Hanson abandons neocon war policy

Victor Hanson, the triumphalist champion of neocon wars for democracy, seems to have turned away from the neoconservative view to embrace positions long advocated at this website. In his weekly article at NRO, he urges that the United States: (1) give up on democratic nation-building as a policy; (2) adopt the alternative strategy (put forward by Andrew Bacevich and Mark Helprin and frequently discussed favorably by me) of controlling errant Muslim regimes by threatening to punish them and then punishing them, instead of taking them over and trying to re-create them in our preferred image; (3) shun the Muslim world if it rejects all our efforts on their behalf; (4) cut off aid to Egypt and other dictatorial and hostile Muslim regimes; (5) stop most immigration of Muslims into this country.

(In connection with Hanson’s turnabout, we should also remember George Will’s recent rejection of the neocons.)

Below are the key passages from Hanson’s article. (Unfortunately, even in moving away from some of his neoconservative fixations, Hanson maintains his annoying, liberal habit of making “democracy” his sole standard of value and describing everything he doesn’t like as “fascist.” Thus, amazingly, he refers to an “8th-century fascist caliphate.” For a man imbued with liberal preconceptions, as Hanson is, even the Abbasid Caliphate was “fascist.” He probably thinks of William the Conqueror and Pope Urban II as “fascists” as well. After all, they weren’t democrats, were they?)

And the next time the United States uses force in the Middle East, we shall not do nation-building but rather serious GPS-ing at 20,000 feet in punitive Roman fashion. Indeed, despite the glum punditry, the sacrifice of blood and treasure to bring freedom to the Iraqis has been a landmark event by virtue of the very attempt….

Well now, Arab League, here you have your long-sought-after dream: The United States spent its own blood to take out a fascist, committed billions in aid to jump start democracy, and lobbied the world to forgive Iraqi debt—only to find either silence from the region’s dictators or their active help for the beheaders and car bombers seeking to inaugurate an 8th-century fascist caliphate. The point? The Iraqi people and the Arab Middle East will soon have to go on record either accepting or rejecting the chance for democracy. If they choose theocracy, anarchy, or autocracy, well, the United States can say at least it tried to offer them a way out of their self-induced misery—but the region turned out to prefer the Dark Ages after all and must be left alone to suffer the consequences of that decision.

If an aggregate $50 billion in aid to Egypt; billions more to the Palestinians and Jordanians; the removal of the bloodthirsty Saddam Hussein and the Taliban; $87 billion invested in Iraq and an attempt to relieve its international debt; saving the Kuwaitis; protecting the Saudis; stopping the genocide of Muslims in the Balkans; and keeping the Persian Gulf safe gets us sky-high cartel oil prices and poll data showing that 95 percent of the Middle East does not like America, it is time to try something else.

I could start with the modest suggestion of a gradual cutting off all aid to Egypt, halting most immigration to the United States from the Middle East (in the manner we once did with Communist Eastern Europe), and announcing a carrot-and-stick non-interventionist Bush Doctrine II. All future Middle East military and economic aid would be predicated on the recipient’s having a democratic government, while evidence of either terrorist bases or weapons of mass destruction would earn sustained U.S. bombing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 10, 2004 04:30 PM | Send