Sad, isolationist harrumphing escalates…

Well, here we are again. All that nasty little current of isolationist, xenophobic hate-speech that we heard in the US in the run-up to Bush’s invasion of Iraq– remember the “Axis of Weasel”?–is now coming out again inside the country’s culture in response to the Spanish people’s anti-Aznar vote last Sunday.
And Tom Friedman is leading the charge.
I might have said Dennis Hastert, except I was talking about the national “culture”.
Tom’s piece today– the headline for which, Axis of Appeasement picks up on a concept he features prominently in the text– contrasts starkly with this other view expressed on the same page by Maureen Dowd. Maureen picked up on Hastert’s unbelievable mean-spirited diatribe against the Spanish voters for having chosen to, as he put it, “in a sense, appease terrorists.” She commented:

    The Republicans prefer to paint our old ally as craven rather than accept the Spanish people’s judgment– which most had held since before the war– that the Iraq takeover had nothing to do with the war on terror.

Later, she describes Bush as having given a “Beavis and Butthead” snigger during a short media opportunity with the visiting Dutch Prime Minister. And she writes:

    Now that he hasn’t found any weapons, Mr. Bush says the war was worth it so Iraqis could experience democracy. But when our allies engage in democracy, some Republicans mock them as lily-livered.

You have to admit, she has a point.
Meanwhile, back in Friedman-ville, that particular caped superhero writes:

    Spain is planning to do something crazy: to try to appease radical evil by pulling Spain’s troops out of Iraq– even though those troops are now supporting the first democracy-building project ever in the Arab world.

Okay, Tom, take a deep breath and repeat after me:


“I – will- not- let – the – increasing – desperation – I – feel – because – of – the – problems – in Iraq – drive – me – to – making – unfounded – allegations – against – decent – people…. ”
Supporting the first democracy-building project ever in the Arab world — ? Wouldn’t that be great!! As I noted here, it might, just might, be on the point of happening. But the US has not yet credibly demonstrated any real commitment to making possible the building of democracy in Iraq…
But if that does happen, and if the democracy-building project goes ahead under the only auspices that will make fair elections a real possibility–those of the UN– then Spanish PM-elect Zapatero has already told us that his forces will be there to support that mission.
So here’s another suggestion to my old bud, Tom Friedman. After you’ve taken a few more deep breaths, could you think of apologizing to the Spanish voters and their new leaders for having plastered that ugly great Scarlet ‘A’ on their foreheads? And could you signal your real readiness to engage in a respectful worldwide discussion–including Iraqis and non-Iraqis– of how the desired end of free elections in Iraq is to be reached?
Being a democrat, after all, means a lot more than just casting your vote in an election, or supporting the organizing of elections all around the world. At its core, what it means is a readiness to understand that decent, honest people can disagree about serious subjects; but that there are ways to work out those disagreements through consultation and dialogue rather than name-calling, threats, vitriol, and violence.
So Tom, notch down the rhetoric, why don’t you. Then people might take you more seriously as someone who might truly espouse–and be prepared to live by–democratic ideals at the worldwide level.
One thing Tom Friedman might usefully go back and look at–if, indeed, he ever bothers to read anyone else’s writings these days–is this Op-Ed piece by Ian Buruma that appeared in the NYT yesterday.
Buruma is a very thoughtful essayist and writer who has written movingly about many aspects of global culture–as well as about what it was like for him, growing up in the Netherlands in the post-Nazi-Occupation era. He writes:

    One year later, most of the stated reasons for invading Iraq have been discredited. But advocates of the war still have one compelling argument: our troops are not there to impose American values or even Western values, but “universal” ones. The underlying assumption is that the United States itself represents these universal values, and that freedom to pursue happiness, to elect our own leaders and to trade in open markets, should be shared by all, regardless of creed, history, race or culture.
    Some might question whether America is as shining an example of these good things as is often claimed. Nonetheless, spreading them around is certainly a more appealing policy than propping up “our” dictators in the name of realpolitik. Still, history shows that the forceful imposition of even decent ideas in the claim of universalism tends to backfire ? creating not converts but enemies who will do anything to defend their blood and soil…

He notes, quite accurately,

    One problem with American troops’ liberating the Middle East is that it confirms the opinions of both Muslims and Westerners who see the Iraq war as part of a religious war, a “clash of civilizations” in the phrase of the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington…
    The real question for the Western universalists, then, is whether the cause of moderate Muslims is helped by the revolutionary war that has been set off by the American and British armies. For that is what the war in Iraq is: not a clash of civilizations, but a revolution unleashed through outside force…

And he reaches this sobering conclusion:

    In the face of what is seen as continued Western aggression, it is harder for Muslims in any country to take a strong stand against fellow Muslims for fear of being branded as traitors…

Who knew? Who would have thought it?
Plenty of us, as it happens: all those of us who warned that “democracy” is not something that can be delivered on the tip of a cruise missile, or implanted into another country by brute force…
All those of us who realized that, for all the claims by some naive Americans about the “universality” of the values they claim to represent (but don’t, as Buruma notes, always actually live by), in fact those values are not “universal”, but only one, particularly American form of highly individualistic, free-market liberalism.
Many Americans, Denny Hastert probably included, I am inclined to forgive for the essential provincialism of their views in this regard. I mean, this country is just so darned huge that the vast majority of US citizens have never traveled to a foreign country– and a startling proportion even of our legislators have never bothered to apply for passports. So what do they know, sitting here in their secure little citadel of free-market individualism?
Tom Friedman, however, I am inclined to hold to a higher standard. We can’t totally excuse him on the grounds of lack of awareness of other cultures and other approaches to the project of democracy. He knows, much more than Denny Hastert, whereof he speaks. So I guess we have to conclude that it is not ignorance that drives him to his extremes of vitriol and rhetorical illiberalism. I think he must, at some level, be an ideologically committed adherent of the doctine of “liberal imperialism.”
But Tom, it’s never too late to change your mind!!

18 thoughts on “Sad, isolationist harrumphing escalates…”

  1. With all respect, I don’t understand why Tom “France-is-an-enemy!” Friedman’s reaction surprises you. The fact that Spain, where 92% opposed the war (more, IIRC, than France or Germany), was a member of the CotW, must have been like one of those 19th century whalebone girdles for poor Tom.
    Uh-oh…Shakespeare moment coming on….
    Gerg! Uarg! Must…not…make… joke…from… King Lear…Argh! Can’t help it!

    EDGAR (Within): Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!

    (The Fool runs out from the hovel)
    FOOL: Come not in here, nuncle, here’s a spirit…Help me, help me!
    KENT: Give me thy hand. Who’s there?
    FOOL: A spirit, a spirit: he says his name’s poor Tom.
    EDGAR: This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth!
    […]
    Poor Tom; that eats the swimming frog, the toad,
    the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water; that in
    the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages,
    eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the
    standing pool; who is whipped from tithing to
    tithing, and stock- punished, and imprisoned; who
    hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body, horse to ride, and weapon to wear;
    But mice and rats, and such small deer,
    Have been Tom’s food for seven long year.
    Beware my follower. Peace, Smulkin; peace, thou fiend!

    Sorry, Helena, I think I’m over that. It’s a malady I betook when I spoke the forbidden name of the Scottish play. But emerging from character, I beseech readers to imagine that Edgar is method-acting Poor Tom with mouth-foaming, writhing, shivering naked veracity, rolling his eyes and shrieking with such ardor that Lear’s Fool is for once deprived of any repartee.

  2. Gloss on the text: may I? I’m a little nutty about this stuff.
    Long ago I tried to get readers excited about modern parallels between Shakespeare plays and current events. One of my favorite tropes was the Lear=the passive segment of the US population, Cordelia represented the earnest antiwar Americans, the Fool represented an irreverent tendency which takes nothing seriously, and the jingoists were the wicked sisters Goneril and Regan. If you’re not familiar with the play, just avoid any production associated with the BBC (my God, their acting is HORRIBLE!).
    “Flibertigibbet”–taken from “Popish Impostures,” includes 40 demon names, all from then-popular songs. But the OED etymology suggests idle, frivolous chatter, whilst I suspect it’s from filbert-o’-gibbet, a withered prune-line thing on the public gibbets commonplace in Europe to about the early 19th cent.
    “web and pin” = cataracts in the eye
    “sallets” = salads
    “ditch-dog” = carcass of a dog, “road kill”
    “Green-mantle” = pond scum, obviously, but consider this from John Buchan’s WW1 thriller Greenmantle:

    Then began some varied experiences. I used to wake up in the morning, wondering where I should be at night, and yet quite pleased at the uncertainty. Greenmantle became a sort of myth with me. Somehow I couldn’t fix any idea in my head of what he was like. The nearest I got was a picture of an old man in a turban coming out of a bottle in a cloud of smoke, which I remembered from a child’s edition of the Arabian Nights. But if he was dim, the lady was dimmer. Sometimes I thought of her as a fat old German crone, sometimes as a harsh-featured woman like a schoolmistress with thin lips and eyeglasses. But I had to fit the East into the picture, so I made her young and gave her a touch of the languid houri in a veil. I was always wanting to pump Blenkiron on the subject, but he shut up like a rat-trap. He was looking for bad trouble in that direction, and was disinclined to speak about it beforehand.

    Oh weep for Tom–he is stupid.

  3. I think what we see in operation here is the cultural blindness typical of nations that have triumphant power: “We are at the pinnacle of the world power because we along understand what it takes to succeed. You have to adopt our principles and values if you even hope to acquire anything close to the kind of success we have.” Such myopia, of course, lead to unbridled arrogance and eventually to isolation from the real world. That seems to be where the U.S. is today.

  4. Well, JRM, all I can say to you is, “Marry, nuncle!”
    I do, however, like the concept of “Poor Tom … that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets” (and, I might add, sometimes seems to serve the same delicacy for arguments).

  5. In my haste I neglected to explain the significance of Greenmantle; in the spirit you mentioned serving up cow-dung for arguments, “Poor Tom” mentions that he drinks the green mantle of the standing pond. In other cultures, this is a popular metaphor for imbibing utter delusion. The Greenmantle of John Buchan’s WW1-era thriller was a sort of Wassmuss character (Wilhelm Wassmuss was a German diplomat and secret agent who spoke Persian and Turkish. When the War broke out, he attempted to lead an anti-British uprising from Bushehr, Iran); but in Buchan’s mind, Greenmantle is supposed to be a sort of madhi, or messiah, of s.w. Asia; the nefarious Turks and Germans natually manufacture an imposter to lead this uprising, which the narrator foils a la James Bond.
    The novel Greenmantle was a huge success because it appealed to popular images of the Arabs, images later pilloried in Sa’id’s Orientalism (the Gerome painting on the cover of the paperback edition of Sa’id’s book says it all!).

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