Blame America Second
In the course of a Standard Blog Stunt I would have thought beneath him, James Joyner quotes a bit of heresy from Andy Rooney:
The disaster on September 11th wasn’t like any of those. It was manmade. Death by design. Some people who hated Americans set out to kill a lot of us and they succeeded
Americans are puzzled over why so many people in the world hate us. We seem so nice to ourselves. They do hate us though. We know that and we’re trying to protect ourselves with more weapons.
We have to do it I suppose but it might be better if we figured out how to behave as a nation in a way that wouldn’t make so many people in the world want to kill us.
which James glosses as “Andy Rooney explains why the tragedy was really our fault.” Which isn’t actually what Rooney seems to be saying – he’s saying that , prospectively, we might improve our odds of avoiding future attacks from all quarters by changing how much of the world regards the country. Where I’d disagree with Rooney is just who “us” and “we” and “the nation” are that matter. It’s not me and Andy and James Joyner: it’s the people in power. It s the US government.
James, in typical Republican fashion, simply notes that this constitutes “blaming America” and moves on, without pausing to consider whether, maybe, five years constitutes a decent interval after which some introspection is in order. Because, really, what are the odds that, if most of the world’s attitudes toward your nation ranges from passive resentment to active hostility, that it’s because your country is just too good for this awful, fallen world?
Meanwhile, in the big, cranky ABC thread downblog, Brian CB writes
This kind of willed, exculpatory amnesia by the Republicans’ Party is among the most reviling fruits of 11 September. It’s one thing to charge Clinton with being incompetent and distracted, and another not to admit that you spent the eight years of his presidency bitching about Waco, black helicopters, the culture wars, welfare queens, the jack-boots of the IRS, the dangers of pornography and gays in the military and public health insurance, about the threat of the Endangered Species Act or medical marijuana or Darwin to Our Way of Life, or pointing out how the key to immediate world peace was deposing Saddam Hussein. Not to mention that the chief distraction to Clinton was your pursuit of the man for the high crime of being sexually immature and stupid with his penis. You spent eight years delegitimizing him, and it doesn’t occur to you that some of his lost presidential authority might have been spent on putting an end to this particular band of stateless terrorists, of whom he imperfectly, but far more completely than did any prominent Republican, perceived the danger, and that therefore your crass, zero-sum partisanship might have been a tad short-sighted and shameful.
Which is a sad, sad story. But the truth is that, while Bill Clinton may have perceived the danger of al Qaeda earlier than many other politicians, Bill Clinton fed that danger too. It was his administration’s eight years of sanctions and bombing runs and troop deployments that provided al Qaeda the impetus to metastasize. It’s nice that he also set about lopping a head or two off the hydra when the opportunity arose, but it was his – and GHW Bush’s monstrous dog in the first place.
Comment by Nell —
September 12, 2006 @ 8:33 am
And Ronald Reagan’s and Jimmy Carter’s. Imperialists all.
Comment by digamma —
September 12, 2006 @ 8:57 am
You spent eight years delegitimizing him, and it doesn’t occur to you that some of his lost presidential authority might have been spent on putting an end to this particular band of stateless terrorists
Brilliant. And if Democrats had refrained from criticizing Bush, would he have caught bin Laden now?
Comment by Davebo —
September 12, 2006 @ 9:01 am
When the going gets tough, the tough start talking about Clinton.
Bill Clinton isn’t going to solve our current problems in the world. But I find it odd that the right currently says now is not the time to talk about the mistakes that led us here, (when they are this administrations mistakes) we need to start looking at solutions to the problems we face.
And if there are not good solutions available, we need to look back at how Clinton caused it all.
Comment by jlw —
September 12, 2006 @ 9:02 am
Given that elected Democrats spent a good year or more after September 11 in thrall of the Bush Adminstration and its Global War on Terror (R), and during that year, U.S. troops had at least one golden chance to capture bin Laden, the answer is no.
Comment by jlw —
September 12, 2006 @ 9:04 am
My reply is directed at digamma.
Comment by Barry —
September 12, 2006 @ 10:41 am
Besides, Bush didn’t give a flying f*ck about Osama. Remember “I’m not that concerned about him”?
Comment by Barry —
September 12, 2006 @ 10:48 am
James Joyner is just another data point in favor of the theory that ‘Political Science’ is not an academic discipline, just a place for people who couldn’t hack it in real disciplines.
I realized that he was a dishonest f*ck when he compared damage control/rescue efforts after Katrina to efforts in Bangladesh. Instead of in the USA, in Florida, the year before. When FEMA pre-positioned supplies ahead of time, and Bush made a personal appearance, instead of going on vacation. He probably did that because the comparison between election-year swing state behavior and normal Bush behavior might have been too revealing.
James has shown flashes of reality recognition recently, as disaster becomes apparent even to many Republicans, but I guess that at heart, he’s still at least sipping the kool-aid.
Comment by norbizness —
September 12, 2006 @ 10:57 am
Shorter JJ: “The failure of people to blindly support a mendacious, hackish speech by the President proves that they themselves are the real hacks.”
Comment by Pithlord —
September 12, 2006 @ 1:02 pm
Democratic apologists ought to be forced to deal with Madeline Albright’s line in response to children malnourished under the sanctions regime, “That’s a price we are prepared to pay.” That was played over and over again in the Arab world. Only Professor Rice was able to outdo her in imperial arrogance/ cluelessness.
And Waco *does* remain the single biggest attack by the federal state on weird Americans minding their own business. So bitching about it seems like a good thing to do.
Comment by radish —
September 12, 2006 @ 1:22 pm
Strongly disagree. Everybody along the way contributed in greater or lesser degree. But if you insist on going further back than August 6th of 2001, the next real turning point is arming the Muj and Saddam in the early 80s and before that you have to go all the way back to 1953. Gulf War Kuwait wasn’t a policy change — we were playing both ends against the middle both before that and after it.
This is Reagan’s, and ultimately Truman’s dog, if you want to be fair and square about it. Maybe things wouldn’t be any better if they’d done things differently and maybe they would, but we’ve pretty much used Truman’s ME policy, and we totally re-committed ourselves to it in 80-84.
Comment by Pithlord —
September 12, 2006 @ 1:52 pm
Is anyone really against giving the mujahedin assistance after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? I mean, strategically, that’s a really cheap way of causing a lot of damage to the evil empire. And, morally, however repulsive their social views, they lived there and the commies did not. If you can’t arm a few religious fanatics fighting communist tyranny in their own country, who can you arm?
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
September 12, 2006 @ 1:57 pm
No matter when, how, or where the attacks had happened, the Loyal Opposition at the time could still cry “malfeasance.” With the vast size of the intelligence and national security bureaucracies in this country, there would surely be a scenario, memo, meeting minutes, wargame, snippet of intercepted comm traffic, etc., predicting what actually wound up happening.
It’s the people who still treat terrorism as a “what-if” after 9/11, that keep me punching the R on the ballot.
And I don’t feel in the least obligated to supplicate myself back into the Islamic world’s good graces. They have their reasons for feeling the way they do. But those are their reasons, not ours.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
September 12, 2006 @ 2:09 pm
I keep wanting to punch the Rs on the ballot, but always remind myself that that sort of violence won’t accomplish anything useful.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
September 12, 2006 @ 2:15 pm
Come to think of it, that urge isn’t limited to the Rs.
Comment by Leonard —
September 12, 2006 @ 3:02 pm
Pithlord, sure, I’ll oppose the US government meddling in Afghanistan, 1979+ and now. I have no beef if private citizens want to buy weapons for foreigners; but please do it with your own money, not mine. Thanks!
Regarding your question, a peaceful state should only arm its own citizens. (Almost all of them do follow this rule, in fact!) Simple enough, and a nice bright line.
In retrospect, arming the Mujahadin was a mistake, for many reasons, not just in creating OBL. But it seemed a good idea at the time, for the exact reasons you give. Most mistakes seem like a good idea at the time. Unexpected consequences have the rather nasty tendancy to be hard to predict. My approach to international relations — isolationism — has the great virtue of making few mistakes of commission. Sins of omission are always easier to get absolution for.
Comment by Pithlord —
September 12, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
Leonard, I’m statist enough to think that do-it-yourself foreign policy would be even worse than what we’ve got. Lots of things would seem like a good idea at the time to lots of rich people, and would turn out not to be.
The US in 1979 was not being an ideal peaceful state. But then neither were the Soviets. America’s security is better now than it was then, no?
Comment by Leonard —
September 12, 2006 @ 4:51 pm
Rich: yes. But not by virtue of our interventionism; in spite of it.
As for rich people’s foreign policy, the point is not whether or not they do better than Carter, Reagan, Bushes, and Clinton. (Although I might point out the rather low bar implied here.) The point is, when the US state acts it implicates all of us, and thus, justifies terrorism against “innocent” citizens by any foreigner who thinks in terms of collective responsibility for involuntary collectives. And many, many people think like this — including us, in WWII. OTOH, when individuals act, this sort of reaction is much less likely. Even depraved Arabs understand that individuals act for themselves, while governments supposedly act for their citizens.
Comment by Pithlord —
September 12, 2006 @ 4:59 pm
Well, if Scaife or somebody funded his own private army to invade Venezuela, I imagine that would be considered unacceptable.
Canada was actually formed in part because private armies of Americans were attacking us. The anti-British Republican government in Washington ended up stopping that sort of thing because it would have inevitably meant war.
Come to think of it, Osama was kind of operating a private army out of Afghanistan. And we all remember how Bush (backed by world opinion on this one) felt the Afghan state bore some responsibility for tolerating this.
Comment by Pithlord —
September 12, 2006 @ 5:06 pm
Further, a privatized foreign policy would be dictated not by the median billionaire (who might do better than Carter, Reagan and so on), but by the marginal billionaire (in all senses). This is not an encouraging prospect.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
September 12, 2006 @ 6:19 pm
Pithlord, I don’t think anyone who knows anything about Afghan history would claim that the people there were better off under the mujaheddin or the Taliban than under the Communists.
Even as ferocious an anti-communist as Brad DeLong admits this.
Comment by The other Eric —
September 12, 2006 @ 8:38 pm
lemuel pitkin: I suppose it depended on what Afghan village you lived in under Communist rule. The Communists did tend to go for wholesale slaughter.
The director of the Soviet prison system rather notoriously claimed that only 1 million Afghanis were needed to bring “true Communism” to Afghanistan. The other ~14 million could presumably find a new hobby, such as being dead.
It’s been a pretty awful 36 years for the Afghanis, hasn’t it?
Comment by The Sanity Inspector —
September 12, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
If it has the word “science” in its name, it isn’t a science.
Comment by Barry —
September 12, 2006 @ 10:05 pm
The Sanity Inspector: “It’s the people who still treat terrorism as a “what-if†after 9/11, that keep me punching the R on the ballot.”
See “I’m not that concerned about him”, “OK, you’ve covered your ass, now get out of here”, and “Let’s invade Iraq!”.
After five years of security theater and politics, you don’t have an excuse.
Comment by jlw —
September 12, 2006 @ 11:23 pm
For what it’s worth, planetary scientists are real scientists.
Comment by Nell —
September 12, 2006 @ 11:36 pm
The other Eric: The Communists did tend to go for wholesale slaughter.
Any references for this?
Comment by Nell —
September 12, 2006 @ 11:37 pm
In Afghanistan, that is.
Comment by Tom Scudder —
September 13, 2006 @ 3:37 am
Leonard:
Even depraved Arabs understand that individuals act for themselves, while governments supposedly act for their citizens.
How does this square with Hizbullah’s foreign policy freelancing with respect to Israel, and the consequences thereof for other Lebanese?
Comment by BigHank53 —
September 13, 2006 @ 11:23 pm
How far back do you want to go? Britan’s partitioning of Iraq? The creation of Israel? Or how about when we decided that the Iranians had stayed up past their bedtime and gave them a good SAVAKing? I’m not sure what goes through people’s heads when they contemplate the cigarette burns on their scrotum, but I can be reasonably certain they are not happy thoughts about the people who gave his torturers power in the first place.