Jim Henley has found that, in his case at least, the old saw is really true–it turns out he really does hate to say “I told you so.” In a long, impassioned, and obviously heartrending piece, he describes the turmoil he feels as he watches his political standpoint vindicated. Jim has argued long and hard against American interventionism, specifically in Iraq, and to him the events in Fallujah, Sadr City, and the other conflict-ridden cities in that country is the terrible, inevitable proof that he’s right.
He’s wrong.
The tragedy of Iraq does not stem from what we are doing now, but from what we failed to do for decades. Ever since the day our leaders realized it no longer behooved them to refer to Stalin as Uncle Joe, we sacrificed to combat communist totalitarianism. This of course was an enemy that needed defeating–a brutal, evil enemy whose tens of millions of victims go largely unremembered and unmourned even today–but in defeating him we embraced another class of evil men. Focused on the menace of Moscow we shook hands with the grinning torturers of the Third World, who fed the anticommunist war machine with the broken bodies of political prisoners, death squad victims, fodder for mass graves. Our religious nation so feared the godless that we joined forces with men whose religion is so pitiless and bloodthirsty as to be essentially godless itself.
We defeated the communists, yes. And the price of our victory was millions of impoverished, maimed, slaughtered innocents, pawns on the chessboard. It was not until a clear September morning three years ago that we truly saw the face of their killers.
Re-read Jim’s post. Look at the statistics he cites–how in a nation of 24 million people, 2.8 million want American soldiers dead. A sobering, horrifying statistic–but how much more horrifying is the logical consequence of the position Jim advocates? How much more horrifying would be an Iraq where these 2.8 million are lord and master over the 21.2 million? For that matter, how much more horrifying was the Iraq where all 24 million bowed to one? How much more horrifying would have been the Iraq where all 24 million bowed to his two sons?
Across the globe the tyrants slaughter with impunity, but it is only when American soldiers attempt to intervene that the doves’ pangs of conscience kick in. When Saddam slaughtered his hundreds of thousands, where were the long dark 30-graf blog posts of the soul then? Such things only appear when American soldiers, who most doves acknowledge the most decent and fastidious fighting force in human history, kill their hundreds. And these are not indiscriminate hundreds. These are not women and children gassed in their homes and fields, these are not the relatives of the tortured rising up and having their homes razed to the ground or their marshes dried up or their daughters raped and murdered. These are the torturers, the theocrats, the terrorists, the brownshirted thugs of the new fascism. And even with these, we are calling for ceasefires, truces, and negotiations. Yet this is what engenders the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. And the depredations of legitimized killers across the globe rage unstemmed.
Jim once had an exchange with blogger Tacitus in which Tacitus challenged non-interventionist libertarians on the terrible and inevitable results of such a policy. Tacitus said
One last thing: Henley objects to my description of libertarian foreign policy as operating on a Kitty Genovese principle as “overheated and….wrong.” It’s certainly wrong inasmuch as it’s not true of all libertarians: I don’t believe the Samizdata crew advocate such moral abdication. But it is, unless I grossly misunderstand him, a perfectly accurate description of the preferred foreign policy of libertarians like Henley (and Justin Raimondo, et al.), who, for all their radical concern for human liberty within the confines of their particular nation, could care less about it abroad. Arguing that courses of action may only be undertaken when and if they directly involve or affect one’s own country requires a morality exclusively predicated on the national interest. This is clearly an absurdity that leads to monstrous ends. No libertarian of this stripe would have forcibly ended American slavery absent a Southern invasion of the North; stopped the Holocaust pre-1939; taken measures against South African apartheid; supported armed intervention against Hutu Power in Rwanda; endorsed an active role opposing the Burmese SLORC; contemplated action against the Taliban before 9/11; raised a hand against impending genocide in Zimbabwe; or lifted a finger to assist the suffering masses subject to starvation, slaughter, and human experimentation in North Korea. Which is not to say that everyone else does; but at least they recognize that such actions would be good things, and this is, I think, a morally superior consciousness. If, to paraphrase Burke, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, then this sort of libertarianism only serves to supply that precondition in spades. Its proponents may thank their stars they have not and probably never will achieve power: they would, in short time, have much to answer for.
To this, Jim replied
[Later on, I will] probably [comment] more on the long, blustery section at the end where Tac indignantly lists a bunch of things I would not, in fact, have had the United States do for the most part, most of which were things that, in the event, the United States didn’t do.
At that point we’re getting into basic principles that are probably worth going into some detail about, one more time, and we will, but what appears to be happening is that Tacitus is basing his morality on the “wouldn’t it be nice if” level of discussion, where I’m at “yeah, but how would that work out in practice.”
Jim’s point is easy enough to figure out: As horrible as all those things are, American intervention to prevent them would have made them worse.
How? How could they possibly have been worse?
By this way of thinking, the current situation in Kosovo, admittedly a debacle, is somehow worse than what would have happened had Milosevic been allowed to continue waging his disgusting genocidal wars of aggression. The current situation in Iraq, admittedly a crisis, is somehow worse than decades of further rule by the Tikriti crime family, with their weapons programs ready to roll after the sanctions were lifted (which they would have been, because they enabled the Husseins to inflict a level of suffering on their people that no one in their right mind could stomach) and their stated aims of dominating the entire region and their young heirs who if anything were worse than the killer who sired them. The situations in Rwanda, in the Confederacy, in Nazi Germany, in all the other times and places Tacitus listed, horrendous crimes and tragedies that they were, are somehow better than they would have been had we attempted to stop them (in some cases sooner, in some cases at all). And the status quo ante in the Middle East–ruled by despots and the men of a murderous god, beset by poverty and ignorance and terror, fed by mindless conspiratorial hatreds, producing thousands of innocent dead not just in its own lands but now in our own–is somehow better off left as it is, and as it has been for decades, and as it inevitably will remain for decades more.
This is unacceptable.
Listen, I don’t think Jim is being callous or cold-hearted–no one who read his cri de coeur could think this of him. But I cannot fathom how the current American intervention in Iraq merits tortured comparisons to Stalingrad, while genocides and mass murders and war crimes innumerable–with body counts that aren’t separated from Stalingrad’s by an order of magnitude, waged by totalitarian murderers that aren’t as dissimilar from Stalingrad’s butchers as is the average G.I.–are tucked quietly away in the “unfortunate, but oh well” category.
I am no nationalist. Unlike Jim, neither am I a right-winger. Though I do not lose sleep over the death of fascist myrmidons, I also do not think that the life of one American is of more inherent value than the life of one innocent Iraqi or Rwandan or Afghan. I do not think my absurd good fortune in having been born free must be preserved without any inconvenience, to the detriment of others who were not so lucky. To me, what makes America unique–what makes America my home–is not a question of geography or nationality or race or sect, but of an idea: an idea of freedom, of equality under law, of the right of people to choose their own destiny. That is why, when Americans are called to fight for that idea in lands other than their own, I weep when they are killed, but I do not despair of the cause for which they died. Indeed, I believe that it was our refusal to fight for this cause–to defend the inherent right of all people to live free–that has put that cause, that idea, in such danger. What happened that clear September morning was that we caught a glimpse of the future, the future if we allow the status quo to continue, if we refuse to do what is right and defeat the killers and tyrants we once ignored. Yes, in the short term the risk may be heightened; for those brave men and women on the front line in Iraq the risk is heightened without a doubt, and my own risk, sitting here shouting on the sidelines, is laughably miniscule compared to it; but for all of us, Americans and Iraqis, Westerners and members of the ummah, the risk of what will happen if the killers remain unchecked is far, far greater. We know they will continue to prey on their countrymen; and I cannot feel safe trusting in their lack of resolve or ability to prey upon us as well. As long as we allow them to live and to reign, the freedom of humanity is endangered and destroyed. To deny this is to deny the moral calling of the age.
I’m as surprised to find myself doing this as I’m sure you are, but on this day of all days I can’t help but think of a particular passage that I find relevant, almost uncomfortably so.
They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James, and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”
Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
For too long we refused the cup, and who cannot understand why? But we cannot refuse it any longer. We must drink deep, and be strong.