September 11, 2004
DO NOT FORSAKE ME OH MY DARLIN’
9/11 letters (Arthur Schlesinger and Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, September 11, 2004)
Arthur Schlesinger tries to allay European anxieties about the bellicose new America. Timothy Garton Ash repliesSchlesinger:
The second world war was a far more menacing conflict with far more dangerous foes. But it did not threaten Americans in the daily rounds of their lives. Today many feel an intense personal vulnerability they have never felt before. Of course, Europeans have grown accustomed to local terrorism - ETA Basques in Spain, Red gangs in Italy and Germany, Corsicans in France, and the old IRA in Britain. For Americans terrorism is a novel and horrid experience.
This mysterious new threat led a new administration in Washington to change the basis of US foreign policy. That basis had been containment and deterrence, a combination that won us the cold war. The new basis of US foreign policy is preventive war, which cold war American presidents had abhorred and vetoed. The Bush doctrine is to attack an enemy, unilaterally if necessary, before it has a chance to attack us, a right reserved to the US. This casts the US as the world's judge, jury and executioner. Hardly a popular position.[...]
It is not likely that many people in the two opposing camps will change their minds between today and November 2, election day. The battle is for the undecided 10 per cent. The Democratic candidate, Senator John F Kerry of Massachusetts, is in the school of FDR and JFK. His campaign has faltered momentarily but in the past he has shown himself to be a hard fighter and a strong finisher.
Immediately after 9/11 a wave of worldwide sympathy engulfed America. Three years later, America is regarded with hostility around the world. Never in American history has the US been so unpopular abroad. That is not lost on the American voter. And the great strength, the great virtue, of democracy is its capacity for self-correction. So my European friends, do not despair!
ASH:
I am alarmed by the militarisation of political rhetoric in the US over the three years since this century's Pearl Harbor. Too often, the country seems to be engrossed in a mythic, heroic narrative of patriotic, martial prowess. This extends to the heroic pleasure of standing not just tall but alone, like Gary Cooper in High Noon. In real life, it helps to have a few friends.
Terrorism is never excusable, but it is often explicable. Explanations point to causes. Only if we address the political and economic causes of terrorism, as well as the thing itself, will we ever have a chance of winning this war. There is not just "terror" or "terrorism"; there are terrorisms, and they differ greatly. What the Chechen terrorists did to those children in Beslan was among the most evil acts that any human being can perpetrate against another. But it had causes, and some of them lie in the brutality and stupidity of Russian policy towards Chechnya over the last decade.
To reflect on the political causes and how they can be removed is not weakness or appeasement, as the American right insists. It's the kind of common sense that the US itself showed when it encouraged political negotiations with representatives of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian-Macedonian National Liberation Army and the Irish Republican Army, all of which used the methods of terrorism to achieve their political goals.
Equally, nothing can justify Palestinian suicide bombers killing innocent Israeli civilians. Nothing. Ever. But their acts have causes, and if we are to win the war against terrorism, we have to remove those causes. We have to be strong, but also wise. At the moment, Europe needs a bit more strength and America a bit more wisdom. So, my American friends, we're in this together and we look to you. We have not forgotten; we will never forget.
The sensitive among you may wish to avoid reading this exchange on a full stomach. It contains just about every leftist shibboleth and mantra imaginable, made more nauseating by the cloying protestations of eternal love. But two questions do arise. The first is, regardless of what one may feel about European opinion, what intellectual or psychological force drives Mr. Schlesinger, who represents the stronger power, to grovel for the approval of the vastly weaker one and crave the legitimacy of its applause? Is this not unprecedented historically? The second is would Mr. Ash see any difference at all between strategies for removing the causes of unjustifiable terrorism and the causes of legitimate protest? Beyond panic, that is.
Mr Schlesinger is not the stronger power. America may be a stronger power than Europe, but Mr. Schlesinger is weak compared to his peers, and grovels to them.
Posted by: pj at September 11, 2004 10:50 AMPj:
Fair enough, but he is not alone. What causes (North) American intellectuals to be so prone to deferring to European opinion? In the 21st century there is no rational reason to look at Europe and see a higher level of wisdom or civilization or even culture (as you could have argued there was in the 19th century), yet they keep doing it. My theory is that Americans are self-critical and they are not and so we assume they have found answers and insights, when it is usually just smugness.
Posted by: Peter B at September 11, 2004 11:02 AMWow. If there is any sort of trophy for stupidity per column inch, they might as well retire it.
Posted by: David Cohen at September 11, 2004 11:21 AMTimothy Garton Ash writes that the argument among the Western powers is about how, not whether, to defeat the evil that brought about 9/11, Beslan, and the 11M Madrid bombing.
However, since the reaction in Spain was to immediately capitulate, how seriously can we take such a statement ?
A bit lower on the main page, there's a post about how 70+% of Europeans want military might to rival America's, but over half of that 70+% aren't willing to pay anything extra in taxes to acquire it.
This seems to fall into the same category of wishful thinking.
Arthur Schlesinger, (whose work I enjoy, even as I disagree with much of it), writes that the right of preemptive attack is reserved to the US.
Not only is that patently false, I don't even think that I've heard anyone in the Bush administration make that claim, even as tangentially as in the Project for the New American Century.
Has anyone read anything suggesting that the Bush admin believes that only America can attack first ?
Peter B:
Maybe it has something to do with the contrast between North America, which the US has dominated since the mid-Nineteenth century, and Europe.
Americans can afford to be culturally insensitive and unilingual.
Europeans tend to be multilingual and multicultural, to have, (at the national level, at least), better "people skills".
Perhaps it's analogous to an only child vs. a large family.
The U.S. is the New Jerusalem and the New Greece. The original Greece and Jerusalem merged in ancient Rome, from which a line can be drawn to Ivy League campuses.
Maybe it's sentimental attachment to the roots?
(W)hat intellectual or psychological force drives Mr. Schlesinger, who represents the stronger power, to grovel for the approval of the vastly weaker one and crave the legitimacy of its applause?
Emperor Nero had the same drive to get approval from the Greek intellectuals of his time. I'm sure Schelsinger and his ilk are proud to emulate such a famous leader from history.
Posted by: David Rothman at September 11, 2004 12:46 PMMr. Ash should have that phrase on his tombstone:
"Nothing. Ever. But..."
Posted by: oj at September 11, 2004 1:13 PMPeter - None of these people are looking for answers and insights. They are fleeing answers and insights. That's why they are so reluctant to reach conclusions. They do look for mutual support, but that is different than acknowleding an authority. They adopt ideas that further their selfish interests, but that is different than seeking truths. They are very comfortable with never finding truths, or temporarily finding a few when it is expedient only to discard them later.
Posted by: pj at September 11, 2004 2:22 PMA natural follow-on of their argument comes another question:
Why doesn't Israel firebomb a few Palestine cities and then have Arafat & Co. ask what they can to do to appease Israel?
Why doesn't America drop a few daisy-cutters in Rhyad so that the Saudis ask themselves "Why do they hate us and how must we change to that they don't hate us anymore?"
Somehow, to these despicable people, it's always the West that must grovel to the killers. Our lot in life is to die; their lot is to commit atrocities.
Posted by: ray at September 11, 2004 7:01 PM"Senator John F Kerry of Massachusetts, is in the school of FDR and JFK."
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., is now 87 years old and far gone in his dotage. His first major haigiography was the Age of Jackson, published when he was a lad of 29. This was followed by his multi-volume hosanah to FDR. He was then court historian to Camelot (and was not invited to any of the good parties) and wrote eligies for JFK and RFK.
His entire career has been a shill for the Democrat party and pardoy of scholarship.
That there are a large number of academic liberals who get their cues from europe, is beyond cavail. Their provenance is clear. Their teachers were europeans, mostly refugees from WWII.
Schelsinger is not one of them he is just a party hack repeating the lines the Kerry campaign has been handing out. He is not nearly smart enough to have thought of any of that stuff himself, even if he were not senile.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 13, 2004 1:52 AM