Bush's Second Inaugural 

Bush's Second Inaugural

I was surprised, but I shouldn't have been. I didn't really think much about what the themes would be, or how the speech would go. I can't really stand to watch him speak anymore--it's too likely to turn out like a documentary on people who need speech therapy, but gamely keep on going with a goofy grin on their faces.

This speech was truly eloquent, and he was apparently the master of his material. Whatever the contribution of his speech writers, this was what he wanted to say. Basically: freedom, more or less on the American model, will come to the entire world sooner rather than later. The United States itself is likely to be a catalyst--sometimes using force, sometimes not--pushing this tremendous force for good along. Bush is already the benefactor of humanity, and has a good chance to be so even more before he is through. "... we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom." He or his immediate successors will deserve as much credit as if he single-handedly brought both World War II and the Cold War to an end, with a glorious victory for the side of right.

There is incredible confidence here--not only that he is in the right morally or "ideologically," but that he will succeed--with just enough difficulty to say a challenge has been overcome, but not so much that there is any real risk of failure. The morality is difficult to argue with in the modern world. We can stipulate, as the lawyers say, that there have been decent regimes that were not democracies. At earlier stages of technology, some kind of aristocracy, tending to mere oligarchy, might have been necessary in order for any human beings to achieve leisure, and thus the kind of accomplishments that make history--and perhaps offer wisdom. Leo Strauss went to some trouble to show that Socratic political philosophers, famous among other things for their denunciations of tyranny, may have quietly offered defenses of rational tyranny. Thucydides quietly suggests that imperialism and war come because of human nature, and bring moments of supreme skill and accomplishment--maybe grandeur, or glory. But if a society is so fortunate as to stay calm while a tyrant tends them like a gardener tending his private property, this may be in some sense "the best regime." Harsh words to our ears.

In the modern world, we have seen the accomplishments of technology stun everyone; and, when combined with liberal democracy, provide a kind of liberation of the common man that could hardly be conceived of before except in visions of an afterlife. Anyone who questions Bush's vision that democracy (more or less American-style) is good, and the more of it there is, the better, is easily seen as a Hitler lover or something.

What about the practicalities? Remarkably, Bush doesn't seem to think he has to worry about them. Yes, he has moved beyond a lot of specific statements justifying war on this or that country--weapons, ties to Al Qaeda, support for a loosely organized terrorist movement, or whatever. Of all this he is saying: I'll make mistakes, or I'll trust people who make mistakes, but it won't matter because I mean well. But it's more than that. "Mistakes" in foreign policy used to mean disaster. There were rival countries of roughly equal size, or smaller ones that were very eager to rise. Politics was a zero-sum game; what you gained, you took from someone; what you gave up, someone would take and threaten to harm you with it.

Bush just doesn't seem to believe any of that applies any more. No one can threaten the U.S. Even with Iraq going a lot worse than they hoped or predicted, what's the worst that's going to happen? An election is going to take place--basically the first ever in Iraq. Maybe the results will be challenged, maybe the major factions will slide into civil war. The U.S. remains free to withdraw its troops and try again somewhere else--maybe by using force, maybe not. Who's going to stop them?

He promises Americans that with the exception of military volunteers (and, er, those reserves being extended) they won't have to actually sacrifice in order to fight and win a major war--an historic first, which takes a bit of the shine off the resulting glory. [Correction: "A few Americans have accepted the hardest duties in this cause - in the quiet work of intelligence and diplomacy ... the idealistic work of helping raise up free governments ... the dangerous and necessary work of fighting our enemies. Some have shown their devotion to our country in deaths that honored their whole lives - and we will always honor their names and their sacrifice."]

I try to put myself into the shoes of Bush supporters. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, they felt fear and anger. There's a temptation to say they were overcome by these emotions, and kept demanding that everyone feel exactly the same way at exactly the same time. Now: "We're spreading democracy, like it or not. No sane person can question the morality; and no one's in any position to make us pay a serious price. Massacres in Mosul are terrible--but almost infinitely better than any comparable violence in Des Moines--whether or not the insurgents in Iraq have anything to do with any attack on any Americans."

I'm glad to see the comparison of this speech to JFK's Inaugural--still, perhaps, the most recent inaugural that will be taught in school over many years. (See Fred Kaplan, who actually links to the Kennedy speech). JFK practically promised both an escalation of the Vietnam War, on the one hand, and the peace corps and other kinds of practical foreign aid on the other; both toughness against enemies, and true concern for the well-being of all humanity. What prevented him from a Bush-like reverie, I guess, was the Cold War--the presence of a rival with comparable power to annihilate--and the need for real allies on almost every front. There was gritty realism in Kennedy's reference to a "long twilight struggle"--and also in his hint that "we shall always hope to find [new states] strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside." In the light of the most fantastic passage in the speech: "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty"--this has a bellicose meaning. If more or less an entire people in a "new state" foolishly supports, er, communists, and the U.S. can't really tell friend from foe, then Kennedy might find himself attacking that entire people. Liberation would have to wait.

The fantastic hopes are all that is left in Bush's speech--all the prudence, calculation, weighing of forces, balancing of a threat of war with a sincere interest in diplomacy have been distilled out. Kennedy referred in different ways to different parts of the world--strongly re-asserting something like the Monroe Doctrine for the Americas. To Bush the whole world is already pretty much one homogeneous mass. For Kennedy history has got us where we are, and it has to be understood in order to move forward intelligently--for at best, we will have little light to guide us. Bush sees everything clearly, "don't need no history," and makes no reference to any book whatsoever. [Correction: "the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran."] Kennedy came close to promising history-making glory with little sacrifice; Reagan came closer to promising no sacrifice at all; Bush reaches some kind of culmination of this tendency.

It is tempting for intellectuals, constantly frustrated by Bush's usual inability to communicate, and his administration's general refusal to do so, to make this personal. Many people can't help being ill-informed but decent hicks, proud of their stubbornness in the face of a challenge they can see in black and white terms. Bush has actually aspired for much of his life, somewhat despite the opportunities given him by his parents, to be someone like that. And now is his moment. He is predicting history; and he may be right, democracy might win all the marbles, quite soon. Of course he's not going to oppose every tyrant; some of them are still quite useful. Of course he's not going to support every democratic movement. But he doesn't have to. The U.S. will continue to do a lot of good; the trend, going beyond U.S. efforts, will continue, and American leaders can take credit for being perfectly well-intentioned almost no matter how badly a war goes in one (puny, hard to remember) country.

Brian Doherty gives Colin Powell a nasty send-off. The man who was expected to be an adult, and to maintain a sober view of foreign policy and war, providing a corrective to the neo-cons, lost every battle to the neo-cons, never resigned over a principle, and in fact became famous for offering some of the most extreme defences of the false pretexts for war. Doherty concludes that Powell is a mere careerist. But again: isn't something bigger going on? The Powell doctrine says: only make war when you are sure of winning. The neo-cons say: make war more or less continuously, maintain enough forces to fight on several fronts at once, there's nothing wrong with maintaining something like the military presence, at least, of the old British Empire. But if Bush is right about the future, the two doctrines converge. The need for caution is overridden by the massive fact that the U.S. simply is going to win.

Even Peggy Noonan is surprised (saddened?) at the lack of "nuance". (The Kerry word!). She respects Bush for wanting to change the status quo, recognizing that the world is not constant (not wanting to simply kick the can a few feet, etc.; he either wants to do something historic or transformative, or nothing at all); but "some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government. This world is not heaven."

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth.

...promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.