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Sara Cammeresi

Are we all Republicans now? —

Over the past several months, I have become increasingly agitated with the state of The Intellectual Activist. To date, I have granted TIA a very large amount of leniency in spite of the publication schedule being seven months behind, the annoyance of which is only compounded by two of their last three issues consisting of what they call excerpts of TIA's 25-year history. (I call what they are publishing `recycled articles.') Unfortunately, my frustration has reached a boiling point after reading the single article contained in their most recent issue (dated December 2004), with which I have a strong, philosophical disagreement.

The thesis of the article, `Three Elections: America, Ukraine, Iraq, and the Politics of Persuasion,' by Robert Tracinski, is that

In a four-month period, from November through February, three elections changed the course of history. As if designed by a master fiction-writer, each took place under very different circumstances--leaving, as their only common element, the meaning of representative government itself (TIA 1).

According to Tracinski, `the deepest virtue of representative government is epistemological. Representative government is the political system that institutionalizes the subordination of government force to persuasion and rational debate' (TIA 5, emphasis in original). The American presidential election, he writes, `accomplished the primary role of elections in an established, stable, free society: it subjected an issue of crucial national importance to intensive debate, aired both sides of the argument, and rendered a verdict that allowed the winner to move forward unimpeded' (TIA 7).

While I agree that rationality is a virtue, I think it is a mistake to equate rationality with debate in a political context. Rationality, in one's own mind, must consist of examining evidence and arguments for each side of a question and then making a decision on the answer to that question. A process of rational thinking must have a conclusion because it is not an end, but a means to an end. It is for this reason that I also object to the reverent language Tracinski heaps upon political debates. Political debates are not an end; they are a means to the end of maintaining a government that protects men's rights.

Tracinski intimates that a conclusion did occur. The central issue of the election, he writes, was the war on terror, and the debate thereon was `ended' by the election, resulting in Bush receiving a political mandate to persist in, as he quotes Bush saying, `"fighting a continuing war on terror"' (TIA 6). This reasoning is unconvincing. Bush won the popular vote over Kerry by a margin of 51-48. Such a narrow margin hardly justifies calling the debate on the war `ended,' if that was the central issue of the election. Tracinski claims it is significant that `the winning side moved forward with no significant political resistance,' but what were the Democrats supposed to do? Having no majority in either house of the legislature, they simply didn't have the means to oppose the Republicans in any meaningful way.

But what action did this alleged mandate allow? Tracinski writes that it `made possible more vigorous and decisive action to suppress Iraq's terrorist insurgency' (TIA 8). Nine months on from Bush's receipt of this mandate, what `decisive action' has transpired? Tracinski lauds the subduing of Fallujah, but fails to mention that al-Sadr, the leader of that rebellion, came out unscathed, when he should have come out in a body bag. Homemade bombs are still regularly being delivered by suicide bombers. `The terrorists' may have `lost their stronghold,' but that fact seems to have not caused any noticeable effect on their operations (TIA 7).

Even so, the assault on Fallujah was only so long in coming, Tracinski writes, because Bush had overstepped the mandate he received from the 2002 election which permitted his invasion of Iraq on the basis of its alleged nuclear and chemical weapons programmes, and the fact that he stepped beyond his mandate when those programmes turned out to be a sham `contributed to the indecisiveness of American policy in Iraq' (TIA 7). What if this had occurred shortly after his receiving the mandate? Would he have waited two entire years to secure a new mandate? Could Bush's indecisiveness be related to the fact that Bush is a complete pragmatist? Abu Ghraib, anyone? What about his constant bungling regarding the real nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran?

I also think Tracinski's analysis of the Iraqi elections is off-base. He maintains that what is important about the elections is the varied, often wrong philosophies that the electorate bring to the voting booth and that their representatives now bring to the new Iraqi legislature.

[The electorate's] mixture of [secular and religious] motives is part of the point. Under the dictatorships that have traditionally ruled the Middle East, there is no such mix because the worst elements of these societies hold a monopoly on power. In the new Iraqi politics, there are still many people with bad motives, but this is the first time that they will have to debate with, accommodate, and share power with those who have better motives (TIA 13).

While it is true that no one religious party won a majority in Iraq's legislature, that in itself is not enough to guarantee that the legislature cannot be dominated by adherence to Islam. Hitler's Nazi party started with nothing and won 18 per cent of seats in the German legislature in 1930. It swelled to 43 per cent in 1933, shortly after which, Hitler was given dictatorial authority. Numbers are not a substitute for proper ideas.

As evidence for how the lack of one party having a majority in the new Iraqi government will cause the country to be governed by better ideas, Tracinski cites the fact that Islamists have had to drop their demand that the Iraqi constitution name Islam as the `sole legitimate source for the nation's laws' and have instead had to settle for it `[describing] Islam merely as "a source" for Iraqi law' (TIA 15). This is not a victory. To ask whether laws should be decided by faith or a mixture of faith and a little bit of reason is a false alternative, and it will only benefit the more irrational side. This minor political change is not a substitute for proper ideas.

Tracinski maintains, however, that proper ideas are taking root. Regarding this alleged change in America, Tracinski says:

The Forward Strategy of Freedom has made the final transition from being dismissed as an absurd and impossible notion to becoming an uncontested foreign policy consensus. And this new consensus is essentially correct. (TIA 19).

Regarding Iraq, he writes:

What has changed is the nature of the struggle. Our enemies in the War on Terrorism are now clearly forced to fight on two fronts. Their opponent is no longer just the United States of America; they must also fight the growing power of the best among their own people, who have been enlisted as our allies and filled with the hope that they might win (TIA 19, emphasis in original).

This is the fundamental problem with Tracinski's article: that he wrongly equates political change with philosophical change and thus deems these elections to be major historical events.

While I may agree with his analysis along these lines with regard to the Ukrainian election, the results of the American and Iraqi elections are not indicative of any nascent philosophical upheavals because both elections offered false alternatives. In the case of the American election, as John Lewis points out in his HBL post of 16 July 2005, Kerry offered to withdraw from Iraq and let the UN fight America's enemies, whereas Bush offered to fight for the freedom of others so that they could fight America's enemies. No party advocated the unilateral, systematic elimination of America's enemies. In the case of the Iraqi election, the victors are quabbling over how large a role religion should have in government. No one is debating whether it should have a role at all.

What is indicated by these political outcomes is only superficial, not fundamental, and until a large dose of reason is injected into America's political system, no fundamental change is likely to occur.

posted by Sid at 21.43 / 154 in War on Terror     [ Comments: 1 ]