Economaton

Peter Berkowitz’ harried defense of neoconservativism could only have appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Well, if it was less erudite and shouted, it could probably make it onto FOX News, too. He does a good job of sugar coating a morally bankrupt philosophy based on equal measures of self-glorifying arrogance, greed, and wilful deception of the public in flag-waving red, white, and blue candy stripes. After nearly eight years of application by perhaps the worst president in history, neoconservativism is singlehandedly responsible for starting a war without foreseeable end, causing immeasurable loss of life and human suffering, tarnishing our reputation and moral integrity on the world stage, and saddling us all with an enormous debt that will take decades to pay off. The war was financed by setting dangerously low interest rates for years, sparking the real estate bubble which has led to the current recession. This was all undertaken as a barefaced grab for oil and military contracts for the neocons and their friends, under the cover of blatant lies about nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” and spurious allegations of Iraqi links to Al Qaeda.

One wonders how, at this late date, Berkowitz can still be repeating Karl Rove’s stale Iraq “stay the course” talking points with a straight face. More stunningly, he claims that neoconservativism “insists that government policy should be judged not by the hopes of advocates and intentions of decision makers, but by real world consequences,” then makes the absurd proclamation that “the failure of today’s neoconservatives to anticipate the challenges of postwar reconstruction does not discredit neoconservativism” in the same breath.

Neoconservativism: The Ends Justify The Means (and Make Us Rich)

Or, “Democracy is Only for Those Who Earn It”

“The problem,” he says, “is not that we were too neoconservative, but that we were not neoconservative enough.” By this, he means that the US didn’t make a long-term commitment upfront to an undemocratic social engineering project lasting “decades, if not centuries” in Iraq. And hey, the whole process will be self-financing with all that oil lying around over there!

Democracy, you see, is not a right in the neoconservative worldview, but must be earned. The neoconservatives themselves are, of course the self-appointed arbiters of who is worthy. They believe that some peoples are simply too socially primitive to merit such a lofty form of government. Through a sense of benevolent noblesse oblige, countries such as the United States ought to hold them under our benevolent tutelage, by force if need be, for as long as necessary to create the “material and moral preconditions of freedom and democracy” (i.e. US-style capitalism that furthermore shares profits generously with American companies), so that one day in the distant future they might become like us.

To achieve this ultimately chivalrous aim, any means to that end are both acceptable and encouraged, including murder, torture, authoritarianism, wars of conquest, and lying. And, of course, the subject people being “helped” are expected to pay for all this themselves (this is, after all, still a form of capitalism.) It’s a sort of sneering, haughty “father knows best” condescension reminiscent of nothing so much as the attitudes of the European conquistadores towards the natives when they first reached America and began burning Indians at the stake to save their heathen souls. Through the cracks in their arguments, we can see the barely disguised self-congratulatory greed that is the hallmark of the entire neoconservative movement.

Though Berkowitz claims “fierce pride in American constitutional government,” beyond his flatulent pseudopatriotism, he could hardly be more anti-democratic. Human rights, he believes, are only for countries that earn them by conforming to exactly the sort of capitalism he espouses. America ought to support governments that respect individual rights and govern with the consent of the governed only “to the extent possible” in light of other overreaching goals (such as stamping out socialism and ensuring that multinational corporations continue to make lots of money); “democratization is not always the answer to authoritarian regimes — particularly if they are friendly to the US.”

He cites Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships and Double Standards” as a “seminal document” of neoconservativism, a wretched moral failure used to justify US support for all manner of atrocities by bloody tyrants the world over in places that were not deemed “ready” to handle the responsibilities of democracy — which in practice usually meant that they elected socialists when given the chance to vote. “Democracy” means accepting the results of the election even if you don’t agree with the victor, so obviously further rationalization is needed: “[Neoconservativism] holds that freedom and democracy depend on qualities of mind and character that do not arise automatically, but must be cultivated by the family and civil society.” Electing a socialist leader is taken as ipso facto evidence that a society does not possess these qualities, and thus ought to have its democracy stripped by force until such time as the populace can be re-educated to the “correct” modes of thought.

This articulated policy and its antecedents are to blame for the open US support of numerous brutal dictatorships the world over, including the regime of a young Iraqi officer named Saddam Hussein. Oh yes, that Saddam Hussein.

The neoconservative cheerleaders for invading Iraq always seem to forget in their diatribes on the “tens of thousands, mainly children, who were dying each year” under Hussein that these and other atrocities were well known and supported for many years by neoconservatives in the United States government. They had Saddam Hussein installed in a coup arranged by the CIA and openly supported him for years as a reliable ally against Communism, part of this selfsame policy — that is, to favor brutal tyrants over democracy when democracy elects governments that the business leaders of the US don’t like. And despite allowing his heart to bleed for a moment for the children of Iraq, Berkowitz sheds not a tear for those suffering under other oppressive dictators and starving in countries that either have friendly dictators or are not situated atop vast subterranean lakes of oil.

Neocons Aren’t as Clever as They Think

Or, Foreigners Are Not Necessarily Dumb

The neoconservatives arrogantly and foolishly believe that the rest of the world is either too stupid to realize what they’re up to, or else will invariably be nothing but grateful for the magnanimous moral sacrifices that the neocons subject themselves to on their behalf so that they might one day taste true Freedom. The net result is that neoconservative foreign policy has engendered unprecedented ill will towards the United States. Though the US has long been admired the world over for its commitment to democracy, the avarice-driven neoconservative policy of pressing US-style capitalism at all costs, including via the active suppression of democracy, legitimately calls that commitment into question. The transparent ploys they use to publicly rationalize the suppression of democratically elected governments simply adds insult to injury and further worsens the moral standing of the United States in the world.

Herein lies the neoconservatives’ true colors: neoconservativism is a morally bankrupt rationalization for co-opting and then tossing aside the principles of liberal democracy whenever it is in the financial interests of the neoconservatives and their friends among the business elite to do so. Any use of force, any atrocity at all can thus be rationalized: a country that doesn’t simply do whatever they want (in the sense of agreeing to funnel economic output to the elites of Western Europe and the United States) is, ipso facto, not sufficiently advanced to merit a democratic government. The neocons therefore feel justified in using force to overthrow the democracy, and take whatever measures they deem necessary to “educate” the populace so that they might one day (in the distant future) reach the true capitalist Utopia. Then, they send the subject nation a bill for their services.

Berkowitz’ Rationale for Invading Iraq

Nothing New Here.

Berkowitz begins by suggesting that neocons drew a false analogy between Iraq and eastern Europe, and thought that Iraq would just peacefully adopt democracy once given the chance to do so. On this point, I agree with Mr. Berkowitz completely, though I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t agree with me that this merely evinces the vast cultural, political, historical, and philosophical myopia and self-absorption that informs neoconservative thought generally. He then argues that this was just a minor tactical error which does not discredit neoconservativism per se, because focusing on this “is to lose sight of neoconservative teachings about the material and moral preconditions of freedom and democracy.” In other words, we ought to judge neoconservativism not by the real world consequences of its policies, but by the hopes of its advocates and the intentions of the decision makers who implemented them.

Following more jingoistic, self-laudatory rhetoric and a pair of irrelevant jabs at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Berkowitz then proceeds to read verbatim from the 2002 Karl Rove playbook, dusting off ancient talking points and parroting them off again once more: he alleges that Saddam Hussein had “WMD” ( no sign of which has ever been found, despite nearly five years of US occupation); that Saddam Hussein was colluding with Al Qaeda (despite the government’s own assessment by the CIA and FBI that there was no such link); that Hussein ignored “international agreements and international law” (though the Bush administration itself does this openly, as a matter of policy.)

He speaks of the disastrous consequences that a wholesale withdrawal by the US would have for the Iraqi people and others. Here, I again agree. A unilateral withdrawal would indeed be a disaster at this point. The US made this mess, and so we need to take responsibility for it and clean it up — and we also need to ensure that the neoconservatives who instigated this situation in the first place are held fully accountable for the actions and decisions they made that led us here. However, this is more disingenuity on Berkowitz’ part. He is ostensibly defending the decision to invade Iraq in the first place; this point is utterly irrelevant to that question (and as the holder of a master’s degree in philosophy, Berkowitz undoubtedly knows that this is an example of the red herring logical fallacy.)

Beyond its immense human tragedies, the Iraq war has been a vast windfall for oil and construction companies hired by the Bush administration under shady circumstances to rebuild the war-torn nation and its oil infrastructure with US taxpayer dollars — not to mention vast armies of mercenaries who are apparently only minimally accountable for their actions, all with more or less open links to the neoconservative movement.

Berkowitz offers no concrete suggestions and merely recycles prewar rhetoric, much as the White House has had playing on an endless loop tape for four years, and talks vaguely of the need to “make a long term commitment” (rather like the long-term commitment the Romans made to Gaul.) This article exists only to try to draw mainstream conservatives back into the crumbling and disgraced neoconservative wing of the Republican Party.