[lit-ideas] The End of Fukuyama
- From: Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 08:29:05 -0500
full article;e at
http://www.slate.com/id/2137134/fr/rss/
The End of Fukuyama
Why his latest pronouncements miss the mark.
By Christopher Hitchens
[excerpt]
The first requirement of anyone engaging in an
intellectual or academic debate is that he or she
be able to give a proper account of the opposing
position(s), and Fukuyama simply fails this test.
The term "root causes" was always employed
ironically (as the term "political correctness"
used to be) as a weapon against those whose naive
opinions about the sources of discontent were
summarized in that phrase. It wasn't that the
Middle East "lacked democracy" so much that one of
its keystone states was dominated by an unstable
and destabilizing dictatorship led by a
psychopath. And it wasn't any illusion about the
speed and ease of a transition so much as the
conviction that any change would be an
improvement. The charge that used to be leveled
against the neoconservatives was that they had
wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein (pause for
significant lowering of voice) even before Sept.
11, 2001. And that "accusation," as Fukuyama well
knows, was essentially true—and to their credit.
The three questions that anyone developing second
thoughts about the Iraq conflict must answer are
these: Was the George H.W. Bush administration
right to confirm Saddam Hussein in power after his
eviction from Kuwait in 1991? Is it right to say
that we had acquired a responsibility for Iraq,
given past mistaken interventions and given the
great moral question raised by the imposition of
sanctions? And is it the case that another
confrontation with Saddam was inevitable; those
answering "yes" thus being implicitly right in
saying that we, not he, should choose the timing
of it? Fukuyama does not even mention these
considerations. Instead, by his slack use of terms
like "magnet," he concedes to the fanatics and
beheaders the claim that they are a response to
American blunders and excesses.
Surely the huge spasm of Islamist hysteria over
caricatures published in Copenhagen shows that
there is no possible Western insurance against
doing something that will inflame jihadists? The
sheer audacity and evil of destroying the shrine
of the 12th imam is part of an inter-Muslim civil
war that had begun long before the forces of
al-Qaida decided to exploit that war and also to
export it to non-Muslim soil. Yes, we did indeed
underestimate the ferocity and ruthlessness of the
jihadists in Iraq. Where, one might inquire, have
we not underestimated those forces and their
virulence? (We are currently underestimating them
in Nigeria, for example, which is plainly next on
the Bin Laden hit list and about which I have been
boring on ever since Bin Laden was good enough to
warn us in the fall of 2004.)
In the face of this global threat and its recent
and alarmingly rapid projection onto European and
American soil, Fukuyama proposes beefing up "the
State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National
Endowment for Democracy and the like." You might
expect a citation from a Pew poll at about this
point, and, don't worry, he doesn't leave that
out, either. But I have to admire that vague and
lazy closing phrase "and the like." Hegel meets
Karen Hughes! Perhaps some genius at the CIA is
even now preparing to subsidize a new version of
Encounter magazine to be circulated among the
intellectuals of Kashmir or Kabul or Kazakhstan?
Not such a bad idea in itself, perhaps, but no
substitute for having a battle-hardened army that
has actually learned from fighting in the terrible
conditions of rogue-state/failed-state combat. Is
anyone so blind as to suppose that we shall not be
needing this hard-bought experience in the future?
I have my own criticisms both of my one-time
Trotskyist comrades and of my temporary neocon
allies, but it can be said of the former that they
saw Hitlerism and Stalinism coming—and also saw
that the two foes would one day fuse together—and
so did what they could to sound the alarm. And it
can be said of the latter (which, alas, it can't
be said of the former) that they looked at
Milosevic and Saddam and the Taliban and realized
that they would have to be confronted sooner
rather than later. Fukuyama's essay betrays a
secret academic wish to be living in "normal"
times once more, times that will "restore the
authority of foreign policy 'realists' in the
tradition of Henry Kissinger." Fat chance,
Francis! Kissinger is moribund, and the memory of
his failed dictator's club is too fresh to be
dignified with the term "tradition." If you can't
have a sense of policy, you should at least try to
have a sense of history. America at the Crossroads
evidently has neither.
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