MR. BUSH AND THE LURE OF PSEUDO-REALITY
Germany's defeat in World War II was greatly accelerated by Hitler's refusal—especially in the final two years—to accept any bad news, and to accuse those trying to present such news of disloyalty, defeatism, or stupidity. Enemy forces were invariably underrated, own strength overestimated, and self-deceptions believed with such firmness that, by mid-1944, Field Marshal Rommel felt compelled to conclude that the Fuehrer was living in a Wolkenkuckucksheim ("cloud cuckoo land").
Is it conceivable that the atmosphere in the White House is beginning to resemble that at Rastenburg? One of the best informed political commentators in Washington, Chris Nelson, thinks so. His influential newsletter, The Nelson Report, has been keenly read inside the Beltway for the past 20 years because his information is usually reliable. In its January 3 issue Nelson wrote of the rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush "does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information":
Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news." Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq . . . building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse."
Especially alarming is the insistence of Nelson's sources that this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself, and that it is not the result of senior officials around him trying to mislead or insulate him. Nelson concludes that "whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message."
Similar warnings about Mr. Bush have been heard before, and the disturbing signs—such as his tendency to a messianic outlook—have been apparent for years. His belief that "history has called America and our allies to action" was stated with great firmness in his first State of the Union address three years ago. The conclusion, that he sees himself as an anointed agent of divine providence, seems inescapable.
The notion that one is on the right side of "history" is dangerous in a President, however, not only because it breeds irrational belief in the correctness of one's own intuitive judgment, but also because it prompts megalomaniacal decisions and policies inimical to the political and constitutional tradition of the United States. Abraham Lincoln waged his war against the South with similar convictions as Mr. Bush wages his current global crusade, and with similar consequences. As Eric Foner has noted in his review of two recent books on Lincoln, both Presidents assumed powers that went well beyond what the Constitution seems to allow; in both cases, thousands of people suspected of assisting the enemy were arrested and held without charge and military tribunals were established to circumvent civilian courts:
Leading members of both Administrations described the military conflict as an epic struggle between good and evil, inspired by the country's divinely ordained mission to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world. The Bush Administration's cavalier disregard for civil liberties has directed attention to the permissible limits on the rule of law in wartime.
The historicist fallacy that "history" is an entity on a linear march has bred gnostic ideologies that find it easy to murder those who are deemed to be on its "wrong" side. Sooner or later this mindset results in the destruction of the over-expanded, over-extended bearer of the divinely appointed task. IBD's Washington bureau chief Brian Mitchell has diagnosed the "twin faults" of this mindset leading in the same self-destroying direction. The first is "a gnostic belief in our own anointing as a nation, a belief without any foundation in scripture or tradition, chosen merely because it flatters us." The second is an undeserved confidence in our ability to know and reason, which makes it easy
to pass judgment on others and bear the sword against them, accounting ourselves blameless for the destruction we cause . . . We all know how well men rationalize their nonrational preferences, yet after doing our just-war calculations and obtaining an answer in favor of war, we then proceed with a clear conscience to commit ghastly acts.
Reality is always more complicated than we imagine, he warns, and the farther the reality is from our own experience the less we can understand it. This is the moral basis for nonintervention, for the original refusal of the American Republic to get involved in arranging other peoples' lives.
To deal with the terrorist threat effectively and on the basis of leadership willingly accepted by those who are led, the United States should discard the pernicious notion of its exceptionalism. But instead of realizing that the threat to America is enhanced by the policy of global hegemony, President Bush is turning that hegemony into a divinely-ordained, morally mandated, open-ended and self-justifying mission of this country for decades to come. The winners are the neoconservatives, of course, who can easily tailor their long-term scenarios to fit into Mr. Bush's universe. Their mendacity—apparent in the misrepresentation of the Iraqi crisis to the American people—is now coupled with the chief executive's propensity to hear only "those facts which seem to support his declared mission." It will make the job easier for those around him who subscribe to the Straussian dictum that deception is justified, that there is no morality, and that there is only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior.
Srdja Trifkovic
Copyright 2004, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org
Is it conceivable that the atmosphere in the White House is beginning to resemble that at Rastenburg? One of the best informed political commentators in Washington, Chris Nelson, thinks so. His influential newsletter, The Nelson Report, has been keenly read inside the Beltway for the past 20 years because his information is usually reliable. In its January 3 issue Nelson wrote of the rising concern amongst senior officials that President Bush "does not grasp the increasingly grim reality of the security situation in Iraq because he refuses to listen to that type of information":
Our sources say that attempts to brief Bush on various grim realities have been personally rebuffed by the President, who actually says that he does not want to hear "bad news." Rather, Bush makes clear that all he wants are progress reports, where they exist, and those facts which seem to support his declared mission in Iraq . . . building democracy. "That's all he wants to hear about," we have been told. So "in" are the latest totals on school openings, and "out" are reports from senior US military commanders (and those intelligence experts still on the job) that they see an insurgency becoming increasingly effective, and their projection that "it will just get worse."
Especially alarming is the insistence of Nelson's sources that this "good news only" directive comes from Bush himself, and that it is not the result of senior officials around him trying to mislead or insulate him. Nelson concludes that "whether self-imposed, or due to manipulation by irresponsible subordinates, the information/intelligence vacuum at the highest levels of the White House increasingly frightens those officials interested in objective assessment, and not just selling a political message."
Similar warnings about Mr. Bush have been heard before, and the disturbing signs—such as his tendency to a messianic outlook—have been apparent for years. His belief that "history has called America and our allies to action" was stated with great firmness in his first State of the Union address three years ago. The conclusion, that he sees himself as an anointed agent of divine providence, seems inescapable.
The notion that one is on the right side of "history" is dangerous in a President, however, not only because it breeds irrational belief in the correctness of one's own intuitive judgment, but also because it prompts megalomaniacal decisions and policies inimical to the political and constitutional tradition of the United States. Abraham Lincoln waged his war against the South with similar convictions as Mr. Bush wages his current global crusade, and with similar consequences. As Eric Foner has noted in his review of two recent books on Lincoln, both Presidents assumed powers that went well beyond what the Constitution seems to allow; in both cases, thousands of people suspected of assisting the enemy were arrested and held without charge and military tribunals were established to circumvent civilian courts:
Leading members of both Administrations described the military conflict as an epic struggle between good and evil, inspired by the country's divinely ordained mission to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world. The Bush Administration's cavalier disregard for civil liberties has directed attention to the permissible limits on the rule of law in wartime.
The historicist fallacy that "history" is an entity on a linear march has bred gnostic ideologies that find it easy to murder those who are deemed to be on its "wrong" side. Sooner or later this mindset results in the destruction of the over-expanded, over-extended bearer of the divinely appointed task. IBD's Washington bureau chief Brian Mitchell has diagnosed the "twin faults" of this mindset leading in the same self-destroying direction. The first is "a gnostic belief in our own anointing as a nation, a belief without any foundation in scripture or tradition, chosen merely because it flatters us." The second is an undeserved confidence in our ability to know and reason, which makes it easy
to pass judgment on others and bear the sword against them, accounting ourselves blameless for the destruction we cause . . . We all know how well men rationalize their nonrational preferences, yet after doing our just-war calculations and obtaining an answer in favor of war, we then proceed with a clear conscience to commit ghastly acts.
Reality is always more complicated than we imagine, he warns, and the farther the reality is from our own experience the less we can understand it. This is the moral basis for nonintervention, for the original refusal of the American Republic to get involved in arranging other peoples' lives.
To deal with the terrorist threat effectively and on the basis of leadership willingly accepted by those who are led, the United States should discard the pernicious notion of its exceptionalism. But instead of realizing that the threat to America is enhanced by the policy of global hegemony, President Bush is turning that hegemony into a divinely-ordained, morally mandated, open-ended and self-justifying mission of this country for decades to come. The winners are the neoconservatives, of course, who can easily tailor their long-term scenarios to fit into Mr. Bush's universe. Their mendacity—apparent in the misrepresentation of the Iraqi crisis to the American people—is now coupled with the chief executive's propensity to hear only "those facts which seem to support his declared mission." It will make the job easier for those around him who subscribe to the Straussian dictum that deception is justified, that there is no morality, and that there is only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior.
Srdja Trifkovic
Copyright 2004, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org
posted by R7 | 1/14/2005 07:39:00 AM
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