Andrew Golis

Peter Beinart at the New Republic is writing again about why liberals are losing legitimacy on foreign policy(I’m pasting in large sections of the piece because TNR requires a subscription):

Is George W. Bush the new champion of the liberal foreign policy tradition? Ever since the president’s lofty second inaugural, in which he pledged the United States to promote freedom across the globe, conservatives have been emphatically saying “yes”–comparing him to such liberal giants as Woodrow Wilson, Harry S Truman, and John F. Kennedy. Liberals have been saying “yes, but”–acknowledging the moral power of Bush’s words, but claiming that his policies contradict them.

In policy terms, I think the liberal critics are largely right: Bush’s actions don’t match his words. From Russia to Uzbekistan to Equatorial Guinea, the United States has actually drawn closer to a whole series of tyrannies since September 11. And our efforts to promote liberal civil society in the Muslim world–by funding secular education, for instance–have been pathetically meager.

But liberals are losing the argument nonetheless, because Bush’s second inaugural wasn’t about policy. In fact, it was defiantly oblivious to policy– Bush’s speech never even mentioned Iraq, and, the day after he delivered it, administration officials rushed to deny that it had real policy implications.

But that’s exactly the point. Bush’s second inaugural doesn’t challenge liberals at the level of policy; it challenges them at the level of rhetoric. And, unless they respond in kind, they’ll experience the same fate that befell John Kerry. In policy terms, Kerry probably had a more serious democratization agenda than Bush. But, rhetorically, he never matched Bush’s grandeur. And, in the United States, where it is great causes and missionary impulses that rouse citizens to engage with the world, Bush’s language captured the public imagination, and Kerry’s did not.

Beinart goes on to say that liberals should follow in JFK’s foot steps by using a moral rhetoric that admits mistakes and is respectful to the world:

Why is Kennedy’s language a useful alternative to the language of Bush, who famously never admits a mistake? First, because it has a better chance of being taken seriously in the Muslim world. People in the Middle East know their history, even if we don’t. They know that the United States hasn’t traditionally been a force for democracy in their countries. We haven’t just enjoyed passive, see-no-evil relationships with dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, we have actively intervened to overthrow democratic regimes, such as Mohammed Mossadegh’s in 1953 in Iran. It is the refusal to acknowledge this history that makes Bush look so hypocritical and so arrogant in the eyes of many Muslims.

The second reason liberals should seek a language that fuses idealism with humility is that liberals themselves, far more than conservatives, remember the history of anti-democratic American behavior in the Third World. Conservatives consider it irrelevant to the Bush administration’s supposed campaign for democracy that Dick Cheney voted to keep Nelson Mandela in jail and Donald Rumsfeld promoted an alliance between the United States and Saddam Hussein. But grassroots liberals don’t, which means that Democratic politicians, who have to answer to their liberal base, have only two choices: a realist-isolationist language that does not depict the United States as a global democracy-promoter, or an idealism without illusions that recognizes America’s flawed history on questions of global freedom.

But the third reason is the most important: Recognizing past American misdeeds has implications for how the United States promotes democracy today. The assumption that the United States can do no wrong leads naturally to unilateralism: Why sully our democracy-promotion efforts by partnering with other countries, which lack purity of heart? That implication was particularly widespread in the immediate aftermath of Saddam’s overthrow, when conservatives argued against giving Turkey, France, or the United Nations a genuine role in the occupation on the grounds that Iraqis might distrust their motives. (As if the Iraqis didn’t distrust our motives just as much.)

It’s such an important point. Bush isn’t wrong about his stated goal, he’s wrong to think that, without being more honest about our problems and historical shortcomings, anyone would trust him. Democrats, however, are in a place to keep that goal – freedom and democracy for all – and couch it in a more honest and practical light. Beinart concludes:

In 1959, Chester Bowles, soon to become Kennedy’s undersecretary of state, wrote that the world will see us as “no better than we actually are.” Bush’s second inaugural didn’t recognize that. But, for liberals, who need an idealistic language of their own, it’s a good place to start.

Absolutely! The best thing about this idea, in fact, is that it unites far left liberals who are angry with the evils they perceive their country perpetrating throughout the world (and would like to see us admit our shortcomings and be more honest) with human rights internationalists as well as pro-war Democracy at gunpoint types. I think it might just work.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2005 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.