"Can the Neocons Get Their Groove Back?" A response

In the Washington Post's Outlook section on Sunday, November 19, my friend Joshua Muravchick published an essay under the above title to which I felt compelled to respond. I have done so privately. This is part of what I said:

Having been, to a small degree, in at the birth of the neo-con movement and having shared its position on the Cold War, I agree that the movement performed a great service during that period. However, contrary to your position, I now hope that the neo-con movement is dead with a stake through its heart. It died or should have died of hubris and unwillingness to engage or even to tolerate differing opinions.

We invaded Iraq is large part because of neo-con influence and the purpose of the invasion was, I believe, never publicly stated by the Bush Administration. The invasion had nothing to do with 9/11. Evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden was not just flimsy; it was laughable. Yes, everyone thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction but that was not the issue. The issue was whether Saddam Hussein's assumed possession of WMD constituted an imminent danger to the U.S. or whether there was time to push for more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency and to seek aggressive sanctions against Iraq through the U.N. Security Council if Iraq failed to cooperate with the IAEA. My view is that the Bush Administration wanted to act preemptively, avoiding the diplomatic track, avoiding the need to assemble a sizable military coalition that might have complicated matters unnecessarily (from the Administration's standpoint). Finally, I don't believe that invading Iraq had anything to do with Saddam's brutality toward his own people -- and I doubt seriously that hope of establishing "democracy" in Iraq was anything but a rhetorical flourish. If anyone in the Bush Administration or in the neo-con cheering section actually believed that democracy was a realistic possibility in Iraq, then they were even less firmly anchored in reality than I thought.

The real purpose of invading Iraq was to change the dynamic in the Middle East, putting pressure on Iran and Syria, stablizing the position of the Gulf States (and preserving access to their oil supplies) and improving Israel's security. That was the concept inherent in the famous letter that Bill Krystal initiated, and I heard it articulated in October 2000, prior to the election, by someone who later played a key role in the decision to invade. The concept was so "brilliant" that no one dared speak about it publicly because Congress and the American people would have rejected it decisively as a reason to go to war. Its proponents were convinced that the outcome they wished was so much of a sure thing that independent experts on Iraq were not consulted and no one was allowed to think about, much less plan, for the day after "mission accomplished."

Chalabi and his friends were consulted, of course, but they expected to inherit the country. Outside experts, if asked, could have told anyone prepared to listen that Iraq was a fragile construct left behind by the British when they withdrew from the area and that ruthlessness and brutality were all that held the Sunnis, the Shi'as and the Kurds together against the will of both the Shi'as and the Kurds. Except that Iraq's geography and distribution of oil resources isn't very neat, Peter Galbraith's idea of dividing Iraq along national and confessional lines would be a credible solution (if there is a solution).

While I never studied comparative politics in graduate school, my perception is that the sine qua non of democracy is not elections, not even "free" elections, but a commitment to the "rule of law." Countries we all acknowledge as democracies come in many different shapes and sizes: parliamentary and presidential systems, Constitutional monarchies, presidents that function as head of state but not as head of government, two-party systems, multi-party systems, majority rule, plurality rule, so many parties that coalition governments are compulsory, etc., etc. The one thing they all share is the "rule of law" whether embodied in a Constitution enforced by an independent judiciary, an unwritten constitution established over centures of tug and haul, or fundamental laws forming a non-existent constitution that is somehow interpreted and enforced by a High Court that is regularly assailed but nevertheless obeyed. Germany and Japan became democracies under the management of occupying powers which in Germany's case revived laws and institutions which the Nazis had abolished and in Japan's case mandated a Constitution and the rule of law under a Constitutional Monarchy which the Japanese accepted because they were accustomed to following orders.

I believe that Institutions must be established and firmly grounded in basic laws before democracy can begin to develop. And in addition to the "rule of law" there must be certain identifiable "rights" which the State simply may not breach -- rights similar to, though not necessarily identical to, those embodied in the First Amendment. Iraq never had the makings of a democracy. It's not clear that it has the makings of a viable government of any description.

On the larger issue of what is feasible in the Middle East, Josh Muravchick identified several countries -- Morocco and certain of the Gulf principalities and he might have added Jordan -- in which space for public discourse has widened. (He should not have included Egypt in that list. Things have gotten worse there, not better, since the last "free election.) But space for public discourse is a tiny step, and the road to democracy is very, very long. If it becomes possible to talk about guaranteed space for public discourse and rights of individuals which are enforceable under the law, then it is possible, barely possible, that democracy can begin to develop. Not very long ago, we were congratulating ourselves on the "growth of democracy" in Latin America but events have shown how quickly democracy can be made to disappear unless undergirded by Institutions and rights that do not yet exist in most of Latin America.

As I explained to Josh, I once considered myself a neo-con or at least a "fellow traveler" of the neo-con movement. I abandoned it largely because its leading practitioners veered toward the extremes and practiced a form of debate in which even the mildest form of dissent was greeted with withering contempt. They were absolutely certain of their position down to the smallest detail. When I was in graduate school, I was led to (or might have stumbled across) a famous intellectual battle between Max Eastman and Sidney Hook which generated hundreds of pages of argument and counter-argument with nary a concession that the other guy might actually have a point worth considering. I found the debate fascinating at first and nauseating by the end. Neo-con debates remind me of Eastman versus Hook. Never admit doubt, never concede a point to the other side.

Too many of the neo-cons hold absolute convictions and are utterly unwilling to engage in the give-and-take of genuine intellectual exploration. It's been alternately amusing and disgusting to watch some of them swim furiously away from the sinking ship of Administration policies in Iraq which they helped formulate and cheered wildly until things began to go wrong. If only they'd done what I told them to do but "they" wouldn't listen.

The neo-con position began as a rejection of the McGovern movement by disillusioned Democrats -- a rejection of Democratic extremism. One of our number used to assert: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me." I feel the same same about neo-conservatism. The neo-cons veered toward the extreme -- as ideologues are wont to do -- and they've left me where I have been ever since I grew up, in the moderate middle.