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 f you are
a reader of right-wing opinion websites, you will by now have heard
the voice of the Paleos, loud and strong.
This is a judgment on us for our interventionist foreign policy...
It is time to examine the U.S. relationship with Israel. The
lives of every Israeli is not worth one drop of American blood...
Who has reason to hate this country? Only a few hundred million
people — Arabs, Muslims, Serbs, and numerous others whose
countries have been hit by U.S. bombers...
Nobody is bombing Helsinki or Rome. Nobody is bombing Ottawa
or Sydney...
On the day after Pearl Harbor, ex-President Herbert Hoover
sat down and wrote to friends: "You and I know that this
continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country
bitten."
That last one is from Pat Buchanan, who will be on TV a lot these
next few weeks, and whose royalty statements (the bit of paper your
publisher sends you twice a year to let you know how much money
your books have earned you) will be bringing great cheer to the
Buchanan household for a while to come.
Now, I don't mind Paleos. I understand the appeal of their vision:
A busy commercial republic, minding her own business, with no troops
stationed beyond her shores, the champion of liberty in every land,
but never its guarantor. Heck, I used to belong to a Paleo e-mail
list. I know all the arguments. (Pur-leeze don't send me
reminders.) The strongest one, so far as I am concerned, is the
one that says you can't maintain liberty as the Founders understood
it when you are practicing Empire. You'll be hearing this a lot,
too, over the next few weeks. In calling for their government to
better protect them against these horrors, many people won't much
mind if, in order to do so, the government closes down some of our
liberties. Yes, yes, I know the arguments.
I dropped off that Paleo list, after much thought, because I just
didn't share that vision. I say again, I see its appeal, and I have
a lot of sympathy for it: I just don't share it. For one thing,
it would be sort of dishonest, at a personal level, for me to do
so. If not for the U.S.A. having been willing to send troops abroad
to fight, I should not now be here writing this. If alive at all,
I should be out working in the fields under some Gauleiter für
Ostmittelengland. To a lot of us raised in the rest of the world,
having America as a remote, self-absorbed champion of theoretical
liberty is all very well; but we kind of like the
guarantor stuff, too. Sure, the United States is under no obligation
to pander to our preference, however gratifying she may find it:
but there are some strong practical reasons to favor American interventionism,
too. Would the world have been a better, or a worse, place this
past few decades, if America had stood aloof from the world wars?
Would America herself have been safer, more secure, more prosperous?
It seems pretty plain to me — though certainly arguable (but
again, please don't post me the arguments, I've heard them all)
— that the answers are: "worse," and "no."
There were other things, less substantive things, that turned me
off the Paleos. For example, though most of them are thoughtful
and rational people, there is quite a high proportion of lunatics
among them. (There is a certain proportion on any email list, of
course; I am just saying the Paleos have more than average for an
intellectual discussion list.) And even setting aside the lunatics,
there was a sort of crabby, ill-mannered, claustrophobic atmosphere
about the whole thing that started to grate on me after a while.
No, I'm not a Paleo. Republic or Empire? Empire, please.
I understand, of course, that Americans at large, even those who
have never even heard of the Republic vs. Empire debate, are schizophrenic
about the matter. Huge numbers of Americans couldn't care less about
the world beyond their shores. They want nothing to do with it.
They go to Florida for their vacations, or at the very furthest
Hawaii. Passport? Who needs it? I am talking about un-intellectual
Americans — decent, good-hearted, Christian family-loving folk,
who just can't see why the affairs of Albania or Zimbabwe are any
damn business of theirs, much less why they should send off their
beloved children to be killed in such places.
Yet there are other Americans who understand, what I believe is
true, that the Republic option is, at bottom, an empty fantasy.
Public opinion supported the Vietnam War almost to the end of it;
it was the elites and the intellectuals who turned against it, not
ordinary Americans. People understand, I think, that however much
Americans might wish to leave the world alone, the world will not
leave America alone. Great wealth and great success generate great
envy and great hatred. And America's high ideals, if clutched jealously
to America's chest, while those abroad who believe them are hunted
down and slaughtered without help, will whither and die. Idealism,
like terrorism, has — can have — no borders. We know that
our way of life is far superior to Islamic Fundamentalism, Chinese
Communism, "Big Man" Kleptocracy and Bureaucratic Welfarism.
Knowing that, the urge to assist — assist by some practical
means — those in other places who believe the same thing, will
sooner or later prove irresistible to a bold, fearless, liberty-loving
nation. (And if those adjectives no longer apply to this country,
I have made a major life error.) American idealism cannot be contained.
To fall back on my own origins again, I come from a nation that
actually did practice Empire, very successfully, but eventually
decided it was too much trouble and cost, and gave up on it. Certain
things followed, one by one. For example, we lost the ability to
defend ourselves. From WWI onwards, we were essentially a U.S. protectorate,
and still are today. For another, my country sank gradually into
a mentality of fatalism and defeat in which no vigorous action against
our enemies became possible. To see what I mean, look at Britain's
response to Irish terrorism, about which I have written many times
in this space. Here I was banging away on
NRO last June, for example:
The fault for that tragedy [i.e. a fascist takeover of Ireland]
will lie squarely with politicians in London, Dublin and Washington,
who for thirty years have refused to do what the leaders of civilized
nations must do when faced with terrorism in their own jurisdictions:
hunt it down and exterminate it, without pause or pity or quarter
or apology.
Why have those politicians refused to do that thing? Why are IRA
terrorists, who have done the foulest and most beastly things —
the kinds of things, though not on the kind of scale, we saw on
Tuesday — walking around free in the streets of Belfast and
Dublin, having been let out of jail in return for a few vague and
empty promises from those who give them their orders? The fundamental
reason is not hard to find. Britain, having forgotten its responsibilities
as an upholder of civilization, no longer cared to confront civilization's
enemies in the way they must be confronted. They put their
trust instead in "peace processes," in legalisms and trials,
in panels of international do-gooders blathering on about "human
rights," in the State Department. They did not put their
trust in the thin-lipped, hard-faced, soft-talking men and women
who do civilization's dirty work for it. To fall back on Kipling
again (I am sorry; but at times like these, Kipling
is indispensable), they made mock of the uniforms that guard us
while we sleep.
The option that the last few British governments have taken —
the Surrender Option — is available to America, too. It may
even be taken. I was dismayed to hear the President speak about
his instructions to find "those responsible" and "bring
them to justice." Mr. President, these are not traffic violations;
these are acts of war. Justice must go by the board for a while,
as it did when we firebombed German and Japanese cities, incinerating
helpless babies and old folk who wished us no harm. Where was the
justice in that? Oh, and by the way: "those responsible"
are already dead. They killed themselves attacking your country,
and were proud and happy to do so. Some Americans — I speak
as the father of two Americans — will have to get killed attacking
their countries. (Oh, yes, they have countries.) Some of those Americans,
likewise, will be proud and happy to do so, on behalf of the nation
they love. Dirty business, running an Empire. Dirty business, defending
civilization against barbarism. Barbaric business, sometimes
— there's a paradox to ponder... But don't think you're the
first to ponder it. It was a Roman who said oderint dum metuant,
and a Roman who rebuked him for saying it. Dirty business, dirty
business. But then, there is always the Surrender Option.
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