Codevilla on The War
Timothy Sandefur on Jan 9th 2006
My copy of the Claremont Review of Books was late, so I’ve only just now had a chance to look at Angelo Codevillia’s article “Some Call it Empire.” I enjoy Codevilla’s writing, and although this article is a bit tedious, I thought the conclusion was especially good:
Today, the not-so-new, sophisticated elite consensus appears to be that our many prolonged, inconclusive involvements are a permanent feature of America’s life in the modern world. Some call it empire. But if it is an empire, it is so only by adding together adventures that have no common theme, and whose purposes the various imperialists involved do not share, either in general or in specific instances. In fact, each involvement abroad becomes one more occasion for exacerbating conflicts among Americans.
President Bush’s reaction to the events of September 11 further muddied America’s understanding of our relationship with the world. He could have addressed the fact that Arabs had struck America on behalf of causes espoused, and embodied, by a number of Arab regimes. He could have declared that in doing so these regimes had put themselves in a state of war with the American people—and he could have proceeded to undo our foes, regime by regime. That war would have left many enemies dead and many potential ones eager to avoid the experience. That, and that alone, is true peace.
Instead, President Bush deferred to parts of what some might call the U.S. government’s “imperial infrastructure,” the State Department and CIA, which have long-standing stakes in many Arab regimes, e.g., Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority. He absolved the regimes of responsibility, and proclaimed war on an abstract noun, “terrorism,” to achieve some indeterminate global effect. In pursuit of this so-called war, he has raised America’s rhetoric, profile, and presence around the world, harming many who do not count and killing few who do. Occupations are not wars. Criminal investigations are not wars. Democracy-building and nation-building campaigns are not wars. Unlike wars, they do not produce victory, nor its offspring, peace.
The United States is not at peace, and it is not making war. To this extent alone the accusation of empire—the dawdling kind that wastes its core resources—sticks. If we continue to trifle with empire rather than establishing peace, we shall reap stalemate, retreat, and the domestic strife that is empire’s bitterest consequence.
Filed in The Barracks
[...] Unfortunately, I do not think that the design of Welch’s quiz does much to answer this, the more important question. But it does much to stir up divisions where perhaps they need never have existed (for example, I consider this post by Sandefur to be pretty much accurate. It just got buried in the kerfluffle). [...]