"We handled 9/11," wrote Andrew Cuomo two years ago, "like it was a debate over a highway bill instead of a matter of people's lives." Cuomo was referring to the Democratic Party, but his reprimand snugly fits several rightist commentators. The Iraqi campaign is nearing the end of its fourth year and for several months has been wreathed in dysphemisms, the fatalistic kind.
In question would be whether this front in the war is devoid of what should be or what some of us would prefer to see. Soldiers generally believe the latter, and many thousands choose to declare it by reenlisting so that they may return to Iraq. A lot of intellectuals are convinced of the former and have reverted to what Mr. Cuomo thought disgraceful. Where broadly expressed preferences for tactics and strategy would be relevant, some editorials instead tender "policy" about "security" to "end" the "violence." As if the deaths, most of them from Iraq's civilian population, were casualties of the remote; or that rhythmic murders by the enemy could be, with just the right public initiative, enjoined.
Very little of what the enemy can muster, against Iraq's future, is irreversible — as often as the word is repeated and by whomever, when polity, construction and defensive prescriptions continue, one can't say things are "deteriorating" unless to do it a priori. What seems to be motivating this, on the right, is a dissociate carelessness, a product of boredom with the war.
If it is not distracted thought, then National Review editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg should be in some trouble. Seven weeks after obliquely terming Iraq "a mistake," at the same time calling for a plebiscite on the acceptance of allied troops, Goldberg, today, retracted the democratic offer and asked for a prepotent Iraqi to decide for all 25 million — including the Kurds? — by usurping state control and emulating the recently deceased Chilean tyrant, Augusto Pinochet.
Just three days ago, National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr. reviewed Pinochet and his life, decided Chile and the West were fortunate to have been rid of the man after seventeen years and ended with an apothegmatic warning: "Power begets the abuse of it." But because Pinochet might not have been as murderous as other dictators, and because Pinochet (an authoritarian, not a totalitarian) left Chilean culture and markets mostly alone, and because Pinochet surrendered the government two years after the country was finally enfranchised; Goldberg has, if not exactly ennobled Pinochet, selected the example of his rule for salutary intercession in Iraq.
Goldberg propounds this through a series of errors, beginning with a choice between placing Fidel Castro or Augusto Pinochet in Baghdad — a strange one that no one actually needs to make. The government of Nouri al-Maliki, embattled, is still together and despite the enemy's tenacity there are no rivals behind which Iraqis have gone. The "bad options" Goldberg says that Washington has are the ones he gives us. And then, Pinochet himself, a lurid Cold War remainder whose rule could only arguably have led directly to present-day Chile. Rather, Goldberg wants correlation to prove causation: "Pinochet's abuses helped create a civil society," he asserts, crediting Pinochet with "democratic institutions and infrastructure" and "free-market reforms."
First, Chileans were already navigating constitutional government before Pinochet took it from them. Second, Pinochet plus Chile equals enterprise is not universal — the Czechs and Estonians didn't learn about economic liberty from Moscow. Third, if non-totalitarian authoritarian Pinochet made it all happen? On Pinochet Christopher Hitchens has opined, reasonably, that "free-marketeers presumably do not believe that you need torture and murder and dictatorship to implement their policies." Or Americans with any interest in the vindication of their government's foreign efforts.
The "Kirkpatrick doctrine," that of the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, is part of Goldberg's justification. But Kirkpatrick advocated forbearance of authoritarian regimes opposed to the totalitarian Soviets, not dictatorial coups fifteen years later, not the political infanticide of Goldberg's design. In her own words, Kirkpatrick said "I think that it's very important for us to continue to assure Eastern Europeans and citizens of the former Soviet Union, that whatever the current difficulties, we are convinced that they have made the good choice, the right choice, for the long run."
After the removal of a Stalinist despot, and granting to popular confirmation a constitution and government, actions led by a president who ran for reelection on the probity of his administration, it upends reason to believe that the United States would not enervate the libertarian causes it has always impelled, or the national will therefor. It is disturbing enough to hear of the extent of Iran and Syria's manipulation, the murder of Iraqis by enemies of the state who wear the state's uniforms. But to openly effect an oppressive government?
Practically: who would be picked to play Pinochet; how many and which kinds of dissidents could he harass, imprison, execute; how much of the nation's resources would be his through escheat; what would be his time limit to reinstate what he undid; or would there be one?
On the right, some parochialists are resigned to leaving the Third World to the several brands of fascists — but one has to strain to recall the last time somebody wanted to forfeit an entire country, and positively. If polemics have not left us all dulled, there will be an exclamation, to Jonah Goldberg, of: What did you just say? Goldberg's article is out of character, insouciance over the betrayal of millions, but that is not an excuse.
National Review's editors and publishers, to avoid an impression of lazy inconstancy that could nag, might return to the departure of Ann Coulter five years ago. Coulter was admonished for writing, on September 13, 2001, in an obstreperous tribute to the slain Barbara Olson, that the United States "should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Goldberg, in fact, wrote about the unsuccessful conciliation and Coulter's contract halt.
Coulter, Goldberg explained, didn't fail as a person, but as a writer. What so repulsed was her implication of literally forcing a populace to obey, in Goldberg's words in 2001, "at gunpoint." Unless the Iraqi Pinochet employs dominative psychokinesis, he will have to follow Goldberg's plan with the force of arms, too. So, turn to Goldberg. If the demand for a Pinochet impersonation was a joke, it wasn't funny. If, as the saying goes, Goldberg was "just thinking out loud," he should think hereupon to himself, principally on where he went wrong.
If Coulter was too much, in the rawness of September 2001, either National Review deals with Goldberg or it tolerates what is understood in conscionable terms only as pro-fascistic. Does meaning still matter to the right? Goldberg should apologize and recant or National Review should send Goldberg the same way as Coulter — out.