The rather odd premise of this Reason article is that libertarian “constitutionalist” GOP candidate Ron Paul may have appeal to disaffected progressives.
Now, this may be true in the broad sense that progressives will likely find themselves agreeing with Paul on the war, the PATRIOT Act, the war on drugs, etc. but what is the upshot supposed to be here? That progressives are going to cross party lines en masse to vote for Paul in the GOP primary?
After all, it’s virtually a foregone conclusion that Paul won’t get the GOP nomination (especially when an astonishing 65% of Republicans still say that President Bush is doing a good job according to a recent poll). So there’s really no question of Paul appealing to progressives and liberals in the general election.
And besides, if progressives want to vote for a longshot candidate who shares their views on the war, they’ve got Dennis Kucinich with whom they’re likely to agree about much else. Ron Paul’s vision of an ultra stripped down nightwatchman state is likely to send big-government liberals running for the hills.
Good article at Reason on the Ron Paul-Rudy Giuliani showdown:
No one knows precisely what morbid formula inspired the Sept. 11 attacks. Most likely, it was some mix of U.S. foreign policy exacerbating radical Islamists’ already deep-seeded contempt for Western values.
But to suggest that we shouldn’t even consider that our actions overseas might have unintended consequences is, frankly, just ignorant. And to attempt to silence anyone who says otherwise by attempting to define them as the lunatic fringe of political debate is not only ignorant, it’s an embrace of ignorance—a refusal to even hear ideas that might challenge your own perspective.
The debate kerfuffle between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani over the question of the causes behind the 9/11 attacks has generated a fair amount of comment. I think Paul got the better of the exchange and Giuliani came across as a bit of a demagogue, but it’s still worth asking whether Paul is right here.
Talking about the connection between our interventionist foreign policy and “blowback” in the form of terrorism has been the genuine third rail of US politics over the last 5+ years. What I didn’t hear Paul say was that we in any way deserved the 9/11 attacks. This is the canard frequently used against people who try to explain the motives of the terrorists with reference to US foreign policy. But there’s a big difference between explaining something and justifying it. Saying that OBL and co. want to attack us because we’re “over there” as Paul puts it does not imply that they were right to do so.
My view has been that our interventions in the Middle East are at least a contributing factor in Islamist terrorism and the 9/11 attacks. I don’t want to discount the role of Islamic extremism, as some leftists and anti-war conservatives seem to do. The former often advert to sheerly economic or political explanations, while the latter sometimes fixate on the role of Israel. Nevertheless, as Paul pointed out in the debate, bin Laden and his confederates have explicitly said that they attacked us because of our presence over there. It would be extremely foolish to disregard their own account of their motives, even if it’s not the full story.
An important component, I would think, of any sound strategy against terrorism would be to “peel off” potential supporters of terrorist groups by listening to their concerns about our presence in the region. Granted there are a hard core of radicalized jihadists who will be swayed by nothing, terrorist groups seem to thrive only when they have some kind of support from the larger public. Presumably one of the reasons the IRA was able to carry on its campaigns for so long was that there were people not directly involved who at least sympathized to some degree. Paul is surely right that it’s important to ask how we would feel if some other country was meddling in our affairs like we do in the Middle East (and elsewhere).
And even apart from the question of blowback, we need to ask whether our interventions are a) good for the US on the whole and in the long run and b) morally legitimate. Even if Osama bin Laden didn’t oppose it, there’s still reason to doubt whether US forces should’ve be stationed in Saudi Arabia, just like there’s a legitimate question whether our forces should remain stationed in Iraq. And the fact that it would likely make the Iranian people dislike us even more (possibly leading to terrorist reprisals) is not the only reason to doubt the wisdom of attacking Iran to prevent the government there from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Conservatives have reacted (at times understandably) against the leftist litany of American misdeeds, but this has all too often spilled over into an uncritical approval of everything the US does or has ever done. If conservatism means anything it means dealing with reality as it is, not as you would wish it to be. At least the kinds of conservative thinkers I’ve always found congenial are those who criticize simplistic, utopian, and ideological thinking. Repeating the mantra that “they hate us because we’re free” won’t help us understand our enemies and ultimately deal more intelligently with them.
Moreover, Christians of all people should be able to look unflinchingly at their own sins. We don’t need to pretend that we, individually or collectively, are free from fault. Believing in the power of forgiveness ought to enable us to look honestly at our own failings and those of our country, without sliding into self-loathing. We shouldn’t have to fear acknowledging them and, if necessary, changing course. That’s part of what I think Christians should bring to the civic conversation, especially when political parties seem institutionally committed to an uncritical nationalism.
Ross Douthat makes a point not unlike the point I made here. Much as I enjoy Ron Paul’s red-meat isolationism, the chances that such a view will actuall carry the day are slim to none. With Romney, Guliani, and McCain all trying to out-hawk each other, it would be great if the realist-internationalist school of thought was represented in the current debate. Unfortunately, Chuck Hagel seems more interested in playing will-he-or-won’t-he with the press than making substantive contributions to the current debate.
Marvin points to a blog post discussing a poll indicating that we thirtysomethings are the only age group still giving majority support to the Iraq war. Much speculation abounds in the comment thread about us children of the 80s having been brainwashed by the evil Reagan.
Coming near the tail end of this cohort (I’m 32), I’ve always been anti-war, beginning with my teenage skepticism of the Gulf War propaganda fed to us by the classroom “news” program Channel One when I was in high school. I did have a slight deviation during the Afghanistan conflict, seeing it at the time as a justifiable response to the 9/11 attacks (I’m a bit more ambivalent about that now).
Perhaps surprisingly, it was really the liberal “humanitarian” wars of Bill Clinton that put me solidly in the anti-war camp. A truly self-defensive war I could theoretically get behind, but the whole idea of dropping bombs on foreigners to make them get along better always struck me as incredibly corrupt and perverse. I think this is actually part of the reason I became something of a right-winger in the late 90s – in those days it was the congressional Republicans who were opposing the President’s wars! This trend of Republican dovishness probably peaked with candidate George W. Bush’s “more humble” foreign policy and skepticism about nation-building.
Obviously times have changed, and the anti-war position is only represented in the current crop of GOP candidates by Dr. Ron Paul. Dr. Paul made the case that non-intervention is the traditional conservative and constitutional position, though it might be a bit of a stretch to call Ike an isolationist of any sort. It’s indicative of how surreal these debates are that Paul, a radical libertarian “fringe” candidate, is the only GOP contender who comes anywhere close to the position of the majority of Americans on the war, even if not us warmongering thirtysomethings.
A Thinking Reed 