Idealism Is Dangerous

This article from the Washington Post is fascinating. It documents the collapse of "neo-conservatism," and in doing so provides yet another case study (as if we needed another) of how dangerous idealism is when untempered by realism.

As an aside (only), I have to note Richard Perle's ridiculously self-serving effort to avoid taking part of the blame, which WaPo does a decent enough job of skewering that I can simply quote it without comment:

In an interview last week, Perle said the administration's big mistake was occupying the country rather than creating an interim Iraqi government led by a coalition of exile groups to take over after Hussein was toppled. [Huh? How exactly would you have done that?!] "If I had known that the U.S. was going to essentially establish an occupation, then I'd say, 'Let's not do it,' " and instead find another way to target Hussein, Perle said. "It was a foolish thing to do."

Perle, head of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board at the time of the 2003 invasion, said he still believes the invasion was justified. But he resents being called "the architect of the Iraq war," because "my view was different from the administration's view from the very beginning" about how to conduct it. "I am not critical now of anything about which I was not critical before," he said. "I've said it more publicly."

That is simply laughable, Richard, you spineless weasel. I haven't heard so much exculpatory hair-splitting since Bill Clinton was talking about Monica Lewinski.

It is almost too easy to make fun of Perle. Or Wolfowitz. Or Rumsfeld. Or Feith. Or any of those other "neo-conservatives" who were so convinced that America was on a mission from God (metaphorically in some cases; literally in others). But the quote that really captured my attention is from Ken Adelman, another one of the self-confessed intellectual architects of this war:

"The whole philosophy of using American strength for good in the world, for a foreign policy that is really value-based instead of balanced-power-based, I don't think is disproven by Iraq. But it's certainly discredited."

"Disproven" vs. "discredited." Now THERE's a distinction even a lawyer couldn't love. One cannot "disprove" ideas; one can only "discredit" them. But that is not the real point. It should not be necessary to "disprove" or "discredit" the idea that foreign policy should be driven by "values" rather than self-interest. The idealism that underlies Adelman's neo-conservatism not much different from that which underlay the Utopians or even the hippies. It is, for all its seeming ferocity, almost childlike in its naivete.

International relations is about self-interest and nothing else. If our self-interest aligns with our ideals, so much the better. But if our ideals and our self-interest diverge, only a fool would pursue the ideals.

The Iraq war was sold on the basis of realism and self-interest. In 2003, there was no talk about spreading freedom and democracy. It was all about getting rid of a government that was portrayed (and perhaps even perceived) as posing a clear and present danger to our security. But, as Adelman effectively admits, that was not really the true rationale of the people who orchestrated the selling of the war. Their true motivation was, as Adelman confesses, a "philosophy of using American strength for good in the world, for a foreign policy that is really value-based instead of balanced-power-based." Adelman is right that the fiasco in Iraq thoroughly discredits such an idea, and one can only hope it will stay discredited for another hundred years. But what is amazing to me is that these guys believed it in the first place. How do such men get to positions in which they control the levers of US power?