January 12, 2004
Safire offers spin control on Bush foreign policy.
William Safire, long-time Republican spinmeister, going back to his days on Nixon's staff, offers an interesting spin on the progress Bush has made in his war on the world,
Spinning Into Control. (Sorry, but I can't resist calling it spin since he actually uses the word in the title. :)) He actually makes some good points, and unlike all of the Bush-bashers, I'm perfectly willing to admit that not everything he does is horrible.
The strategic reason for crushing Saddam was to reverse the tide of global terror that incubated in the Middle East.
Is our pre-emptive policy working? Was the message sent by ousting the Baathists as well as the Taliban worth the cost?
Since I don't think that there's a "tide of global terror", which he how he begins, I can't say I agree with how he reasons from that. A single attack over two years ago hardly constitutes a "global tide," and it's about time the folks in New York got over it and admitted that.
His callous dismissal of what's happening in Iraq is rather frightening. A classic piece of spin.
In Iraq, where casualties in Baghdad could be compared to civilian losses to everyday violence in New York and Los Angeles, a rudimentary federal republic is forming itself with all the customary growing pains. After the new Iraq walks by itself, we can expect free Iraqis to throw their crutches at the doctor. But we did not depose Saddam to impose a puppet; we are helping Iraqis defeat the diehards and resist fragmentation to set in place a powerful democratic example.
No worse than in NY or LA? You'll have to judge the accuracy of that for yourself. I wouldn't know where to begin. And if the US is so committed to democracy in Iraq, why is it so resolutely fighting Iraqi demands for direct elections? Something that is being led by Muslim clerics, no less, which, in Safire's world-view, should be the last people to want that. See this NY Times article,
Direct Election of Iraq Assembly Pushed By Cleric, on that subject. No, the US wants "caucuses," which it can more easily control. "Puppets" are exactly what it's trying for. But I guess the feeling is that since Iowa is still stuck in the 19th century, so should Iraq and the rest of the world.
He seems to focus on recent moves by Libya, Iran and others to open up to UN weapons inspectors as indication of progress. What he ignores is the fact that Bush's policies have caused a major new global arms race to begin. India, Russia and other countries are building up their arsenals. And the fact that his hostility to others throughout the world is creating a new generation of people who hate the US, something that will have devastating effects for generations to come.
But he's an old man. He won't be around to pay the staggering costs of these wars, all financed by borrowing on the future. He won't be around in ten, twenty or thirty years when someone whose family was killed in Iraq or Afghanistan freaks out and blows up something in the US, the UK or elsewhere. He concludes:
The columnist Jim Hoagland cautions that it is too early to proclaim that nonproliferation is "spinning into control." But taken together, this phased array of fallout to our decision to lead the world's war against terror makes the case that what we have been doing is strategically sound as well as morally right.
Strategically sound is questionable. Only in the short term, not in the long term. But "morally right?" I beg to differ. There's nothing moral about lying, about killing children, about violating international law, about beginning a global arms race, about closing schools and hospitals in the US to finance death and destruction, about stealing money from future generations, about throwing the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the trash. Not even close. And he knows it too.
And the fact is that hardly anyone in the world, including most Americans, wants or needs the US to be the world's policeman, or to use violence to force its views and values on everyone. He claims its about "democracy." But he knows that in any fair vote of all of the people in the world, these policies would be soundly rejected.
Why do you think Bush never dared formally asked the US Senate to formally declare war against Iraq, as the constitution specifically requires? Because he knew damn well it would not have passed.
And let's wait until we actually see functioning democracies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, all examples he gives, before we pass judgment and proclaim success. And I mean real democracies, including full and equal rights for women, which, in my opinion, would have to include rights to half of the profits of all of that oil. Afghanistan has a constitution, true. But, just like the American one, the women there had no say in it. That's not democracy. It's the perpetuation of the same system under a different name. Slightly modernized, but still the same.
And, as a Jew, I would have to wait for the closing of the madrasas that continue to promote the vilest form of Jew-hating, in the guise of education, before I think anything has really changed.
And, as an American, I'm much more concerned with the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons by the warmongers in the US and the UK than I am anywhere else. These represent a genuine and lasting threat to world peace, and it's time that people, especially the Democratic candidates for president, acknowledged that.
