The repugican foreign policy is a tortured and terrifying admixture of
religious dogmatism, political ideology, and corporate thirst for
profit…
“Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this
country or that is the be marked out as the eternal ally or the
perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no
perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those
interests it is our duty to follow.”
– Lord Palmerston, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Speech to the House of Commons, 1848
If you contrast the wise and pragmatic views of Lord
Palmerstone with the rhetoric coming out of the wingnuts of the American
political spectrum, you see at once the problems facing America will not
be ameliorated by repugican victories in 2014 or, the gods forbid, 2016.
The repugican foreign policy, as we stand at the cusp
of the autumn of 2014, can best be described as a tortured and
terrifying admixture of religious dogmatism, political ideology, and
corporate thirst for profit, an alchemy destined to keep America at war
with somebody, somewhere, for any reason that can be conjured, in order
to keep the profits flowing.
Initiatives to promote
political reform should be based on realistic assessments of the needs
and dynamics of each country, not on ideological orthodoxy. As Henry
Kissinger has noted, “a foreign policy to promote democracy needs to be
adapted to local or regional realities, or it will fail. In the pursuit
of democracy, policy — as in other realms — is the art of the possible.
In 2005, Hagel attacked the shrub junta over the Iraq War and in 2006
said, chillingly, “There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq.” One 2006 poll
showed Hagel to be more popular with Democrats than with repugicans.
It should be noted that Chuck Hagel was afterward
nominated by President Barack Obama to be his Secretary of Defense,
despite the fact that Hagel supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and Obama did not, revealing that Obama was less wedded to ideology than
Hagel.
Tellingly, W. James Antlee III wrote at The American wingnut on July 28, 2014,
There is a reason the
campaign against Chuck Hagel was so fierce and Jon Huntsman’s inability
or unwillingness to appeal to wingnuts was so disappointing. With repugicans like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft aging out of government
service, it’s possible that the wingnut foreign-policy
establishment could become a realist-free zone.
But at the same time Antlee is condemning a rigid devotion to ideology, he is embracing christian just war theory, arguing that
“just war theory is an approach to moralizing foreign policy with a
long christian pedigree that is compatible with a strong national
defense but actually limits the resort to arms.”
If, as Antlee asserts, “wingnuts who dissent
from the reflexively hawkish status quo are presently at a
disadvantage,” then embrace of just war theory seems a strange way to
rectify the situation. History has taught us that wingnut christians can find ways to justify a unjust war, as when Rick Santorum defended the indefensible, the crusades:
The idea that the crusades and the fight of christendom against islam is somehow an
aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what
the perception is by the American left who hates christendom.
For Santorum, if you hate on the idea of just war, you hate on christendom itself, and therefore spit in the eye of god.
Or as in when the Iraq War became the latest religious crusade.
The shrub set the tone when on September 16, 2001 he called for a global “crusade” against terrorism, and the idea of a holy war
caught on. This idea of a crusade caught on, and many wingnut christians came to see it as a war against the forces of satan, as when
Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin
told a cult
in Oregon that islamic extremists hate the United States “because we’re
a christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are judeo-christians. … And the enemy is a guy named satan.”
Much as Americans rail against jihad, they are more
than willing to wage the christian equivalent, the crusade. If ISIL is
now waging jihad on Americans on behalf of a caliphate real or imagined,
it is only because they are dancing to a tune we called.
Though Donald Rumsfeld defending Boykin by saying
that the War on Terrorism was “not a war against a religion,” for repugicans, the war on terror has very much become a war against a
religion – islam. In the repugican foreign policy lexicon, the word
“muslim” is now seen as synonymous with “terrorist.”
You can see the fruits of “just war” theory in the words of Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson the other day:
Robertson was promoting his book when Sean Hannity
asked “America’s
preacher” to weigh in with his foreign policy insight on how America
can best respond to radicalized muslims in ISIS. Like a good preacher,
Robertson promptly whipped out his trusty christian bible and began
citing scripture and verse. He read a passage from 1 John chapter 5
where he claimed god almighty divided the world into “two groups of
people; the children of god, or christians, and those under the power of
the evil one” he claimed was ISIS and likely all muslims. He also cited
god’s words in Proverbs 8:36
that “all who hate me, love death.” The two scriptures led him to
conclude that America has a simple foreign policy choice in dealing with the shrub’s spawn; “you either have to convert them, or kill them.
One or the other.”
Right out of the bible. Appeal to just war will not
get us out of this mess, because it got us into this mess, and rather
than moderate a repugican foreign policy, it will inflame it.
Chuck Hagel, if the repugican cabal – which sees
war as the answer to every circumstance – does not, would seem to have
understood Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s injunction that, “Continuity of
policy is not sacrosanct against diversity of circumstance.”
Hagel
identifies “Terrorism [as] a historic and existential challenge that redefines traditional notions of security”:
A wise foreign policy
recognizes that U.S. leadership is determined as much by our commitment
to principle as by our exercise of power. Foreign policy is the bridge
between the United States and the world, and between the past, the
present, and the future. The United States must grasp the forces of
change, including the power of a restless and unpredictable new
generation that is coming of age throughout the world. Trust and
confidence in U.S. leadership and intentions are critical to shaping a
vital global connection with this next generation.
According to Hagel, again in Foreign Affairs,
[A] repugican foreign
policy for the twenty-first century will require more than traditional
realpolitik and balance-of-power politics. The success of our policies
will depend not only on the extent of our power, but also on an
appreciation of its limits. History has taught us that foreign policy
must not succumb to the distraction of divine mission. It must inspire
our allies to share in the enterprise of making a better world. It can
do so by remaining true to seven principles.
This sounds more like the Obama foreign policy than
anything even remotely possible coming from a repugican. For repugicans today, foreign policy IS a divine mission, with even our
national borders established by god. How in the world can the word
realpolitik (realistic or practical politics) ever be used in
conjunction with any reference to repugican foreign policy?
There is nothing quite so frightening to the
imagination as a bunch of warmongers who don’t know what they’re doing
controlling the most powerful military arsenal on earth. What could go
wrong? President Obama may have fumbled his way to peace, as some have
charged, but how is fumbling your way to war in any way an improvement?
