Imperial Ambitions by DAVID BARSAMIAN

Author:DAVID BARSAMIAN
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Published: 2005-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

SIX

THE DOCTRINE OF GOOD INTENTIONS

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS (NOVEMBER 30, 2004)

You’ve written about the “doctrine of good intentions.” Occasionally U.S. policy is marred by the proverbial “bad apples” and “tragic mistakes” but basically the record of our goodness continues unimpeded.

The standard story in scholarship and in the media is that there are two conflicting tendencies in U.S. foreign policy. One is what’s called Wilsonian idealism, which is based on noble intentions. The other is sober realism, which says that we have to realize the limitations of our good intentions. Sometimes our noble intentions can’t be properly fulfilled in the real world. Those are the only two options.

You see this not just in the United States. Take England. Probably the best newspaper in the world is the Financial Times in London. The Financial Times printed a column a few days ago by one of their leading columnists, Philip Stephens, that was quite critical of U.S. policy. The problem, he says, is that U.S. strategy is overly dominated by Wilsonian idealism. You need a few drops of sober, “hardheaded realism” to temper this passionate dedication to democracy and freedom.1

And Stephens goes on to say that there can no longer be any doubt that George Bush and Tony Blair are motivated by their vision and faith in democracy and rights. We know this because they’ve said so, and that proves it. But we have to be more realistic and acknowledge that, although Bush and Blair are dedicated to what the press calls “the Bush messianic mission to graft democracy onto the rest of the world.” We must understand that Iraqis and others in the Middle East may not be able to rise to the heights that we have planned for them.2

As the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq have collapsed—no weapons of mass destruction, no Al Qaeda tie to Iraq, no connection between Iraq and 9/11—Bush’s speechwriters had to conjure up something new. So they conjured up his messianic vision to bring democracy to the Middle East. When Bush gave his speech announcing his new vision, the leading commentator at the Washington Post, David Ignatius, a respected editor and correspondent, just fell over in awe. He described the Iraq war as perhaps “the most idealistic war fought in modern times—a war whose only coherent rationale, for all the misleading hype about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda terrorists, is that it toppled a tyrant and created the possibility of a democratic future.” This vision of a “democratic future” is led, according to Ignatius, by the “idealist in chief,” Paul Wolfowitz, who has probably the most extreme record of passionate hatred of democracy of anybody in the administration. But it doesn’t matter. The proof is that Ignatius was with Wolfowitz when he went to the town of Hilla and spoke to Iraqis about Alexis de Tocqueville.3 Hilla also happens to be the town where the first major U.S. massacre of Iraqis during the invasion took place, but put that aside, as well.4

Ignatius represents one side of the spectrum.

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