September 19, 2007

God-Send Gates!

Regular readers know well my detestation for the abysmal Rumsfeld, now scampering merrily about Taos and St. Michaels with not the merest smidgen of shame, spouting inanities to GQ journalists. So as someone who feted Gates' arrival on the scene, he's the last player in this Administration I'd want to criticize, to be honest. Still, however, allow me to briefly dissent on ye grand Williamsburg speech here. I speak of remarks Gates made on Monday in Virginia, of which the hagiographic treatment of same has been quite something. Le tout Washington is seemingly riveted by such apercus:

Over the last century, we have allied with tyrants to defeat other tyrants. We have sustained diplomatic relations with governments even as we supported those attempting their overthrow.

We have at times made human rights the centerpiece of our national strategy even as we did business with some of the worst violators of human rights. We have worked with authoritarian governments to advance our own security interests even while urging them to reform.

We have used our military to eliminate governments seen as a threat to our national security, to undo aggression, to end ethnic slaughter, and to prevent chaos. In recent times, we have done this in Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, the Balkans, Haiti, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the process, we have brought the possibility of democracy and freedom to tens of millions more who had been oppressed or were suffering.

To win and protect our own freedom, the United States has made common cause with countries that were far from free – from Louis XVI, to one of history’s true monsters, Joseph Stalin. Without the one there is no American independence. Without the other, no end to the Third Reich. It is neither hypocrisy nor cynicism to believe fervently in freedom while adopting different approaches to advancing freedom at different times along the way – including temporarily making common cause with despots to defeat greater or more urgent threats to our freedom or interests.

Now I know, in a cretin-infested Washington, these rays of common-sense appear the second-coming. But really, friends, come now. Of course you need to speak to the "bad guys" at times. Of course democracy takes time. Of course we aren't going to end tyranny in the world under the Decider's watch (reinstituting habeas corpus in this country would be a good start, however). Again, we had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union throughout the entire Cold War. Nixon and Kissinger opened up dialogue with Red China. But the gang of mediocrities in Washington spend time coaxing Olmert not to speak to dastardly Bashar, because agenda-ridden third-tier players like a Dave Wurmser would get bummed out. In similar vein, we have a Mitt Romney (showing that success in private equity can still have you proving a reckless simpleton on foreign policy) clamoring for an Alan Dershowitz or John Bolton to serve process to Ahmadi-Nejad when he gets off the tarmac at Kennedy for the UNGA. This type of ribald fare is turning this country into a provincial-looking laughing-stock. But yes, OK, god speed to Gates. I can protest Foreign Policy 101 being heralded as some great new hybrid of 'realism and idealism' or such, but still, I'll take a sane SecDef over a criminally negligent one any day of the week.

P.S.David Brooks writes about Gates today: "(o)ver the long term, Gates represents a shift in the foreign policy center of gravity. Over the short term, he is, to use a phrase he borrows from the historian Joseph Ellis, “improvising on the edge of catastrophe.” Perhaps, given the enormity of the disaster in Iraq, but what Gates is simply trying to return us to is basically the entire thrust of post-WWII foreign policy in this country, interrupted by a confluence of 9/11, a hugely underqualified President, pugnacious nationalists (and their know-nothing 'more rubble, less trouble' allies), and fantastical neo-cons. It ain't rocket science, it's called common sense, deal-making, sanity, etc etc. Why this Thermidor need take place over the 'long-term' is beyond me. It needs to happen today, better yesterday even.

Posted by Gregory at September 19, 2007 11:13 PM