Whose Side Are You On?
I'll start with Ann Althouse's comments on the new movie by the South Park boys, "Team America."
As Althouse says, the NYT is surprised to discover that even though the movie makes fun of the patriotic American action team, which can't seem to liberate Paris without blowing up the Louvre, the movie still shows a genuine American patriotism, even praise of American military might.
I think Parker and Stone have already said there is no good choice in the presidential election; it is between "a s..t sandwich and a s..t sandwich." (B.A.'s weblog--link to NYT now requires payment). Elsewhere (Rolling Stone) they have said that if they voted, they would cancel each other's vote--so they won't bother. But there is still something to this idea of South Park Republicans: the belief that the U.S. has a good system, all things considered--democracy, capitalism, a considerable degree of government intervention in the economy, a lot of laissez faire libertarianism on social issues. It's not a bad thing to try to spread this model around the world--especially in areas where the alternative is a hateful and violent form of fundamentalism. It's not helpful to have the administration wrap their actions in so much empty pomposity and dishonesty--while failing to achieve anything like Lincoln's or even Blair's rhetoric as to what it all means--but they still may be doing more good than harm.
Reading the new piece by William Langewiesche in the November [link=http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200411/langewiesche]Atlantic[/link] (not on line) on life in the Green Zone in Baghdad, it's difficult not to think of the Boy Scout in P.G. Wodehouse's Joy in the Morning. People keep getting hurt, accidentally, in the course of the Scout's good deeds. He feels badly about this, and keeps adding to the list of good deeds he owes people. It's not long before everyone he knows is begging him: please, no more good deeds.
And yet...an election has been held in Afghanistan, and women are enjoying at least some more rights than before (I guess it is always necessary to add: at least in Kabul). What conqueror has ever brought that about--has ever even tried to do so? Allawi is to some extent a proxy for the U.S. in Iraq. But he seems to be working hard to bring about a meaningful election, in which all major groups in the country participate. He has negotiated with the Sadr forces: if they give up their arms, they can be granted an amnesty for past deeds and participate in building a new government. Otherwise they will be treated as criminals. A similar deal is being offered in Fallujah. This may not work, but the intention seems right. At the least, (and here goes a Vietnam analogy again), replacing Saddam with Allawi is a lot better than replacing Diem with Thieu.
FrontPage has an interesting debate on why the left hates Bush, even when some of his accomplishments have been the kind you would expect the left to hail. As Glenn Reynolds asks, why is it that so many people are not really anti-war at all--just on the anti-American side? Of course this is reminiscent of the Cold War. Some of the lefties can say "we used to talk about freedom" but in fact they would defend any Communist regime, no matter how repressive. I can remember both the Marxist-Leninists and the Maoists handing out leaflets. As more and more became known about the mass murders, imprisonments and tortures carried out by both the Soviet and Maoist governments, attention shifted to Enver Hoxa's Albania--the great advantage being that nothing was known about it. Fidel and Che, of course, have always had a place in the hearts of many humanities professors.
I guess there is still a lingering attachment to Marxist analysis: capitalism can only lead to the mass starvation and suffering of the workers, i.e. the majority; this terrible development must be impending soon, if it is not happening already; the Third World may be a better place to find a proletariat, since there is at least a mixture of old-fashioned oligarchy and frontier capitalism; whatever is the case "at home," in foreign policy the U.S. must always be doing more harm than good.
Here is someone (Elinor Burkett) who is inclined to give Bush credit for improving some problems, somewhere:
[blockquote]I agree with [Joshua] Frank that U.S. foreign policy was an atrocious tangle of human rights violations, exploitation and oppression for most of the 20th century. And, certainly, neither by design nor by result did these policies liberate anyone. [/blockquote]
[blockquote]But if it is true, as [Robert] Jensen would have us believe, that the "ideals of solidarity and freedom" remain at the core of left politics," how can he ignore the reality that the women of Afghanistan are no longer forced to wear burqas, that they are no longer being stoned to death in the old Olympic stadium? Is that caring about freedom?[/blockquote]
There are dozens of things that make me angry with George Bush. But I find myself even angrier with those who profess to favor freedom yet refuse to acknowledge its advance simply because they can't stand its architect. My female friends in Kabul don't give a damn whether Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in order to liberate them. They care that they have found a bit of space from which to build a future.
Before the attempt to give Bush some credit: "neither by design nor by result did [U.S.] policies liberate anyone." Really? Not even with the massive exception of post-World War II reconstruction? Not even the Phillipines, or parts of Latin America? Even if we want to call U.S. policy "imperialism," have they done a worse job than the Brits in the 19th century? Haven't they been better, more enlightened and even helpful, than any other known empire?
All too often there is a kind of soup of different rationales for war--the idealistic ones are usually in there somewhere, but oddly, perhaps because the U.S. is so rich and (basically) so safe, both the idealistic rationale and the coldly self-interested or profit-seeking rationale can end up being half-hearted. (Has anyone ever shown that there was money to be made in Vietnam? On the other hand, Iraq clearly got to the head of the line at least partly because of oil and Israel). None of this should mean, however, that the U.S. never gets credit for doing anything good--or for being on the right track. Otherwise it is indeed a poster child for schadenfreude.
On the domestic front, do all of Bush's big spending initiatives represent things the left should be defending? Education and health care? My sense is that No Child Left Behind may be doing some good--the anger of teachers' unions is a good sign. I don't understand the U.S. Medicare legislation. But in general, I think Bush is letting Republicans in Congress spend on anything they want so as to maintain his majority voting bloc. He has been enjoying the advantages of both a president in a congressional system, and a prime minister in a parliamentary system.
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