The latest issue of the Atlantic is up online, and it features (among many other pieces, some on more urgent topics) my take on why the American memory might yet smile on George W. Bush - and why that would be a bad thing.
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Redeeming Dubya
16 May 2008 12:02 pm
Comments (29)
The latest issue of the Atlantic is up online, and it features my take on why the American memory might yet smile on George W. Bush - and why that would be a bad thing.
America smile on Dubya? Are you kidding? Why would history smile on him? The Republicans are going down to historic defeat in November. The economy is in the crapper. I could go on. Dubya will go down as one of the worst presidents ever.
More from the same article:
And just as crucially, they depend on American troops’ staying in Iraq for as long as it takes for that to happen. If these events come to pass—if the Iraq of 2038 or so is stable, democratic, and at peace with its neighbors, and if American troops have maintained a constant presence in the country—no one should be surprised to hear hawkish liberals as well as conservatives taking up the idea that George W. Bush deserves a great deal of the credit.
Ross projects 30 years, and recognizes that this is an unlikely scenario, McCain projects five and says that's the way it will be. Ross is quite clear that McCain's goals are unrealizable, and thus any notion of a withdrawal by 2013 is simply a lie, because such a withdrawal is predicated on a peace that will not be in place in 2013.
Ross demonstrates in this article that he knows that John McCain is peddling misdirection, arguably lies, and his Iraq speech only works insofar as it pulls the wool over the eyes of the American people. Insofar as the American people agree with Ross as to the nature of the conflict in Iraq, they will recognize that McCain is misleading them.
As such, it is morally incumbent upon Ross to point this out, to make clear that he thinks that McCain is trying to fool Americans. Praising the politics of the speech in one post and revealing that you know the politics of the speech are based on a great deception in the next simply cannot be acceptable practice.
Here is what I want just one single goddamn conservative Bush lover to answer:
Why, if Bush will go down in history as a great president, or if its even likely that Bush will be viewed more favorably than he is now, has the Bush administration done everything in their power to close off the administration's papers to scholars and erected propaganda outlets designed to intentionally obfuscate Bush's legacy?
CAN ANYONE ANSWER THAT?
I think some of you are missing the point of the article. Its not that Bush deserves to be remembered well, its that given past examples there's a decent chance he will. Truman and Teddy were pretty terrible presidents and everyone loves them now.
DivGuy - The Second World War ended in 1945. If, in 1941, FDR had anticipated victory in four years, and bringing the boys home in 1945, and also anticipated a long road ahead, one in which American forces would occupy Japan and Germany for 60+ years, he would be anticipating the world in which we live today.
I don't agree with Ross on the nature of the conflict. I hate this war, as a Marine who served in it, and as a citizen who cannot deny the damage that's been done. But so many of the arguments against the war, even those I consider correct, read like a laundry list of problems in many, if not all, conflicts of the type we're likely to fight.
Europe hated us before, they hate us now, they will hate us tomorrow. Terrorists and other enemies are "emboldened" when you start fighting them. Chaos ensues. And so the list goes on and on.
The gross incompetence of our big, lumbering, slow-to-learn clusterf*ck of an armed force is very American, not just a Bush-era phenomenon. If you want to use this fact to say we should fight no wars, so be it. I just don't think it makes a good specific argument against this war.
If, in 1941, FDR had anticipated victory in four years, and bringing the boys home in 1945, and also anticipated a long road ahead, one in which American forces would occupy Japan and Germany for 60+ years, he would be anticipating the world in which we live today.
This is true.
This is irrelevant to Iraq, because the goals of WWII were the defeat of Germany and Japan. When that defeat was achieved, troops could come home.
The goal in Iraq is to police a civil war and institute stable democracy on top of tribal and inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict, as well as on top of mass economic hardship.
FDR and Truman had a plan to win WWII. McCain has no plan to win Iraq besides stay the course, and hope that somehow we will not see the same continuation of conflict and lack of political progress that has been the case in 2003 and 2004 and 2005 and 2006 and 2007 and 2008. Hope is not a plan.
FDR and Truman had a plan to win WWII. McCain has no plan to win Iraq besides stay the course, and hope that somehow we will not see the same continuation of conflict and lack of political progress that has been the case in 2003 and 2004 and 2005 and 2006 and 2007 and 2008. Hope is not a plan.
It strikes me as a more acceptable plan than Truman's mass slaughter of Japanese civilians, but okay. More to the point, though, the "2013" speech did not say that all of the troops would be home by that date, but only "most" of them, and added that in his vision the US "maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role." Nothing in what Douthat said - "American troops’ staying in Iraq for as long as it takes for that to happen"; "American troops have maintained a constant presence in the country" - says anything about troop levels. Sheesh. Try some charity.
And by the way, "Douthat never says anything about the Iraq war" crowd, I hope you didn't miss this:
The cost of the Iraq War, in lives and dollars and squandered opportunities, ought to far outweigh the possibility that a long-term American presence might push the Middle East in a direction it was headed anyway.
Not only is Ross's idea that Bush might be celebrated as great one day likely to be off-base, but his thesis is historically incorrect. Hubris does not lead to a great legacy in the future. Case in point: William McKinley. Furthermore, the celebrated presidents he mentioned are not really celebrated for their hubris (with the exception of TR and the Panama Canal situation). Predictably, he underrates Truman, who initiated the policy that won the Cold War, and overrates Coolidge, who did absolutely nothing to tackle extreme income inequality (that, unlike the Clinton years, did not see absolute incomes rise at the bottom) or prevent the Great Depression.
Ross' thesis boils down to that it it's silly to value Presidents on the basis of their ambitions irrespective of their success or failure. I can't really disagree with that, and, although I don't really want to, I think he's right on Iraq. I'm not really sure where he thinks US foreign policy should head after Iraq, I guess we'll have to wait for his book.
The more important question is will the republican party save itself by impeaching Bush and Cheney. If the republican party does nothing it will be out of power for decades.
John, I'll assume you're talking about the highly destructive and prolonged firebombing campaigns on top of the dropping of the atom bombs and not just the atom bombs themselves. The point is, we had already killed a lot of civilians before Truman decided to drop the bombs, including over 100,000 civilians in Tokyo.
Because if you were only talking about the dropping of the atom bombs, well, that'd be a demonstration of a very narrow outlook on a decision that was consistent with the warfighting philosophy we adopted against the Japanese (not to mention consistent with the UK's use of zone bombings against the Germans).
It's not a philosophy I share, necessarily, as I think a lot of it may have been guided by racism and cultural paranoia, but I think any assessment of the decisions made during the Pacific War should be understood in as a complete of a context as possible.
Given that Bush has presided over a pretty good economy, despite an attack on the country's financial center and its military center, that he has turned two of the most hostile governments in the world to allies, broadened and deepened the U.S./India relationship, and planted a fragile democracy in the middle east I think Ross is wrong. He will be seen in the top 20 of Presidents.
He has two terms. If John McCain wins his successor will be a Republican. A positive economy, smashing America's enemies, appointing two Supreme Court judges, lowering the tax burden, and beating the Democrats in three straight elections are not small beer.
I fall into the conservative "the administration has not executed well" camp but this "worst President ever" business is nonsense. George Bush is by objective measure either the second or third best President of my lifetime.
Nixon, Ford, Carter, and his father are measurably worse in economic measures and achieving victory in elections. Johnson had Vietnam. Clinton was impeached and made our military weaker, and was forced to move Right against his will.
Bush II is arguably a better President than Clinton or Johnson, but in any case is not even the worse within memory.
He spent too much money and made the Government bigger. But as Ross points out we don't pillory Presidents for that.
Matthew,
I suppose I was referring only to the atom bombings, but I think without a doubt that the same condemnation applies to the firebombings as well. That Truman may have been "consistent" in his disregard for civilian casualties doesn't help him at all in my estimation; the same holds, e.g., for McCain's unwavering devotion to the war in Iraq.
Ross somehow forgot about Abu Ghraib and all it symbolizes -
extraordinary rendition, torture as state policy, and the consequent blackening of America's moral reputation for generations to come. Interventionist liberals of the George Packer stamp may come to look on the Iraq War as a good idea, poorly executed, but few of them will praise the administration's moral squalor. And this raises the question of why so many religious conservatives, Ross included, can't understand why the world looks on George Bush with contempt.
Oh, good grief, could we just end the ridiculous notion that this war has included unusual illegitimate violence which has uniquely blackened America's moral reputation? The primary difference between Donald Rumsfeld and Harry Stimson is that Stimson was crafty enough to tacitly encourage front line soldiers and Marines to commit widespread atrocities in the Pacific Theater, while ostensibly banning mistreatment in rear areas, whereas Rumsfeld tried to quietly sanction illegal treatment of a relatively small group of prisoners, while emphasizing good conduct by front line soldiers and Marines. If Rumsfeld had followed the Stimson model, he would have instituted a propaganda campaign which inculcated the message into American soldiers and Marines that Iragis were subhuman insects or other types of beasts, and were to be treated as such when encountered in the field, while emphasizing legal treatment in rear areas. Of course, unlike the mid 20th century Pacific Theater, if American troops had engaged in charming practices as using captured Iraqis for target practice, or removing the gold teeth of live Iraqis with bayonets, it would have received lot of attention, and have really caused a world-wide outrage. The reason why Stimson (and FDR) didn't swing from a rope at the conclusion of WWII is that victors don't swing from ropes, not because they did anything to maintain the American reputation. War is forever an obscenity, and when it involves two very different cultures, that is especially so.
Predicting the future is a mug's game. Bush's reputation will rise if Iraq's political culture improves markedly, relative to the standards of the region, and his reputation will be mired in the cellar if it does not. Frankly, I highly suspect that if the price of gasoline was $1.75 a gallon, Bush's popularity rating would be around the 40% mark, and our oh so wise historians, who presume to write history in real time, would be influenced by that popularity rating, and thus not be so nearly unanimous in their estimation of Bush. I say that as someone who was predicting that Bush would be an awful President in terms of domestic policies as early as 1999, and has been unfortunately proven correct, by my standards of what a President's, and the Federal Government's, proper role is.
Don't blame the interrogation policy of the current administration on Rumsfeld. It came from higher up. Policy meetings were held in the White House about how far to go in extracting information, and Bush says he knew about the meetings and approved them. I imagine he didn't attend them in order to keep his hands as clean as possible. And where did Will Allen's looney idea come from about our World War II political leadership encouraging inhumane treatment of Japanese prisoners? Undoubtedly terrible things were done by our troops in the stress of war, but if Allen can show that the people at the top encouraged torture, let's see the sources.
And finally, I'd like to return to the responsibility of writers like Ross for the moral squalor of our government. I used to think it was part of Christian morality to abhor torture. Apparently I was wrong. If Bush does it, it's OK.
Stan, you may be correct about Bush leading Rumsfeld to the water, but you are entirely ignorant about WWII. Here's a good description of how the United States government encouraged atrocities in the field...
"Government publications for U.S. servicemen frequently depicted the Japanese in a similar manner. Yank, the weekly magazine of the U.S. Army, referred to Japanese working on the airfield on Guadalcanal as "termites," while a piece of War Department training literature entitled The Jap Soldier, derived from an instructional filmstrip of the same title, informed GIs that Marines fighting in the Solomons believed that the presence of the enemy could be detected by their odor, described as "the gamey smell of animals."(20) Another War Department treatise likened the Japanese soldier to a poisonous snake, and urged readers to use their "better brains" in combating him. Referring to the cumulative impact of such imagery, a U.S. Army veteran remembers that "[w]e had been fed tales of these yellow thugs, subhumans, with teeth that resembled fangs. If a hundred thousand Japs were killed, so much the better. Two hundred thousand, even better. I wasn't innocent, either. You couldn't escape it."(21) "
Stan, I rather doubt that when a live Japanese prisoner was having his gold teeth extracted by a bayonet, was saying to himself, "Golly, I sure am glad that this isn't being done as a result of a memo authorizing torture, in an effort to extract information! I feel much better knowing that my cheeks are being slashed open by bayonet, and the tip of the bayonet jammed below my gum line, because this member of the American military has been told by his government, as part of a deliberate propaganda campaign, that I'm on the same level of a cockroach! What a relief!!"
This propaganda campaign, which was uniquely deployed against the Japanese, and not the Germans, was designed to encourage the most harsh, and often illegal, possible treatment of the Japanese. Yes, mistreatment was banned in rear areas, but on the front lines, atrocities were tacitly encouraged, and tolerated. German propagandists were hung for war crimes for similar behavior. American propagandists, and those that directed them, weren't because the American propagandists were on the winning side.
Will, while much of what you say is correct, it is important to note that the feelings between the U.S. and the Japanese were mutual, and that the Japanese rarely took prisoners and also committed many, many atrocities in the field.
Curtis LeMay once told a younger Robert McNamara during WW2 that if the U.S. had lost to the Japanese, LeMay himself would have been tried for war crimes.
While I believe the atrocities on the front lines are unforgivable, I really have no opinion on the overall FDR/Truman strategy. If the horrendous firebombings and the atom bombs were what won the war, then they're easier to justify. If not, and there probably is a case to be made that the firebombings only strengthened Japanese resolve (just as the British area bombings did to the Germans), then hundreds of thousands of Japanese were killed for no result whatsoever.
I do think, John, that if witnessing the destructive power of only two bombs in two different cities were what caused Japan -- who, unlike Iraq, actually started the war -- to finally capitulate, retrospective moral criticism becomes more difficult. What if we had to invade Japan? Would more people have died as a result? Would the Japanese have given each child two grenades, one to throw at the Americans and one to fall on? After all, that's what they did on many of the islands to where we sent ground troops. And what if the Soviet Union had invaded Japan shortly after they declared war (roughly the same time we dropped the atom bombs)? Would the country had been divided between North and South Japan?
The flip side of this is, however, that maybe the atom bombs didn't cause the Japanese to surrender, but that they surrendered because of the threat of invasion and because they were unable/unwilling to fight a two-front war between the United States and the Soviet Union. That actually seems a bit more plausible to me, but I really do not know.
What gives me hope about all the destructive madness on the front lines and in the aerial bombings in the Pacific War is that, after the Japanese surrendered, the race hatred declined immensely, and the two countries worked incredibly well together in the reconstruction process, and ever since Japan has flourished to a point where Toyota might actually purchase GM within the next ten years.
If the destruction we reigned upon Japan during the war was not what won it, then I think Ross's qualms with Truman look rather small compared to mishandling Korea. Of course, he praises Eisenhower, rightly so, for ending the war on our terms, even knowing he did so by making it very clear that using nukes was on the table. Would anyone have taken him seriously had we not dropped the bombs? I guess what I'm trying to illustrate is that it is really, really difficult (nearly impossible) to run a cost-benefit analysis on the atom bombs.
Will, you are right about the nature of our anti-Japanese propaganda in World War II. I was a small boy during the 40's, and I remember that the movie and radio news was much more hostile to the Japanese than the Germans and Italians. But that wasn't what you I thought we were talking about. You said that Henry Stimson encouraged widespread atrocities. I doubt it. Stimson was famous for having closed down the State Department's cryptographic section when he was Hoover's Secretary of State because, he said, "gentlemen do not read other gentlemen's mail". He was not the kind to guy to encourage torture, and even if he were, his orders would have to be transmitted through the military hierarchy. I simply can't imagine generals like Marshall and MacArthur countenancing such a thing. Finally, you may be right in implying that history is written by the victors. But I can't see the people Ross was writing about - the George Packers and the Tom Friedmans of the future - ever glossing over the thuggish nature of the Bush presidency.
It's really difficult to run a cost-benefit analysis on the use of the atom bombs. The firebombings arguably strengthened Japanese resolve in the short term, which makes their use even more suspect beyond the hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. But what if the atom bombs actually caused the Japanese to surrender? Had we not dropped them, wouldn't we have had to invade Japan? Which would have been more destructive? With attitudes like "the only good Jap is a dead Jap," wouldn't American servicemen have been merciless on mainland Japan? What if the atom bombs ended the war soon enough to stop the USSR from invading Japan and thus avoiding a Korea-like situation in Japan? At the same time, maybe it was the USSR declaring war on Japan that caused them to surrender, or perhaps it was the threat of invasion.
There is no way of telling whether or not the alternatives to dropping the bombs would have resulted in more or less casualties.
Also, Will, much of what you say is true, but I think it's important to point out that race-hatred was not exclusive to the allies in the Pacific War, and that the Japanese also very rarely took prisoners and committed many atrocities in what was really a "kill or be killed" fighting environment informed by mutual fear, hate, and racism. There is an excellent book by historian John Dower called War Without Mercy that details the attitudes both sides had during the war.
However, Dower also wrote a book about post-war Japan called Embracing Defeat, and given the total destructiveness of the conflict and the attitudes of both sides, I draw a lot of hope from the fact that those fears and hatreds by and large subsided as the two countries partnered to rebuild Japan. That doesn't excuse any of the atrocities, but I think Truman's choice to legitimize Japan as a liberal democracy instead of opting for further humiliation a la Germany at Versailles is definitely a major point in his favor and demonstrates his greatest strength overall: quickly moving beyond the WW2 rivalries in order to establish the framework and strategy to wage the Cold War.
Crap, I essentially posted the same column twice with different language. The first one I meant not to post because it contains a major logical error in the final paragraph. But maybe my whole logic is just flawed anyway.
Also, Will, I don't think the Stimson model would have done us a bit of good in Iraq, given that the goal of this war is not as clear-cut as seeing the enemy defeated, but about winning support of the populous, and atrocities in the rear or in the front make it much harder to accomplish that.
Matthew, I wasn't arguing that the U.S. should have encouraged front line atrocities against the Iraqis, via a deliberate propaganda campaign directed at U.S. military personnel as the consumers, in the way that atrocities against the Japanese were tacitly encouraged in WWII. Nor was I saying that U.S. behavior in the Pacific Theater was worse, or as bad as, that of the Japanese. I was simply disputing the ahistorical view that the behavior of the Bush Administation has been uniquely lawless in regards to how it has prosecuted the current war. Heck, consider this...
"In January 1942 Admiral William Leahy, chairman of the new Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed that ". . . in fighting with Japanese savages, all previously accepted rules of warfare must be abandoned," to which he added some months later the opinion that the United States should destroy Japan "utterly."
No, FDR, Stimson, and Marshall did not write memos specifically ordering torture to extract information from a relatively small group of prisoners. A reasonable argument can be made that they did something worse, in terms of the amount of illegal violence unleashed. They deliberately inculcated in American military personnel the belief that the enemy was not really human, and then they turned a blind eye to whatever atrocities ensued, as long as the atrocities did not take place in rear areas. Hence, widespread atrocities ensued, on a scale that dwarfs what has taken place in the current conflict. As I stated above, this is exactly what some German propagandists were hung for. Oh well, it's good to be on the winning side, ain't it? By the way, there are some who argue that hostilities began between the U.S. and Japan when the U.S. embargoed Japan. Now, I happen to think beginning an embargo against a militaristic, expansionist, empire which has already slaughetered a few million is likely a good thing to do, but
it really is a good idea to have a full historical picture.
Look, I happen to think FDR was a very good, and possibly great, President, and George W. Bush will probably be seen in 50 years as mediocre at best, and really awful at worst, depending on what happens in the Persian Gulf over the next 20 years. That doesn't mean, however, that it is a good idea to entertain a bunch of nonsense about halcyon days of yore.
Will, I still feel that our interrogation program is ill-advised and immoral, but I see more clearly what you've been saying, and I agree with you in part.
Will, fair enough, and I shouldn't have implied otherwise. All apologies. I happen to agree with you by and large, although I don't agree with historians who argue that the embargo sparked the war.
There is no way of telling whether or not the alternatives to dropping the bombs would have resulted in more or less casualties.
Of course dropping the A-bombs saved lives (may have saved my father's life and allowed my genesis -- I think that makes it my duty to be grateful). Any student of WW2 would know this. The invasion of Japan would be at least as costly as the invasion of the islands that preceded it which were bloody indeed. Those preceding battles also demonstrated the irrational unwillingness of Japanese civilians to surrender in the face of certain death.
Which brings to mind the one of the stupidest assertions in Douhat's Atlantic article (hard to choose from so many stupid assertions), namely that the Iraq war has been excessively costly in terms of lives and dollars spent.
Clearly, those who question the wisdom of dropping the A-bombs and think that the Iraq war is excessively bloody, have not learned much about the second world war, the bloodiest war in human history. The war in the Pacific alone was incredibly bloody and costly, making the Iraq war look like a Sunday picnic at the beach. America could fight twice as long in Iraq and still not reach the American death toll from Iwo Jima (one of several very bloody island battles). Given the lowered casualty rate now, it might not reach it were Americans to stay 100 years.
Such ignorance is astounding. Do they not teach youngsters how to count? Do they not teach the meaning of greater than and lesser than anymore? Is comparison of two quantities too mathematically challenging for modern Americans? Do numbers mean nothing?
About 1.5 million Japanese died in WW2, most within a four year span. Tens of millions died during this relatively short war. Millions of Vietnamese died in that much longer conflict. Only Communist icons Stalin and Mao could kill on a greater scale than this.
In contrast, only 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in the five year Iraq war and total theater deaths have numbered in the hundreds of thousands (at most). Leaving aside the truism that every death is a tragedy [what trite conclusion must we draw from that? that no sane person likes death?] millions > hundreds of thousands.
It's really a kind of vanity to remain ignorant of history.
On a stylistic note, I believe it more correct to say "greater or fewer casualties" rather than "more or less".
Bob White -- cost is related to what you are paying for.
$10,000 would be excesively costly fo even a very good burrito, but pretty cheap for a new Bentley.
The cost of WWII is weighed against the removal of existential threats.
The Iraq war would be excessively costly if no US people died and someone gave us a trillion dollars for our troubles.
To "theCoach": So who is the burrito? The Frenchman, one of 40 million liberated by the Allies? Or the Afghani, one of 30 million liberated by Coalition forces? I'm not good at classifying liberated innocents. Do you do so by the color of their skin? By the similarity of their alphabet to yours? By shared culture or religion? What makes one liberated person more worthy than another? I have trouble distinguishing between one case vs another. Enlighten me.
And after liberating 30 million Afghanis, we went and liberated 25 million Iraqis -- after which they had contested elections (after which the opposition was not rounded up and thrown in prison).
All this democracy and freedom at the cost of fewer lives than were lost in the summer after D-Day -- for a bunch of burritos. I suffer from a lack of perspective on cost. No, I am a simple agnostic who stares at the numbers: more people liberated at the cost of fewer lives. What am I missing?
You know how I know Bush is right? He gave a speech yesterday at Sharm-al-Sheik stating that democracy does not consist merely of holding elections if the viable opposition to the winner is held in jail. And the Arab powers-that-be yawned and whined -- just as the Soviets yawned and whined when Reagan championed the denizens of the gulag. That's their act: to pretend his words have no meaning or worth. But how can you dispute the truth of his words as he advocates that other Arab powers adopt democracy? We know he is speaking the truth and to an unwelcoming audience. That takes courage.
If indeed Arab countries liberalise, Bush will be seen rightly seen as a compassionate democrat.
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Ross Douthat, in the above piece:
The Iraq War, his signal endeavor, has lasted for more years than America’s involvement in the Second World War and seems likely to last longer; a fragile truce in a wrecked, misgoverned country is the best the next president can hope for.
John McCain, in the speech Ross Douthat praised in the post immediately below:
By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.
But Ross still praises the speech on a political level without engaging with the essential obfuscation that is central to its functioning. Ross obviously sees the way the speech only works if audiences come away from it with a false understanding of McCain's actual Iraq policy, and the above quote shows that he recognizes that McCain is peddling a pile of hooey.
Come on, Ross, this is really unacceptable as punditry.
Posted by DivGuy | May 16, 2008 12:25 PM