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Do these glimmers of moderation appear because Americans and Europeans have promised more billions to Arafat's regime that can be spent as his "government" sees fit? Surely Saddam Hussein in the post-9/11 world at last realizes the need for more international cooperation instead of barbaric force in settling disputes? Can it be that Saudi Arabia is remorseful that its citizens butchered thousands of Americans, and so is eager now to craft joint investigations to prevent such future mayhem of our innocent civilians? Is North Korea finally appreciative of the hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid that we have lavished on its dictatorship to feed its own enslaved people and help the autocracy develop a state-of-the-art nuclear industry? We wish that such dictatorial regimes would appreciate our forbearance, help, and counsel. Who, after all, enjoys cynicism — much less the pessimistic acknowledgment that humankind is impressed more with power than reason? Nevertheless, we know in our hearts that all these regimes see such kindness as weakness, and instead interpret the recent mention of American force, not merely as serious but almost in an eerie way as admirable. Unfortunately, much of American policy in the last decade has been built on precisely the opposite — and false — assumptions about human nature in the Middle East, Korea, and for many years in the Balkans. Yet such naïve trust in the ultimate decency, or at least rationality, of killers and dictators is just as dangerous as mindless saber-rattling and cynical Realpolitik — as we now learn from the tally of corpses in Israel, the West Bank, Bosnia, and Kosovo and the arms shipments from North Korea and Iran. Far better it would have been to adopt a consistent policy of promoting consensual government — but backed by the use of real force when confronted by regimes that threaten our security. Those who trust in utopian solutions — like the European peacekeepers who routinely watched Muslims being butchered nearby their posts in the Balkans — are no better than the brute realists who advocate support for any unelected authoritarian who claims he is fighting terrorism. But before we can adopt such a consistent strategy — one that would radically alter our relationships even with so-called "moderate" dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Egypt — we should ask ourselves: Where do such optimistic (but quite dangerous) American assumptions about the human condition arise? Why do some of us believe that the hundreds of state-of-the-art M-1 tanks we shipped to Egypt will never be used against Israel, that the nuclear waste in Korea will not packed into missiles aimed at Japan, or that the guns we sent to Arafat will not be used to riddle Israeli schoolchildren? Most average Americans, of course, would never entertain such delusions. Much of our difficulty in assessing human nature arises from our very success — the old Roman worries about luxus. America is now the freest and most affluent society in the history of civilization, but one whose material expectations and appetites are nevertheless constantly rising even further and faster. In that sense, the citizenry is far more concerned with summer movie blockbusters, the addition of another 50 cable channels, or the price of vacation gasoline than with lunatic states abroad that possess the potential — in truth, often the remote potential — to radically disrupt our lifestyle. Far easier, then, has it been in the past to grimace at government-sponsored suicide-murdering in Palestine, the ravings of Hamas, intelligence reports about North Korean nukes, and Iraqi gas, or at least to adopt a policy of appeasement that in the short term costs us a few million here and there, and an occasional blow to our pride. The rationale seems to be that mass murdering in Africa or the potential for worse in Kashmir can be relatively ignored, while the more bothersome troubles in the Middle East or North Korea — closer to our oil supplies, more likely to obsess our media and intelligentsia, and of more concern to our European and Japanese allies — can be bought off, allowing us to avoid the tough choices in identifying and confronting thuggery. In the strange climate of the past decade, talk of confronting evil earned one the sobriquet of a war-monger or worse; lofty rhetoric about the need for peace — while thousands were killed, bombs stockpiled, and terrorists bred — was proof of both prudence and morality. So there is also a more fundamental reason beyond just Petronian self-absorption here at home that explains our strange optimism about the autocratic Arafat clique or the monsters in North Korea. With leisure and comfort also comes a distance from physical hardship and ignorance of just how brutal life was for Americans until the last few decades — and still is for billions abroad. By the same token, education and learning create a brotherhood of enlightened minds that profess to assume all behavior is governed by the dictates of reason, rather than by superstition, prejudice, or religion. Such often-welcomed thinking among our elites in academia, government, and the media can nevertheless be as arrogant as it is dangerous — haughty in that it assumes that books and classes have all the answers to man's fate, perilous in its wrongheaded assumptions that the rest of the world either wishes to, or in fact will, join them and so shed its age-old trust in the tribe, the patriarch, the holy man, or the creep with sunglasses and a holster. And there is a third reason, in addition to our material splendor and intellectual superciliousness, that makes us so misjudge a Saddam Hussein in 1991, a Milosevic in 1995, a bin Laden in 2001, or an Arafat in 2002. It is innate to the human condition to aspire to transcendence — the desire to feel moral, to right others' wrongs, or to find solidarity with the less fortunate. For many of our most powerful and affluent, who have lost their faith in God and have no belief in a soul, humanism is instead the real religion. The last measure of their sense of worth is found in feeding as many poor or solving as many disagreements as possible. Like Christian missionaries of the past, a great many of our intellectuals, professors, diplomats, and journalists find moral solace in the belief that they are refined and chosen folk, evolved far beyond force, and adept at using instead their expertise and learning to lift up the ignorant — and in showing the "other" that they at least are aware of the world's cruel capriciousness in lavishing largess upon a lucky few such as themselves. These are all noble sentiments, and often to be welcomed — but in a time of war they are perilous to the very safety of the republic. For such caring people the stakes now are no longer the salvation of their eternal souls, but rather a more immediate and daily sense of feeling good about themselves, and assuaging the depressing thought that Americans — due to greed or oppression rather than their singular know-how, tolerance, and hard work — have more cars, computers, and clothes than they can possibly use while most of the world seeks a glass of water without bacteria. For such aggrieved minds, how do you deal with the depressing fact that Americans know more about botox than botulism? So we have developed a dangerous antithesis in our country between our consumerist middle classes and our more affluent and educated elites. The former are so busy slaving away to maintain their newfound and quite amazing standards of living that they have no time or interest in the world abroad and so have entrusted American affairs to those who do. The latter — mostly not in hock for discount teen-age orthodonture, student loans for the local state college, and an overdue Visa ledger from last year's trip to Disney World — have the opportunity, but not the savvy, to deal abroad with the depressing and real nature of man. So those who best understand and appreciate the scrappiness of life have either no occasion to get involved in America's role in the world, or no interest in doing so; meanwhile, those who are least in touch with the elemental struggle claim the education, expertise, and time to fathom what motivates human kind. We should adopt a policy of trading places for a year. A few editors of the New York Times, some writers for the Nation, a bureau or two in the State Department, and a dozen or so Harvard faculty should try laying cement in Vegas, daily frequenting the local Taco Bell in South-Central L.A., or driving a smoking, 30-year-old Massey-Ferguson with a tank full of paraquat for 12 hours or so at a stretch. Such field research would do wonders for their worldview and their take on human nature. And I expect such a sabbatical at the tire shop in Des Moines or waitressing at Denny's in Mobile would not turn them into Marxists as much as realists who could at last gain the full measure of someone like Arafat, Kim Il Sung, or an Iranian cutthroat mullah. In turn, I have no idea what havoc the local cesspool pumper, the peach picker, or real-estate hustler would do during a year's sojourn in the State Department or as hosts of NPR. Plenty, perhaps. But I do know that they would never provide nuclear expertise to North Korea — much less condone giving machine guns to the Palestinian Authority. |
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now of all times are there nascent efforts to "reform" the Palestinian
Authority? Why has Saddam Hussein for the last nine months been relatively
quiet, and toyed with the idea of rigged inspections of his arsenal of
death? Are there reasons why once-reclusive Saudi sheiks are suddenly
popping up all over Washington? And why have the Koreans expressed recently
a wish to negotiate? 
