Where the Battle of Algiers rages on ...Rick's Cafe Americain

I hesitate to put words in anyone’s mouth, but it appears that Sullivan can be labeled as someone who supports an American foreign policy designed around establishing democracy internationally and, where necessary, through the use of force.  He says in his column:

[Bush] is still right that democratization is the only ultimate security in an age of Jihadist terror.  And when you see women bravely exercising their right to vote in Afghanistan, you are seeing something that would not have happened without our current president. That moral achievement can never be taken away from him.

I still believe that [Bush’s] decision [to invade Iraq] was the right one.

The chance of a third forced regime change somewhere in the world in the next four years is extremely low. We don’t even have the troops. Bush’s comparative advantage - the ability to pull the trigger when others might balk - will be largely irrelevant. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t come in handy.  Without Bush, Saddam would still be in power.

Does Kerry believe in the power of freedom enough to bring Iraq into a democratic future? I don’t know. It’s my major concern with him.

Also, New Republic is generally considered a neoconservative publication. So I doubt I am misrepresenting Mr. Sullivan.

I have long thought that the one silver lining to, as Jon Stewart calls it, Mess’O’Potamia is that it would sound the death knell for the neoconservative viewpoint, even if Iraq eventually becomes a stable democracy, because of the obvious costs and risks associated with regime change and nation building so aptly demonstrated by the events of the last year-and-a-half.  However, Sullivan attacks Bush and his administration for their incompetence in handling the Iraq war and occupation, while still agreeing with the decision to go to war.  In the process, he sets forth the blueprint for the neocon apologist—it is not the ideology that is the problem, just the execution by Bush.  But, I think Sullivan is using the incompetence of this administration as a crutch to avoid seeing the flaws in his ideology.

I agree that Bush has mishandled Iraq.  Frankly, the number of and the degree of errors made have astonished me.  But the most egregious error was the decision to invade in the first place.

The problems with an ideology that advocates regime change and nation building as a foreign policy strategy for the Middle East are legion.  First, there is little evidence that forcibly imposing a democracy upon a nation that has little to no history of democracy and has few of the institutions in place necessary for democracy works.  In most situations, like in Iraq, you are taking a huge risk—maybe we’ll end up with a peaceful and democratic Iraq, or maybe we’ll end up with a radical theocracy.  Joy.  Second, these invasions and occupations can be really expensive and America is not so much of an economic superpower that we can indefinitely compete with one hand tied behind our back.  Third, it makes the rest of the world a little nervous when the clearly most powerful nation on the planet starts to flex its muscle a lot.  That tends to isolate us and that is not good economically or for the war on terror.  Fourth, by acting imperialistic, we are providing the best recruiting tool the terrorists could ask for and makes it all the easier for foreign propagandists to poison their populaces against America.  Five, we all know that the American populace won’t stand for full scale, all out, throw everything we have at it conflicts, so we are necessarily going to be going in handicapped and partially governed by political expediency (which probably has a lot to do with why more troops were not sent to Iraq).

I’ll stop there.  These are the reasons why Iraq is such a disaster.  Bush’s incompetence has exacerbated things, but even without their incompetence, Iraq would almost certainly still be a mess right now (or at least a risk—no one has yet explained to me how we expect Iraqian democracy to sustain itself when we leave).  So yeah, Bush’s bungling is a reason why he should not be President, but Iraq is more than that.  It is exhibit A of why the neocon viewpoint should be rejected.

Finally, I want to make my own ideology clearer.  I am not a pacifist who is against all war and I am fine with preemptive action against real threats—and “preemptive action” usually does not entail full scale invasion and occupation.  I am not even against all war for purely moral reasons—though I do think that in such a situation the morality must be clear, there must be a clear goal to achieve and you ideally should have a broad international coalition (and, yes, I am in favor of going into some of the Africa situations on moral grounds).  Naturally, I also support democracy.  Nevertheless, I also think that Winston Churchill was right, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.  Anyone who views democracy as a panacea is living in a dream land.  Finally, we should go after the terrorists with a passion and a focus that Bush has not been exhibiting, yet also understand that the world is more nuanced than good and evil.  Let’s crush Al Qaida, but let’s also step back and achieve a better understanding of why Al Qaida exists and get better at the non-military ways of fighting it.