Monday, March 7, 2010

I know this is just one of what are probably many conservative voices who see traces of W. in the 'Arab Spring,' but this is the first such piece I actually got sucked into reading.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer writes:

Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the United States has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance and imperialism.

A strange moral inversion, considering that Hussein's evil was an order of magnitude beyond Gaddafi's. Gaddafi is a capricious killer; Hussein was systematic. Gaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture and mass murder, gassing entire villages to create what author Kanan Makiya called a "Republic of Fear."

"Everyone," writes Krauthammer, "is a convert to George W. Bush's freedom agenda."

Brother...

Does Krauthammer really not recognize the difference between supplying assistance to a home-grown revolt that is already underway and attacking a country in retaliation for a provocation, 9/11, that it had nothing to do with?  

The issue, of course, with W's "freedom agenda" wasn't the "freedom" part. That's the part that just about everybody was okay with. It was the part about launching a war and occupation of Iraq, a set of events which has shattered the lives of millions of Iraqis and of a much smaller number of Americans, and which has thus far cost the United States at least $3 trillion.

(Krauthammer, by the way, is another fake deficit hawk—but hey, you can't put a price on freedom!)

What was original, sort of, in W's approach was a quality that some people would call boldness, and which others would call recklessness. His concept of regime change through force has absolutely nothing to do with what is going on in Libya right now.

***
Here is another interesting section from Krauthammer's piece:

America is leaving Iraq having taken no oil, having established no permanent bases, having left behind not a puppet regime but a functioning democracy. This, after Iraq's purple-fingered exercises in free elections seen on television everywhere set an example for the entire region.

Oh really? What does it mean to 'take' oil? Does the signing of a series of no-bid contracts between western oil companies and the government of Iraq not, at least in the minds of some people, bear some relation to 'taking' Iraqi oil? A more western business-friendly climate in Iraq created by force of arms. True, the US government did not benefit economically from this, nor did American taxpayers. Instead, a small group of oil companies benefited.

And does Charles Krauthammer honestly believe that the US is not in Iraq permanently? We're already signed up for four more years in Afghanistan—a date that is far enough ahead in the future that we can't possibly say what the situation will be like then. 2014. Does anybody really believe we will be out of there by then? Does anybody really believe the US will willingly leave Iraq and allow the Iraqi government to just become whatever it becomes?

Actions beget actions, and occupation begets more occupation—after all the blood and money that has gone into this thing, future US presidents will feel a responsibility to intervene again in Iraq, if it seems necessary.

It's disingenuous to argue that the US has 'taken no oil' or 'established no bases' when the US has most certainly made the business climate much easier for foreign oil companies by creating a government that is much more amenable to American concerns more generally. One way or another, we'll be there if we think it's necessary. The only way we will clear out of there totally will be if we are confident that the government there is relatively stable and capable of defending itself.


I don't think the US will leave either Iraq or Afghanistan anytime soon—not by choice, at any rate

***
But back to Libya: the government of Muammar Qaddafi was, in fact, one of the few Middle Eastern states whose relations with the United States actually improved during the W. administration. Back in late 2003, Qaddafi was the Arab flavor of the month in the Bush White House, with Libya's renunciation of nuclear and chemical weapons trumpeted by the W. crew as vindication of the invasion of Iraq. Here's what Bush said about Qaddafi back then:

"With today's announcement by its leader, Libya has begun the process of rejoining the community of nations. And Colonel Gaddafi knows the way forward. Libya should carry out the commitments announced today." 

The W. administration didn't care about freedom—they only used a lack of freedom in some countries as an excuse for pushing them around. Qaddafi was embraced because he made Bush and the Iraqi invasion look good, but he was no more of a democrat then than he is now.

In the former USSR, meanwhile, W's 'freedom agenda' was equally sordid. Condoleeza Rice called for the overthrow of Belarus President Lukashenko, but what was the W. administration's attitude towards Azerbaijan? Predictably tolerant of real tyranny, paid for and supported by American businesses eager to earn money from Azeri oil and gas holdings.


"Freedom, shmeedom, there's bushels of dough to be made here!"

Talking about freedom constantly and then working to advance it only when it suits your interests does absolutely nothing to promote freedom in a general sense. Instead, it just makes everybody else view you with cynicism and distrust. That's why Bush's freedom agenda is remembered as a sick joke by just about everybody outside the United States, the Middle East in particular. And that is also why the Obama administration has been smart to tread carefully in the Middle East thus far. (In particular, I'm glad the US hasn't engaged—or at least been caught engaging—in boneheaded ploys like the UK's 'James Bond' mission. Stuff like that just hurts the credibility of the opposition).

W's 'freedom agenda' has perhaps had an indirect impact on the shake-ups that have occurred, in the sense that instability can lead to other forms of (unanticipated) instability. But the 'freedom agenda' wasn't really about being free. Instead, what the 'freedom agenda' really constituted was an American willingness to wage war—one that really did advance the interests of oil companies and military industry types—on other countries in the name of freedom.

Something tells me this is a principle that would find relatively little support on the streets of Libya, or anywhere else in the region for that matter.