Bill Kristol in Toronto 

Bill Kristol in Toronto

Bill Kristol spoke at the U. of Toronto on Thursday, just before my class. I didn't make it for his lecture, but I got a seat for the Qs and As. I obviously cannot do his remarks justice.

The general idea was that Bush is doing a pretty good on national security, and that is by far the most important thing. Both Afghanistan and Iraq could still turn out OK, and if they don't, it's hardly Bush's fault.

One questioner asked: aren't you and other Americans making too much of 9/11 as a pretext for a new, belligerent U.S. foreign policy?

Kristol spoke, I thought, very frankly. He and Bob Kaplan publicly advocated a more aggressive foreign policy before 9/11, and even before the 2000 election. They openly (I believe he confirmed) advocated the invasion of Iraq. He said: I doubt we could ever have persuaded Bush to do it had it not been for 9/11.

He thinks a whole series of presidents, certainly including Bush Senior, were too passive in the face of dangerous developments in the world. They encouraged the American public to think the world was basically safe, while the terrorists and others grew stronger. He mentioned the whole Milosevic adventure, and I believe Rwanda as well, as events in which the U.S. should have intervened earlier.

Kristol is charming and witty. He said it is clear Europe has no intention of intervening in other countries much at all, whether for morality or oil or whatever. And that's fine--they can be a big Switzerland. Kristol thinks this is not really adequate, and he hopes the U.S. continues to be aggressive--not only with military means, but with intelligence and diplomacy, soft power as well as hard, in many hotspots, but particularly the Middle East. He wants an expanded budget for all these areas: defence, intelligence, the State Department. (Also restructuring/re-thinking, perhaps especially for State).

Insofar as Kristol speaks for the neo-cons, it seems fair to say they miss the Cold War, they wish it could have ended with some shooting and glory, and they are morally comfortable with a never-ending war against an enemy who can be characterized as both powerful and evil.

Are there really a large number of foreign interventions that are a good idea? Does the U.S. really have the know-how to improve so much of the world? Kristol didn't really promise that the U.S. will spread democracy, but he said we have seen cases where the example of democracy makes a difference to an entire region--Latin America, Eastern Europe. Is Kristol promising, like Reagan and perhaps Pericles, glory without sacrifice? But Pericles at least tried (fruitlessly) to tell Athenians to stay at home--he didn't say that if you intervene all over the world, you wll have glory without sacrifice.

Surely part of the problem the neo-cons have is that it is awkward for them to fit in any major party on domestic issues. Is Kristol pro-life? Does he have a serious concern about partial-birth abortion, cloning, or stem cell research? Does he want a lot of Bible quotation in politics, and prayer in schools, or does that whole business give him the willies? I don't read the Weekly Standard enough to know, but I suspect that in many ways his hero is still D.P. Moynihan of a certain era--before Moynihan decided the neo-cons were a bit nuts on the subject of the Cold War. Kristol is just a bit too old-fashioned for today's Democrats--perhaps he is a gentleman, or a square. But is he really at home with Republicans--as Bill Schneider used to say, white shoes and all?

Someone should write a piece on "The Last--and Second Last--Refuge of the Scoundrel." One can say liberal and libertarian folks--except when they get war fever because of 9/11--still pin a lot of hope on sexual and other kinds of personal freedom. (Liberals may not like aspects of consumerism; libertarians generally embrace it). Both the man who used to be called a cad and the woman who used to be called something I shouldn't repeat become heros for asserting their sexual freedom--their freedom from long-term attachments to people, rules, or traditions. One might say this is the liberal refuge for scoundrels.

But then, as Dr. Johnson's old line reminds us, there is patriotism. Bill Kristol is not a scoundrel, but war-loving patriotism can certainly cover over a multitude of problems.

Here I go protesting again: I actually admire "conservative" politicians who use war as a kind of trick to keep domestic political forces in line--Palmerston, Disraeli and (perhaps) Salisbury in Victorian Britain; and maybe good old Nixon. For that matter, Reagan. But somehow Kristol is a true believer. Somehow it would be better if he were a hypocrite.

UPDATE: Kristol said India is a natural ally of the U.S. these days, since it is familiar with the experience of dealing with a powerful enemy, right next door. Er ... as opposed to the U.S.? Surely, even counting 9/11, American civilians have had a remarkably peaceful life for a long time--at least as long as India has been at war with Pakistan.

Chamberlain made the mistake of misinterpreting the actions of a militaristic and ideological dictatorship, which really was on the way to conquering the known world; Chamberlain kept insisting that crises such as the Rhineland and the Sudetenland were flare-ups of local issues. Isn't Kristol in danger of making the opposite mistake--yoking together as many different local issues as possible in order to suggest that there is one big war going on, and Americans are in danger?

This struck me watching Law and Order last night (delayed running of the "Abu Ghraib" episode from Wednesday). The DA, played by Fred Thompson, gives the speech about how terrorist attacks either by Al Qaeda or linked to Al Qaeda are breaking out all over--he even mentions Bali. Isn't there at least a good question as to whether these incidents are all linked (whether, for example, Arabs join Chechens to help out with a centuries-old feud, not as part of an international conspiracy), and whether many or most of them threaten the U.S.? Above all, perhaps: what any or all of them have to do with Iraq?

I do like one Fred Thompson line: the U.S. has become the poster child for schadenfreude. (Referring to the fact that "we're blamed" for not interfering, such as in Rwanda, and for interfering, such as in Iraq). Not something you're going to hear every day on TV.

This is a problem for Canadian intellectuals. The U.S. is our best friend and ally, and biggest trading partner. There should never be anything pleasant for us in U.S. failure. Yet when they go in all boastful, and a few months later are asking for UN help, it is sometimes difficult not to smile.

UPDATE: I guess I should have just said what I told my class: this is one of those times when it's a relief not to be an American--or maybe specifically to be a Canadian. There is this odd feeling that we get to be spectators, stretching in fairly comfortable seats, maybe even having a snack, while the Americans are forced to actually make decisisions, and play out a potentially terrible drama. This can't be quite the way it is though.