Thomas Jefferson, the fourth president of the USA and the principal framer of our Declaration of Independence, is something of a local icon here in Charlottesville, his hometown. Today, my esteemed friend and colleague R.K. Ramazani, a professor emeritus of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia (which was founded by TJ) had a very timely op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer titled What would Jefferson say about Iraq?
The main points there:
- In contrast to Bush, Thomas Jefferson, the intellectual father of America, decried what today are called “wars of choice.” He clearly considered the one war for which he was U.S. commander in chief, the war against the Barbary Pirates, a defensive war. He said he banished “the legitimacy of war to dark ages” and in 1797 said, “I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.” While Jefferson would have seen U.S. military operations in Afghanistan as justified after 9/11, he would not have advocated a so-called preventive attack on Iraq…
Jefferson would have opposed the imposition of democracy on any society by military action for several reasons. He believed that coercion is incompatible with liberty and that a society must undergo an evolutionary process before it will embrace democracy and the liberal values of justice, public education and a free press necessary for it to function. Jefferson would have faulted the Bush administration’s launch of democratization in Iraq without regard to the realities of Iraqi society, in which most people still have higher loyalties to family, religion and tribe than to the nation-state…
Instead, if asked how best to spread democracy, Jefferson would have suggested three alternative and peaceful methods. First among these would be America’s own example of liberal democratic practices. In 1801, he wrote: “A just and solid republican government here will be a standing monument and example for the aim and imitation of people of other countries.”
Second would be effective use of what we now call public diplomacy… He wrote in 1810: “No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its supporting free and good government.”
Third, and most important… he would have advocated expanding American educational initiatives…. In his memorable words: “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
And regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, Jefferson would have insisted on upholding the principles of international law in general, and the Geneva Conventions in particular… More than 200 years ago, Jefferson urged that Americans should endeavor “as far as possible to alleviate the inevitable miseries of war by treating captives as humanity and national honor requires.”
Having provided us all with some great insights into how this important Founding Father of US democracy would have viewed the 43rd president’s actions in Iraq today, Ramazani concludes thus:
- Jefferson would have been appalled by Bush’s misguided policy in the Middle East as tactically shortsighted, strategically ineffective, and above all, dishonorable. He would have … endorsed the efforts of Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) and other congressional leaders to put the brakes on Bush’s foreign policy and redirect the country, even in these difficult times, to a path that preserves the morals of our founders: duty, justice and national honor.
Otherwise, what are we defending?
Well written!
All very interesting about Thomas Jefferson who also admitted that “wherever a man has set his sights on high office, a rotteness begins in his conduct.” Let us by all means bash George W. Bush who deserves all the lashes we can lay upon him and more besides, but let us not lose sight of the role his predecessor played to perfection.
On his website, “Informed Comment,” Juan Cole criticises, appropriately, a FAUX NEWS interviewer for maligning President Bill Clinton for not apprehending Osama Bin Laden. Yet I felt compelled to add additional background that even more appropriately applies to our situation in Iraq today. As I wrote to the good Professor Cole:
Please don’t get me wrong. I have no use whatsoever for Republican State Cable Television, otherwise euphemistically known as FAUX NEWS. Furthermore, former President Bill Clinton has every right to attack Republican Party smear campaigns against him. Still, your criticism of the program in question misses the truly awful point about the essentially vapid farce that superficially passes for political discourse in America today. If the interviewer in question had really wanted to nail Bill Clinton — and thus educate the American people — he could have easily done so by simply referring to Seymour Hersh’s interview (almost a year ago) with Scott Ritter, former head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051114/ritter
Of course, had the moronic interviewer done so, he would have had to nail George W. Bush as hard or even harder. This, of course, he would not do out of abject deference to his current Republican masters; so you got another irrelevant tempest in a teapot about Osama bin Laden who has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to Iraq during either the Clinton or Bush administrations. Face it: if they talk about something on America’s infotainment networks, you can take that very fact as evidence of the topic’s irrelevance. The interviewer should have brought up the following:
“MR. RITTER: Look, the American policy [under Bill Clinton] was regime change. At first they wanted to be passive, we’re just going to contain Saddam through economic sanctions, and he’s going to collapse of his own volition in six months. That failed. [Then] We’re going to put pressure on the Iraqis, and we’re going to get some Sunni general to apply the 75-cent solution–the cost of a 9 mm bullet put in the back of Saddam’s head–and the Sunni general will take over. If you want proof positive about the corrupt nature of our regime-change policy, understand this, it wasn’t about changing the regime. It wasn’t about getting rid of the Baathist party or transforming Iraq into a modern democracy back in the early 1990s. It was about getting rid of one man, Saddam Hussein. And if he was replaced by a Sunni general who governed Iraq in the exact same fashion, that was okay. And that shows the utter hypocrisy of everything we did.”
So in fact — although FAUX news couldn’t care less about this truth — Bill Clinton got fantastically lucky. Iraq very well could have, and probably should have collapsed on Bill Clinton’s watch, with all the horrible shit we’ve seen happening coming down several years earlier. For even despite Bill Clinton’s eight straight years of inspecting, sanctioning, bombing and threatening Iraq, Saddam Hussein somehow managed to hang on and hold the country together by the most slender of hopes and prayers. Then, of course, came blundering boy Bush with the final straw that broke the camel’s back. So, in all fairness to both corrupt American presidents concerned:
“MR. RITTER: I want to highlight that point that Clinton wasn’t so good. You know, there’s a lot of talk today in the Democratically controlled judiciary committee about going after the Bush Administration for crimes, for lying to Congress, and etc. And I’m all in favor of that, bring on the indictments, but don’t stop at the Bush Administration. If you want to have a truly bipartisan indictment, you indict Madeleine Albright, you indict Sandy Berger, you indict every person on the Clinton Administration that committed the exact same crime that the Bush Administration has committed today. Lying during the course of your official duty: That’s a felony, that’s a high crime and misdemeanor. That’s language in the Constitution that triggers certain events like impeachment. So let’s not just simply turn this into a Bush-bashing event. This is about a failure of not only the Bush Administration but of the United States of America, and we have to look in the mirror and recognize that, well, all the Bush Administration did is take advantage of a systemic failure on the part of the United States as a whole, a failure that not only involves the executive, but it involves the legislative branch, Congress.” And furthermore:
“Congress has abrogated its responsibilities under the Constitution, and they’ve abrogated it for years. Then there’s the media, and, yes, we can turn this into a media-bashing event. But you know what? The media only feeds the American people the poison they’re willing to swallow. And we the people of the United States of America seem to want our news in no more than three-minute chunks with sound bites of thirty seconds or less, and it can’t be too complicated. So what we did is allowed ourselves during the decade of the 1990s to be pre-programmed into accepting at face value without question anything that was negative about Saddam Hussein’s regime, and this made selling the war on Iraq on the basis of a lie the easiest task ever faced by the Bush Administration.”
So there you have what the American people should have seen and heard thrown up in former President Bill Clinton’s face. Not some smarmy, irrelevant crap about Osama “the cave dweller” bin Laden. Finally, though, at the end of the day, after trying and hanging our current and former Presidents for betraying our country into this disaster in Iraq: what do we do now?
“MR. HERSH: My own personal view is we have two options in Iraq. Option A, we can get all our troops out by midnight tonight, and option B, we can get them all out by tomorrow night at midnight. And so I wonder where you sit on that, what’s your view?”
“MR. RITTER: I’m a big proponent of bringing the troops home as soon as possible. … Today’s the best day we’re going to have in Iraq. Tomorrow’s going to be worse, and the day after that’s going to be even worse.”
That said almost a year ago by two men who know the score as well as anyone else — and even more true today. But you sure won’t hear Bill Clinton, Senator You-Know-Her, or George W. Bush say anything as truthful or necessary on FAUX NEWS or any other American media outlet. Face it: America no longer qualifies as a serious country because it tends to produce pampered parasites with practically no qualifications for higher office except the one they’ve all mastered to perfection: lying to the American people.
Finally, Bill Clinton has many more things to answer for than just his weakening of Iraq to near the breaking point. As my Chinese in-laws through marriage never tire of reminding me, someday the Chinese will settle up with America for that Clintonesque bombing (coordinates courtesy of George “slam dunk” Tenet) of their embassy in Belgrade Yugoslavia. Nothing personal, you know. Just simple justice. We kept telling them that we had all this super-accurate stuff that never misses and never kills the “wrong” people. They believed us. So they think we did it on purpose. Given lying Presidents like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush (both with adolescent, vendetta hard-ons for one man: Saddam Hussein) who could ever convince them otherwise?
He clearly considered the one war for which he was U.S. commander in chief, the war against the Barbary Pirates, a defensive war.
Clearly…but R’s counterfactual strikes me as wishful thinking. the 1st Barbary war no more defensive than the war in Iraq; none of the 16 existing US states were threatened, merely the merchant shipping routes in the Mediterranean, nowhere near US waters. see:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/barbary.htm
Vadim,
Your badfaith will always suprise me. If you want to compare the situation of the pirates with that of Iraq, can you please tell me which assets/goods of the US people/merchants were threatened in Iraq ? As far as I know the US didn’t have any serious goods or estates to defend in Iraq, unlike the situation of the merchants whose roads and shipments were thretened by the pirates back in those times. The pirates attacked were disrupting vital commercial roads. Can you tell me which US interests Iraq was threatening ? How can you feel threatened for something you don’t have ? All the oil contracts of Iraq were with the Russians and the French.. oh.. wait wait a minute was that the problem ? The US wanted to pull the Russian and the French out in order to get these contracts ?
Your badfaith will always suprise me.
Tsk tsk. Ringing silence from the arbiters of decorum! Christiane, we’re all friends here. No need for nastiness.
s far as I know the US didn’t have any serious goods or estates to defend in Iraq, unlike the situation of the merchants whose roads and shipments were thretened by the pirates back in those times.
I’m sure many of those ships were carrying slaves — another blind spot for “all men are created equal” T. Jefferson. Certainly less vital to the 19th c. US economy than cargo now traversing the Straits of Hormuz, or emerging from the oil fields of Saudi Arabia & Kuwait (& threatened numerous times by Iraq even during sanctions.) on that note – -would you have found a US invasion of Iran during the mid-eighties ‘tanker war’ “defensive?” or imperialistic?
can you please tell me which assets/goods of the US people/merchants were threatened in Iraq ?
Beyond those mentioned above? None. But is this what “defensive war” means? That the “goods or estates ” of your nation’s merchant class are threatened? Sounds mercenary to me. My point was that neither war was “defensive” under any reasonable interpretation.
The US wanted to pull the Russian and the French out in order to get these contracts ?
You left out the Dutch (see:Trafigura) and my own personal favorite, Swiss sanctions profiteers Glencore. Total’s neocolonial resource grab hinged on the removal of sanctions.
I would make the point a little differently: Politicians ALWAYS make the claim that the war on which they’re about to embark is “defensive,” because of some “grave threat” posed by the other country. Even W. had to resort to such a claim to sell the Iraq war — that the “smoking gun” could be a mushroom cloud, etc. It’s up to us and our elected representatives to put those claims to a harsh test before we unleash the dogs of war on anyone. If there’s a difference between Jefferson and W. in this regard, it may be that Jefferson actually believed what he said.
I agree with Vadim about the war against the “Barbary Pirates”, which only by an extreme leap of faith could have been considered defensive. The language itself– “pirates”, when referring to the masters of North African vessels seeking, in their view, to defend their own coastal sea lanes– is also very revealing… TJ’s personal record on the institution of slavery is also, of course, one worthy of considerable discussion and criticism.
However, one does not have to buy into either complete Jeffersonphilia or the “just war” theory that seemed to underlie his view of warfare to recognize that our present leaders have come very far indeed from TJ’s view of the world. I think that was RR’s main argument, and it’s a good one.
“Politicians ALWAYS make the claim that the war on which they’re about to embark is “defensive,” because of some “grave threat” posed by the other country.”
or the shorter version…. ALL WARS START WITH LIES. ALWAYS. AND THE ONES STARTING THE WAR ARE THE LIARS.
I agree with Michael M. said above about Clinton, and it is certainly time to lay to rest the idea that McCain, Graham or Werner are “honorable” after they helped pass the Torture and Rape Bill of 2006.
God help us.
Apropos of Thomas Jefferson and the comments by Seymour Hersch and Scott Ritter alluded to above, I think we should consider again, carefully, the following words:
” … all the Bush Administration did is take advantage of a systemic failure on the part of the United States as a whole …”
While I certainly stipulate to the truth contained in the statement, I think that Thomas Jefferson and his Founding Brothers would have gone further and had a field day with the “all the Bush Administration did is” part. I can just hear their ghosts howling — while turning furiously — in their graves: “That sounds like excusing George the Third’s depradations upon us by saying ‘All that the King of England did was’ …” and so on and so forth. Our erudite ancestors would surely have logically lampooned that inexcusably low-expectation as “praising with faint damnation.”
Put another way, the phrase “All X did is …” equates to saying “X did nothing more than …” (with the implication that the elliptical “…” need not absorb our interest or invite our criticism). Of course our system and its institutions (Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Press, and Military) have failed us utterly — again — just as they did in precisely the same way and for precisely the same reasons during the American War on Vietnam only scant decades ago.
Yet now as back then, no serious debate has ensued about our flawed and failing institutions and our now-desperate need to reform or abolish them for something better. Thomas Jefferson & Company would have clearly seen this intolerable situation and said something about it long before now. Thomas Paine would no doubt have ridiculed our commercialized credulity as “the times that buy mens’ souls,” or something cuttingly rhetorical like that. Alexander Hamilton would just remind us of the bottom line: “Cut off the money and the Presidential military adventurism stops.”
We, the posterity of such giants, have failed our ancestors by not living up to their high standards and trusting expectations of us. They thought we would do better with what they bequeathed to us. We haven’t because we can’t even recognize the need; even when two ridiculously ruinous wars against two non-existent monsters (monolithic world communism and global terrorism) drive us to willingly divest ourselves of our own freedoms, as T. S. Elliot said of us hollow men and women: “not with a bang but a whimper.” Our ancestors would have opted for — indeed, insisted upon — the bang.
Unfortunately for us and our own now-indentured descendents, the notorious Nation of Sheep (or Fate Driven Herd, as Beaudelaire would describe us) will easily fall for only a little cheap word magic. For if George W. Bush “only” did no more than something that doesn’t matter anyway, then why should anyone blame him or his predecessor for not only gaming the flawed system but making no effort whatsoever to repair it?