The Morality of Neoconservatism
Via Robert Farley, Stephen Walt debates Joshua Muravchik on realism versus neoconservatism. Walt brilliantly nails the “morality” dodge with which a lot of folks with blood on their hands seek to excuse the impracticality and irresponsibility of their ideas:
Finally, Muravchik claims neoconservatives “treat purely moral concerns . . . as a higher priority than would realists,” yet his response evinces little concern for ordinary human beings. He expresses no remorse at the suffering that neoconservative policies have wrought and seems mostly concerned that the neocons are now “taking their lumps” over Iraq. What matters to him is political standing in Washington, not the hundreds of thousands of needless Iraqi deaths, the millions of refugees who fled their homes, or the tens of thousands of patriotic Americans killed or wounded. So let us hear no more about the neoconservatives’ “moral” convictions. Amid such company, the realists who opposed the war can stand tall.
Right on. There’s nothing moral or idealistic about costly military misadventures that end up killing, maiming, and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. Anyone who seriously thinks that launching a series of aggressive wars is the best way for the United States of America to help people around the world needs to have his head examined.
35 Responses to “The Morality of Neoconservatism”
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October 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am
RE Matthew’s comment “Anyone who seriously thinks that launching a series of aggressive wars is the best way for the United States of America to help people around the world needs to have his head examined.”
—————-
Of course, in order to Examine the head, you first need to detach it from the neocon’s body.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Indeed. In fact, I believe the photo accompanying this post depicts a refueling operation that is overflying the barren inhospitable moral terrain of the garden variety neoconservative.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:42 am
What craziness, Matt.
All the noble moralizing interventionists know that what matters is what they declare that they wish to happen as a result of their crusading interventions; matters of what actually happens on the ground to the people involved are, at best, left to other, little people to figure out, and at worst are simply issues raised by immoral tyrants’ boot-lickers who don’t understand the pure moralism of the interventionary liberators.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:47 am
And Matt, you should always clarify that there’s a difference between realists and “Realists”. One simply means avoiding unrealities; the other is a political dogma.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:04 am
I, like, I am sure, many other liberals, have long thought that one of the main causes of the Dem losses has been the abandonment of the morality argument against the Republicans by our leaders. No matter how many religious leaders support GWB, for example, it is clear that his policies during the last eight years have been most immoral of the recent Presidents’, but neither Kerry nor any other Democrat, and not even Obama has ever brought this up in any significant way.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Re Stephen Walt
It’s not surprising that Mr. Yglesias admires antisemitic, Israel bashing, fucktard Stephen Walt. Prof. Walts’ prescription for US policy is very simple. Just dump Israel and allow the Arabs to finish Hitlers’ work.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:13 am
“Anyone who seriously thinks that launching a series of aggressive wars is the best way for the United States of America to help people around the world needs to have his head examined.”
———
You can say that again. George Bush should be the first in line to have his head looked at. This should be done in a secure mental institution.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Ah, good morning, Herr SLC.
Here’s something else for you to put on your bagel and chew on:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10142008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_o_jesse_knows_133450.htm?page=0
[ The most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end.
[Jesse] Jackson believes that, although “Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades” remain strong, they’ll lose a great deal of their clout when Barack Obama enters the White House. ]
Pass the capers, please.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:15 am
But then, we have known for quite some time that SLC is opposed to Middle East realism in all its varieties. !Jamón Rules!
October 15th, 2008 at 9:19 am
1) While you’re here, SLC, any comment on this?
http://www.jewishjournal.com/united_states/article/will_wall_street_crisis_spur_anti_semitism_20081007/
2) The Saturday Night Live skit they refer to is here –albeit slightly censored by NBC:
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/c-span-bailout/727521/
October 15th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Apparently the beautiful minds of the Neo-Conservative movement failed Philosophy 101, because otherwise they would know that there is a difference between morality and ethics.
Which is exactly what Walt nails Murchavik on.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Re Don Williams and El Cid
I have not the slightest concern about a possible election victory of Senator Osama as, if he wins, Bush will bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran taking out any threats to Israel or anybody else in the Middle East. After all, who’s going to stop him?
October 15th, 2008 at 9:42 am
That`s their “Noble Lie” talking………As I have always said these people have no heart, no soul and no integrity that ain`t no lie.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:49 am
You’re just foolish, Matt, and not seeing the big picture. History will vindicate them! After all, the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions by the time we’re done) dead won’t be around to write the history books. You know who will? Wingnut welfare recipients!
Who cares if all those people died if at some point in the unforseeable future Iraq isn’t a horrible wasteland?
October 15th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I saw the “60 Minutes” piece last Sunday about the battle for Sadr City, showing how the U.S. Army killed Mahdi Army fighters by using Predators and Hellfire missiles (talk about overkill, and its a half million bucks every time you pull the trigger).
And the neocons are hurting from “taking their lumps”? Boo hoo.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Walt:
Just as Franklin Roosevelt allied with the murderous Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi Germany, realism dictated that the United States rely on both democratic and nondemocratic allies in the long struggle against Soviet power.
I agree with what FDR did (allied with Commies? It’s like nationalizing banks). Who is Nazi Germany now according to Walt? Why do we have to “realistically” ally with dictators?
This lesser evil theorizing went on during the Cold War which led the US to back horrible dictators in order to “fight pinkos.”
The Cold War is over, something most realists seem not to understand. There is no Nazi Germany and there is no reason to coexist with dictators like Saddam.
Many on the left in their drama queen fashion were insistent that the evil, all powerful neocons were going to get us into a war with Iran. I never bought this and it never happened.
Iraq is the worst disaster in human history and meanwhile Afghanistan is the “good war.” They seem pretty similar to me, except Iraq’s oil is more vital to the global economy and Saddam Hussein was worse in many ways than the Taliban (who never invaded anybody, but wouldn’t give up OBL).
October 15th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Oh and McCain has been “realist” with regards to Pakistan while Obama is doing the right thing, even if Pakistan is a nuclear state.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
At this point, the US doesn’t even know what the hell would be “realist” policy with respect to Pakistan and what would be “idealist”. Sure, they hoped “pro-dictator” would somehow turn out to be the realist thing to do but they were too lazy, uninterested or distracted to actually check that assumption.
When Musharraf overthrew Nawaz Sharif, its a good bet he was supported by a lot of idealists in Pakistan.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
How could anyone read the writings of Irving Kristol — or any of the post-Iraq War excuse-making, a la Douglas Feith — and not realize that neo-conservatives are essentially neo-Platonist idealists more concerned with motive and morality rather than effect? Which is odd, given Kristol’s stated goal of introducing rationality into public policy to control the excesses of liberal idealism. But consistency was not his strong suit.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I get the same kind of revulsion when righties talk about “winning” and “victory”. It’s as if the cost in blood doesn’t even occur to them. Who cares? It isn’t their blood.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
The Republican record since the beginning of the Reagan years has been truly horrendous. Look at the alliances with the apartheid governments against the governments of Angola and Mozambique (over 1 million deaths each.) In Central America we have Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, each with hundreds of thousands dead. In Iraq we have at a minumum hundreds of thousands dead, more likely millions, millions of refugees, tens of millions disempowered women. The US government has consistently refused to count civilian deaths; presumably because these people don’t count.
Across the globe there are billions of people who work all morning just so they can eat lunch. Then they work all afternoon so they can eat dinner. If they happen to be in the countries that are deemed strategic, then these good people, people with names and faces, with loves and families, hopes, pains, and dignity become the nameless victims. What can you say about Republicans, other than they are among the lowest form of vicious humanity that has ever existed.
October 15th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
DJ:
At this point, the US doesn’t even know what the hell would be “realist” policy with respect to Pakistan and what would be “idealist”. Sure, they hoped “pro-dictator” would somehow turn out to be the realist thing to do but they were too lazy, uninterested or distracted to actually check that assumption.
When Musharraf overthrew Nawaz Sharif, its a good bet he was supported by a lot of idealists in Pakistan.
You’re so effing confused I don’t know what to say. “Pro dictator” is the realist way, whether you’re pro-Saddam or pro-Musharraf. It’s unfortunate – as Walt says of FDR’s alliance with Stalin against Hitler – but necessary. It’s the lesser evil.
I realize it makes it easier to think about things if you just assume what Bush wants is bad and what he doesn’t want is good, but things aren’t like that in the “real” world.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Re Don Williams
Apparently, Senator Osama and Reverend Jackson aren’t too happy with Mr. Taharis’ article.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017541219&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
October 15th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Oh neocons believe in morality all right, just their own blinkered self-superior sense of it, which bizzarely acts like there’s no such thing as consequentialism. And arguments like this fall on deaf ears:
“To set prudence and justice so radically at odds, however, is to misconstrue the argument for justice. A state contemplating intervention or counter-intervention will for prudential reasons weigh the dangers to itself, but it must also, AND FOR MORAL REASONS, weigh the dangers its action will impose on the people it is designed to benefit and on all other people who may be affected. An intervention is not just if it subjects third parties to terrible risks: the subjection cancels the justice.” (emphasis in original)
– Michael Walzer, JUST AND UNJUST WARS, p. 95.
Ultimately their posture depends on reductionist logic run amok. Anyone who opposes a neocon-advocated *humanitarian* intervention is a heartless realist. There is no inbetween. No weighing of the potentially more harmful (and historically proven to be inevitable) unintended collateral consequences of all-out war. No consideration of the possible relative tolerability of the status-quo (e.g. is there ongoing genocide?) vs. the tolerability of certain death for innocents as collateral damage. And in the case of Iraq, no consideration of the opportunity costs to us and other future terror victims by removing focus from Afghanistan. None of that matters, as long as your “heart is pure”, or at least you say so.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
This is a succinct expression of the mirror image of the head-in-the-clouds neocon folly Yglesias rightly derides: the non-interventionist “liberalism” that made up the spine of the anti-war movement in 2001-2003, which now masquerades as a “reality-based” alternative to neoconservatism, when in fact it is a convergence with isolationist conservatism, and which “expresses no remorse” for — or even awareness of — “the suffering” of Iraqis living under Saddam and his psychopathic sons.
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