Libya: Courage, Prudence, and War-mongering

My colleague's apt poem selection today brought my mind back to Libya.  Reading some thoughts on the day, I found this piece by Max Boot impugning the manhood of President Obama for not acting decisively with force against Qaddafi.  Mr. Boot's war mongering and call to arms is quite honestly shocking in both the sophomoric criticisms of Obama's machismo and blind belief in American triumphalism.

Mr. Boot calls Obama's response "vacillating" and declares, "It is not far-fetched to imagine a Barack Obama Boulevard in Tripoli if the president finally finds the courage to act."  Such appeals to vanity belittle the realities of war and the costs of the use of force.  It is a paradigm that sees a single tool for all tasks, the hammer.

Mr. Boot outlines how easy it would be for the U.S. to enforce a no-fly zone, "if we first neutralize Gadhafi's air defenses."  But of course, before they are neutralized, the must be destroyed which would likely necessitate putting American troops in harm's way.  Mr. Boot glosses over that part, lest we think the use of force is in fact a dangerous endeavor.

He tries to frighten us by declaring, "Given the way the U.S. and our allies have turned against Gadhafi, at least rhetorically, he could easily decide to seek revenge by returning to his old tricks. Considering that Gadhafi was responsible for the midair bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, among many other acts of terror, that is no idle threat."  Except the U.S. has not done anything but speak negatively of Qaddafi, a course of action that Mr. Boot spends his time decrying.  

Still, he erects more boogeymen when he says, " if he is able to keep power by force, it will encourage other Middle Eastern despots to emulate his example.... The Arab Spring could easily turn into a very dark winter that will arrest and reverse the momentum of recent pro-democracy demonstrations...the long-term winners will be al Qaeda and their ilk."  It is as if Mr. Boot believes the mere mention of Al Qaeda will compel people to act.  In truth, he draws some broad conclusions from a very specific situation, while entirely neglecting the on-going history of democracy through force in Afghanistan and Iraq.

To be sure, there are many different views on what we should do about Libya.  Here at DCExile, Ben and I have disagreed about whether to intervene or to not intervene.  Leslie Gelb writes in TheDailyBeast.com that if Britain and France and the Arab League believe so strongly in their ominous warnings, they have the ability to act independent of the UN and the United States.  I am certainly frustrated by others seeking the shade of our military umbrella when it suits them, then shouting at us when they want to be in the sun.  Will Wilkinson also criticizes Mr. Boot, but comes down firmly on the side of a libertarian ilk, which feels too isolationist to me.

There are not easy answers to this problem, but Max Boot seems all to willing to embrace a bloody solution who's motivations lie in a misbegotten sentiment of American triumphalism while grossly ignoring our recent history with democratizing military adventures.

Liberals and Libertarians

For those that monitor the blogosphere, and specifically Economist.com's Democracy in America blog, you've no doubt followed the back and forth between Matt Steinglass and Will Wilkinson on any host of issues.  Mr. Steinglass representing broadly the liberal view of things and Mr. Wilkinson the libertarian view of things.  Without a doubt, it's some of the most intelligent debate between these two paradigms ("ideologies" seemed too rigid and not befitting the rationality they bring to the debate).  I, perhaps narcissistic-ly, like to think the exchanges (typically in the comments section) between Ben, Colin (our foil at To Get Rich Is Glorious), and I are like a minor league version of the Steinglass/Wilkinson debates.

Course they still do it best, and when Mr. Wilkinson lays out some tenets of libertarianism including the belief that "Taxation is coercive but imprisoning the guy who nicked your lawn gnome isn't," you can expect that Mr. Steinglass would respond and so he did.  There's a lot of good stuff in there, but specifically on the issue of "taxation being coercive" he notes that: "liberals think of taxation as paying one's fair share for the collective goods that make society feasible. Every society needs collective goods to function, including transportation and infrastructure, education, the justice system itself, and so on... Payment for those goods cannot be left voluntary, as ultimately everyone would welch."

This completely captures why I think taxation is legitimate.  Of course, one could say, and Colin as suggested, that you must have  pessimistic view of people if you believe they won't voluntarily contribute what is needed for the general welfare.  I think that makes me a realist and a liberal.

Not So Divided - Revisited

The original post prompted quite a few comments between Colin and myself, so I thought it would be interesting to post this entry from Will Wilkinson writing in Democracy in America on Economist.com.  Mr. Wilkinson says:


Although Americans left and right have remarkably consistent "ideologically conservative but programmatically progressive" preferences when it comes to redistributive social policy, it benefits political parties and party politicians to greatly exaggerate their differences. Partisan brand identity and distinction is achieved largely through a commitment to a certain stock of rhetorical tropes and symbolic gestures that float almost entirely free of the party's substantive commitments. People are suckers for rhetoric, which is why merely rhetorical differentiation works at both the grocery store and the polling station. It is also why we are prone to believing crazy things about what the other "side" believes. And this leads to a rhetorical atmosphere corrosive to the trust necessary to facilitate compromises over policy that would be agreeable to most everyone. Our problem, and Mr Krugman's, is that we believe our own BS.


Basically, Mr. Wilkinson and I agree that the rhetoric is far more divided then the policy preference.

Rhetoric & Violence

I’ll admit it. The moment I heard that an Arizona Democratic congresswoman was shot, I thought, “Oh great! One of the Tea Party-ers took all that rhetoric seriously and shot someone.” Judging from the initial blog posts of some in the blogosphere, notably Klein, Krugman, and Yglesias, I was not alone in that initial thought.

We seem to be wrong, or at the very least not completely right. Despite the facts not supporting, completely, the notion that the perpetrator was politically motivated the pundit-ocracy has tee-ed off on this tangent and I don’t think that’s an entirely bad thing.

Will Wilkinson disagrees and I think his post is important to keep us all tethered to the real reasons this particular gunman perpetrated this particular heinous act, but I also think his post fails to address something connected to the incident.

Why did so many commentators believe, just like I had believed, that the shooting was politically motivated and specifically why did we think it was entirely probable such an incident was perpetrated by a member of the Tea Party?

There’s a lot of baggage to that question. Clearly I’m citing “liberal” bloggers and there is the perceived “liberal bias” of the mainstream media. Maybe we are fearful of people who identify with the Tea Party and/or the people further right than people in the Tea Party. Maybe we’re concerned the ramparts of our urban utopia, bastions of liberalism that they are, will be stormed by gun-toting “patriots” from the “real America” and those first shots fired in Arizona are the opening salvo in a broader struggle yet to come that will be decided by “Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson” as Glenn Beck once said.

I would follow up those potential reasons for our response and ask, why do we feel that way? The answer, to my mind, is the hateful, violent rhetoric that has become part and parcel of the message of the right.

Also, let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that the violent rhetoric in recent years has been coming more from the far right then the far left. It’s not being partisan if it’s true. I didn’t hear anybody threaten to shoot John Boehner if he became speaker (though plenty of people threatened to move to Canada if McCain was elected president, which would seek to confirm leftist pacifism). It hasn’t always been that way in America, but that’s the way it is right now.

We’ve heard this litany before. Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map, basically anything that Glenn Beck says about Obama, Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s “second amendment remedies” for Congress, and who can forget the original innovator, Rush Limbaugh. Michelle Goldberg has a web-only piece in The American Prospect that recounts some of the history and urges some restraint in the rhetoric we use. This isn’t an assault on free speech, this is a call for some personal responsibility. Does Sharron Angle believe we should actually shoot members of Congress? I would imagine not. Does Glenn Beck truly think we have exhausted all options and armed opposition to the government is the only way to bring change? I doubt it (advertisers don’t have products to sell during a full-scale civil war and that’d be an issue for a radio program).

If they don’t believe it, then they have a responsibility not to say it. I’m not talking about being at a point were we can disagree without being disagreeable, I’m just asking that you not advocate for a violent solution to what is a political problem. And I’ll go on record and say this, we don’t need legislation about speech to handle this, we don’t even need forced civility, we just need not encourage the violent elimination of political opponents. That strikes me as a low bar.

What happened in Arizona on Saturday was a tragedy of the first order. Two public servants were shot and one has already died. Five other people died for doing nothing more offensive than being in that parking lot at that Safeway at that moment. As we learn more about the perpetrator, hopefully we will begin to understand why this particular incident happened. It does not appear to be what so many of us thought it was when we first heard the news, but maybe this is an opportunity. Perhaps this violence, though not springing exclusively from violent rhetoric, will give us all a moment to consider our words, what we want them to mean, what they may mean to others, and what actions that perception could lead to.

This time it wasn’t politically motivated, but if I heard the same story again, right now, I’d have the same first thought I had on Saturday. I’m hoping we get to a point where that’s not the case.