented everywhere. It certainly is never going to work in the Arab-Muslim world if the U.S. and Britain are alone in pushing it in Iraq, if Europe dithers on the fence, if the moderate Arabs cannot come together and make a fist, and if Islamist parties are allowed to sit in governments and be treated with respect — while maintaining private armies.
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Shorter version of your response: “Clap harder!”
(h/t to ReadytoHurl)
Seriously – don’t you think your response was a tad simplistic? You said:
if the world’s most powerful nation says to itself “We’re gonna fail! We’re gonna fail! We’re gonna fail!” about a million times, it just might fail to accomplish that which it was perfectly capable of accomplishing at the start.
Have you been reading the news? Have you any idea of the extreme violence that’s occurring in Iraq on a daily basis? Now why do you suppose that is? Is it because “the world’s most powerful nation” is saying to itself “we’re gonna fail!”? Do you really think it’s that simple?
Brad, you talk about the middle-east as if it’s some sort of football game where the ultimate goal is scoring more points on the field of battle than our enemy. Your attitude is hopelessly naive. I think we should forget this whole winning thing and focus on what’s really important, the security and economic well being of the American citizens. On both scores we’re better off losing at this point. Vietnam should have taught us that lesson. We lost big time there but in the end it was the Soviet Union that collapsed not the U.S.
If we actually had competent leadership in the white house with at least a tiny smattering of diplomatic accumen, then maybe, just maybe we could salvage something positive by continuing in Iraq. But the crowd we have in Washington is completely unfit for the challenge we face. The best thing to do is bring the troops out of Iraq and try to elect a decent person in 2008 who can work a miracle and begin to slowly undo the collosal mess Bush and company have created. If clapping will help I’ll give it a try.
So… what do we do in 2008 in order to finish the job and deal with the horror that Iraq will surely become the instant we leave — re-invade?
And before you say “it’s already a horror,” you are extremely mistaken if you think it wouldn’t get several times as bad without us.
Oh — and I don’t write about ANYTHING as though it were a football game. Everything I am about is trying to drag the rest of the world — the Bush-haters and the Bush-lovers, the liberals and the conservatives, blah, blah — out of their idiotic insistence upon seeing every complex issue in front of them as simple, polar, black and white.
What we are engaged in in Iraq is an extremely complex, high-risk enterprise, but one that has always been worth undertaking, and that is true no matter who the president is. That the president is George W. Bush is our misfortune, and more to the point, Iraq’s. But there are no alternatives to his being president at this time. And abandoning Iraq would be unconscionable.
A lousy situation, but that’s what it is.
Oh, and kc: Nothing is simple. But the greatest single factor making it tough to succeed at this time is that American resolve is being constantly undermined by … Americans.
It’s impossible to lose to the insurgents. But it is possible to give up. And this country is trying very, very hard to do just that.
Brad, perhaps I was a little too harsh. You have suggested this situation is complex. On that we agree. And that’s exactly why we should leave now. The Bush administration is clueless on how to handle this. His ham-handed, bone-headed, hard-hearted approach is failing and will continue to fail. He’s just not up to the job. The spillover into Lebanon was completely predictable. The diplomacy element is lacking. Sadly, that’s the Bush style.
Yes it may get horrible in Iraq if we leave, or, it may settle down a bit. Frankly, I think our presence is making things worse. But that’s not the biggest issue here. Given the high casualty and costs we’re enduring the the American people are best served by an immediate and complete withdrawl from this costly disaster. The immediate benefits would be American lives saved and dollars that could be spent more wisely at home. And the sooner the better.
In 1995 Brazil had over 35,000 murders. Mexico has a huge number of murders annually. The sissified handwringers on the left in America would surrender to anyone or anything that attacked the USA. Thankfully they are in the minority, loud but often ignored. On and on about the 2500 dead US military they go, without ever realizing the terrorists play their song for them and with them. I guess even when the country was founded there were the weak stomached in the population. But when the colonials defeated the Brits, you can bet the weaklings who sat out the violence were out there celebrating and patting themselves on the back. Maybe even trying to find ways to claim purple hearts, applying for them, instead of being nominated. So history repeats itself again.
We lost 3000 dead on 9/11. That equates to 250 Iraqis in terms of total population. We aren’t paying the highest price, despite the loss of our fine servicemen and servicewomen; the Iraqis are. H***, I don’t know what the answer is; but you can bet those who downplay the cost don’t have the answer either.
But the greatest single factor making it tough to succeed at this time is that American resolve is being constantly undermined by … Americans
You keep saying that. I see no evidence that it is true.
I hope that someone more eloquent than me (maybe Phillip) will ultimately address your comments.
Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders. Indeed, the right has distilled its tale of betrayal into a formula: Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.
Read the whole thing here: http://www.harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html
On and on about the 2500 dead US military they go,
Well, actually, I’m grieved by the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis as well.
“American resolve is being constantly undermined by … Americans.”
Maybe because many of us don’t agree with the objective or the tactics that have been used to achieve the objective. That’s not “undermining” – it’s disagreeing – something we have a right to do.
The tactics have been wrong from day one.
Declaring victory in a staged photo op when the end of our involvement was years away.
Failing to ask Americans to make a real sacrifice to support the war. A military plan that was both understaffed and ill-equipped to fight a running battle against a band of thugs. An ongoing PR campaign (“last throes”, “dead enders”) that looks more foolish as each American soldier dies. Thinking that we could just drop democracy on Iraq and step back and watch it grow like a Chia pet. Missing the boat completely on the Sunni-Shiite hostility that we CANNOT fix.
Pointing out these flaws is not undermining the effort.
Here’s an interesting take on the “Youtube-ification” of the Iraq War
from the former Wonkette on Time.com:
Soldiers are making their own music
videos and “snuff” films and then uploading
them to Youtube and other. From reading some of the quotes, it sure sounds like “Vietnam, The Remix”. All we’re missing is the smell of napalm in the morning.
Brad – are these soldiers also undermining the effort???
The Youtube War
In case you don’t click on the link above,
here’s a telling quote:
>>> After another guardsman supplies a Bush Administration-approved justification for their presence (freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people, stability in the Middle East), the cameraman asks, “tell me how you really feel.” Deadpan, he continues: “After that happens, maybe we can buy everybody in the world a puppy.”
Brad, that outpatient brain surgery was a smashing success!
It’s NOT impossible to lose to the insurgents. It’s happening daily. You just won’t grow up and admit it.
Keep clapping. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Leaving the Iraqis to settle their own civil/religious war ISN’T unconscionable. Pointlessly sacrificing hundreds more American lives just so that Bush (and you) don’t have to admit that you were predictably, undeniably, fundamentally and stupidly WRONG to invade Iraq– now THAT’S unconscionable.
You and Dear Leader have loosed the dogs of war and now, when things go sour, you whine pathetically, “Well, what would YOU do?”
Why do you seem to think that it’s an indictment of the people who’ve opposed this massive, tragic disaster-by-choice from the beginning when we can’t wave a wand to cure the mess that you and Dear Leader have worked for years to create?
Brad,
If there’s justice in the hereafter you, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz and the rest will be sentenced to changing the bedpans of wounded soldiers.
When you become innured to that then you will be forced to experience fully the human tragedies of fatherless children, brain-damaged casualties, and alcoholic ex-soldiers.
When you’re hardened to the thousands of lives destroyed by your support of this “war of choice” then you should be forced to hold down screaming Iraqi innocents while their heads are drilled open.
Saddam was evil. He committed atrocities. You can thank Don Rumsfeld and Ronald Reagan for that. It took George W. Bush and yourself to create a blood bath and send American troops into it to be brutalized.
Sleep well.
Friedman missed the point from the beginning: you can’t spread democracy at the end of a gun barrel. Our system isn’t democratic enough to impose on anybody. We’ve got a 98% congressional incumbent re-election rate in a system that is so polluted by money and gerrymandering that we’re no longer a true democracy (representative or otherwise).
Colonialism doesn’t work and people everywhere resent us for forcing our system on them. It’s that simple.
The people who would opt to ignore Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups like Hezbollah are the same sorts who wanted to stay out of the whole Hitler/Europe thing. Then there is Israel, a people who don’t have an ocean of separation between them and the terrorists. So should the Jews also opt to withdraw while the missiles (13000) come flying in from Lebanon? I guess after all the Jews are slaughtered the terrorists will then be content to leave the good ole USA alone. After all, we have the ocean.
Dave,
We also have technological superiority, an unmatched cache of weapons, and the second largest military force (1.4 million active to China’s 2.2 million) in the world. And, remember, our military is volunteer… if we were faced with a legitimate threat, there are over 100 million Americans age 18-45 who would be available for service.
Unfortunately, our power also makes us a target. We will never be able to stop terrorism by radical groups no matter how much eavesdropping our government does.
Dave, it was Bush who ignored Hezbollah by invading Iraq. (Al Gore wouldn’t have been so stupid). And you conveniently forget that about 80% of the deaths in the current Isreal/Lebanon debacle are Lebonese civilians. So who is slaughtering who here?
The WW2 analogies really have no meaningful value, none, in analyzing the current situation in the middle-east. Vietnam, on the other hand, is amazingly similar. Better yet, the Soviet Union’s quagmire in Afghanistan during the 80s’
kc, that’s the tragedy. You see no evidence that it is true.
I guess fish don’t really see water, either.
Brad, define success in the middle-east. You keep ranting about success, paint me a picture of where we should be in 10 years.
I guess fish don’t really see water, either
Gee. You’re really doing a good job of persuading me by laying out the evidence.
Doug, you are right. We will always be the target that the terrorists want. So, let’s keep this very simple and kill them first. Problem solved.
Bud, the terrorists are using the Lebanese civilians as human shields. If the Lebanese people were not disarmed, each family could kill one Hezbollah and this would be over. They need a second amendment like us. Too bad for them but the deaths are on the shoulders of those hiding in civilian places.
Interestingly, back in February, 2005 I submitted an op.ed. essay to The State for publication that was not published on Mr. Warthen’s editorial pages. It essentially agreed with Mr. Friedman’s conclusion about democratic elections in the region:http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0205-21.htm
Tom, The State does need to ration how many anti-American guest editorials they can publish, that explains it.
Dave, anytime the right is exposed to the light of truth they retreat into emotional hate-filled rants. If you don’t buy the current set of lies trotted out by the administration you’re either anti-American or you’re a coward that wants to cut and run. It’s actually the neo-cons that are anti-American. They are the ones that want to subvert the constitution with warrantless eavedropping, fear inspired wars again _______ fill in the blank (communists, terrorists, the French etc.) for the sake of making a buck. It’s the right that wants to give our precious land resources away to big corporations so they can gouge a bit more money out of hard working American citizens.
My only question is why exactly do the right-wing fear mongers hate America and then accuse those who tell the truth that they are ani-American? My guess is most of the rabid right-wingers are really good people who have simply been duped into buying all the neo-con lies. Wake up before it’s too late. Read Tom’s article and refrain from listening to Rush for a week. Maybe you’ll actually learn something.
I’ve put it on another post, Brad, and I’ll say it again here. I’m associated with quite a few people who know the Middle East well, who have lived and work there. I have yet to find one single solitary one of them who supported our invasion of Iraq.
No, we cannot cut and run, but probably the best we can do is a benevolent strong man like the king of Jordan. Anything else will probably not work. This is not defeatism, at least I don’t think it is. I think it is realism. Take Egypt for example. Implement democracy in Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood will more than likely come to power.
Bud, the next time Tom T. writes something positive and pro-American, make sure I see it. Thanks
Herb, Brad is probably wondering why you hate America. The Iraqi civil war is all your fault, you know. If you were more positive (and clapped harder) it would all be better.
Dave, Tom T. “writes something positive and pro-American” far more often than Dear Leader does something “something positive and pro-American.”
Isn’t the Middle East working out just like he, Cheney and the Neo-Cons predicted? Oh, except that Bush is giving Israel the greenlight to turn Lebanon back into a failed state and a full-fledged terrorist incubator.
Remember Democracy on the march? Allowing the destruction of Lebanon’s fledgling democracy should be the crowning achievement of Bush’s bizarro reign– unless he take us to war against Iran.
RTH, did you see Nicolas Kristoph’s piece on Lebanon this morning? Right on target. Heaven help us if we undermine Jordan’s moderate king. Come to think of it, heaven help us, is all the hope we have right now.
Herb, I’m seriously beginning to wonder if Bush doesn’t truly believe that he was annointed to facilitate the “end times.”
He’s certainly doing a “heck of a job” at achieving peace in the Middle East.
There’s a good article in Buzzflash speculating that the Neocons actually want a caotic middle-east in order to ensure the oil companies will continue to control (and profit from) middle-east oil wealth. It sounds far-fetched but nothing that’s happened so far in the past 4 years has disproven it. Check it out:
http://buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/76