19th
Century Imperial Spirit Inspires Hawks on Iraq
by
Jim Lobe
Dissident Voice
February 24, 2003
''Aggressive
fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords''.
So reads a bronze plaque
that sits on Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld's massive desk in his office across
the Potomac River from here. It encapsulates much of the spirit that animates
the hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush, and their
supporters.
The quotation is by former
President Theodore Roosevelt, Bush's favourite president, who led the charge on
San Juan Hill in Cuba in the supposedly decisive battle of the 1898
Spanish-American War that, with the defeat of the Spanish Navy in Manila Bay
half a world away, established the United States as an imperial power with
global reach.
Of course, the current
president's reading of ''TR'' is rather selective. A passionate
environmentalist and social progressive who built up big government to protect
the public against the depredations of private capital, Roosevelt would no
doubt find much to vigorously protest in Bush's policies.
But now, more than a century
after his presidency, TR's fighting and imperial spirit is being aggressively
promoted as a model for U.S. policies overseas in the 21st century, by both the
civilian policy-makers in the Pentagon and their neo-conservative and
right-wing allies.
Their basic assumptions are
quite consistent with those of the imperialists of the late 19th century: the
conviction of cultural superiority; the view that the world is a place of
merciless, Darwinian competition where force is the only language that lesser
peoples understand, and the belief that the United States and the larger
western world have a duty to civilise the rest - the basic ideological tenets
for imperialism - are now openly championed in public debate.
Even before the Sep. 11,
2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, these hawks argued that much of the
world was essentially in chaos and should be actively policed by the
pre-eminent powers of the day, of which the United States was by far the most
important.
''The great work of
disarming tribes, sects, warlords and criminals - a principal achievement of
monarchs of ... empires in the 19th (century) - threatens to need doing all
over again,'' wrote the much-quoted British military historian John Keegan.
''Because so many states in
the developing world have flimsy institutions, the paramount question in world
politics in the early 21st century will be the re-establishment of order,''
predicted Robert Kaplan, an influential political writer, in his 2002 'Warrior
Politics', a book dedicated to the eminently 'Rooseveltian' notion that
''without struggle - and the sense of insecurity that motivates it - there is
decadence''.
But according to the hawks,
U.S. responsibility does not end, with simply policing, either alone or with
like-minded powers, unruled peoples. Washington also has a duty to ''uplift and
civilise'' the natives as Roosevelt's predecessor, William McKinley, claimed he
learned from praying to ''Almighty God'' about what to do with the Philippines
after the Spanish defeat.
''Afghanistan and other
troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration
once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets,''
wrote Max Boot, a former 'Wall Street Journal' editorial writer now at the Council
on Foreign Relations, last year.
Boot has become perhaps the
leading exponent of a revival of the imperialist spirit since the publication
last year of his 'The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American
Power', a book that takes Roosevelt as a model and argues that, after World War
Two and Vietnam, Washington had forgotten its talents - acquired in the Indian
Wars, the Philippines, and throughout Central America and the Caribbean - for
bringing the blessings of liberty to the less fortunate.
''America should not be
afraid to fight 'the savage wars of peace' if necessary to enlarge 'the empire
of liberty','' he wrote. ''It has been done before.''
Since the ouster of the
Taliban, the benighted to be redeemed by U.S. force of arms, in this view, are
the Muslims of the Middle East, beginning with Iraq now that Afghanistan has
been restored to the path of civilisation.
''We need an Islamic
reformation,'' Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a 'Washington Post'
columnist. ''I think there is real hope for one,'' he added, saying that was a
powerful intellectual rationale for ousting the Baghdad government.
Like their 19th century
forebears, the neo-imperial hawks also see the Islamic Middle East as offering
a particular challenge, presumably because of its inherent violence and
cultural, if not racial, inferiority.
''This is a region
characterised by paranoia, apocalypticism, tyranny, and violence, a region
where differences are settled by the sword,'' according to Joshua Muravchik, an
analyst at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) whose
thinkers are particularly close to Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.
''In centuries past, the
wild and unruly passions of the Islamic world were kept within tight confines
by firm, often ruthless imperial authority,'' added Boot, who praises the
British and French who assumed control of the region beginning in the late 19th
century. ''These distant masters did not always rule wisely or well, but they
generally prevented the region from menacing the security of the outside
world.''
Washington should learn from
them, Boot advises, arguing that U.S. efforts after 1945 ''to carve out a
different style of leadership, one that was meant to distinguish the virtuous
Americans from the grasping, greedy imperialists who had come before'', only
made the country appear weak. ''The record shows precious little bullying'' by
Washington in the Mideast, he adds, ''indeed not enough''.
''The elementary truth that
seems to elude the experts again and again - Gulf War, Afghan war, next war -
is that power is its own reward,'' wrote Charles Krauthammer, a Post columnist
close to Wolfowitz, after the Taliban's defeat. ''Victory changes everything,
psychology above all. The psychology in the region is now one of fear and deep
respect for American power.''
The way to bring the
blessings of enlightenment - and democracy - to Muslims, according to this
view, is through the use of fear-inspiring force. Indeed, if Washington does
not go through with an invasion at this point, Boot argued last week, ''it
would earn the contempt of the Muslim world for its weakness''.
As for those Europeans and
anti-war demonstrators who argue for resort to war only after all peaceful
efforts to resolve the Iraq crisis have been exhausted, the hawks express their
contempt by once again citing TR: ''Weasel words from mollycoddles will never
do when the day demands prophetic clarity from great hearts.''
Jim Lobe is a political analyst Foreign Policy In
Focus (www.fpif.org), and a regular
contributor to Inter Press Service (www.ips.org).
Email: jlobe@starpower.net. Posted with author’s permission.