INTELLIGENCE VS INTELLECTUALISM:

What happens if Dubya's bus to Baghdad goes past its stop? (Gerald Warner, 23 Mar 2003, Scotsman)

It has taken a major war to alert many non-American observers to how little they know about George W Bush. Ignorance, of course, has never been a problem for leftist commentators. They take pride in keeping their prejudices unsullied by embarrassing, politically incorrect facts. It is an axiom on the left that Dubya is a moron, a Texan cowboy who is driven by an extreme right-wing ideology, with a penchant for nuclear war. Does that fashionable description ring any bells? The same was said of Ronald Reagan, whose modest legacy includes the global collapse of communism, after he precipitated the implosion of the Soviet economy by forcing the evil empire to match his Star Wars programme.

People who buy into the Bush/cretin thesis would do best to paint their faces and join the 10-year-olds on the picket lines. We are at too critical a moment in history to abandon intelligent geopolitical analysis in favour of grudge-driven sloganising. The objective fact is that George W Bush is surrounded by some of the most brilliant people to have served in any American administration. Indeed, the real danger may be the reverse of the liberal/leftist canard: the presidential team may be too cerebral for its own - and the world’s - good.

Politics, ideally, should be conducted by intelligent people. That is not a luxury we have enjoyed recently in this country, as witness l’affaire Clare Short - that surreal moment of farce, when Armageddon briefly wore motley. Yet there is an important distinction between government by the intelligent and by intellectuals. Arguably, the most formidable armoured column that is spearheading the present conflict is the invasion of the Oval Office by think-tanks. Dubya is a traditional American cultural conservative who likes to cut taxes, limit big government, encourage citizens’ personal responsibility, reinforce family values and prioritise the defence of the United States against aggression.

Yet even that last principle does not quite explain why he has a quarter of a million troops toiling through the Iraqi desert. This American intervention can only represent that phenomenon beloved of university examiners: a watershed in history. It is not so long since commentators were babbling about "the end of history", the successor buzz words to "glasnost", "perestroika" and the rest of Gorbachev’s turgid nonsense. The message blowing out of the sandstorms between Basra and Mosul is: kiss goodbye to the New World Order - here comes the New American Century. [...]

After the unsatisfactory outcome of the First Gulf War, the US Defense Department drew up a revanchist document which proposed a hyperpower role for America, as universal arbiter of human affairs. Dubya Pere, deeply embarrassed by this charter for imperial expansion, quietly binned it. Its philosophy resurfaced, however, in a report published by a powerful think-tank called Project for the New American Century, in September 2000.

Its authors included Paul Wolfowitz, now deputy defence secretary in the Dubya administration; John Bolton, now undersecretary of state for arms control and international security; and Dov Zakheim, undersecretary of defence and Pentagon chief financial officer.

Conspiracy theorists will get no joy from this coterie: there is no secrecy and their programme is aggressively in the public domain. Saddam is history. Kim Jung-il - by all means read short stories, but don’t get hooked on any serials. Iran? Well, one of their locker-room on dits is that nerds can take Baghdad, real men want to go to Tehran. Beyond those modest ambitions, the orchards of Syria beckon seductively... By an irresistible logic, the ultimate target must be China - probably not as a military objective, but to be absorbed into the global imperium of motherhood and apple pie by a process of economic and cultural osmosis.

Now hold on just one moment, fellas! Some of this Napoleonic stuff is getting kinda scary. Especially since Dick Cheney and Donald (Dr Strangelove) Rumsfeld are country members of the club. There is a danger that the ambitions of certain neo-conservative elements within the present administration may play into the hands of propagandists, by conforming to the leftist caricature of Republicans. Dubya is one of the sanest men this side of Alpha Centauri, but his Special Republican Guard is starting to frighten the children.

The distinction Mr. Warner draws is an excellent one and we should be dubious about intellectuals of the Right just as much as those--far more numerous--of the Left. The neocon intellectuals' notion that the product of these wars will be democratic revolution in the Middle East seems very much like the utiopianism of which we often accuse liberals. However, there's an intelligent case for taking down the very worst government around, particularly if they're actively trying to develop WMD. Democracy would be a pleasant bonus, but realistically, at least in the short term, we can't expect much more than disarmament and improved government. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 23, 2003 12:13 AM