Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday April 2, 2003
The Guardian
This war is un-American. That's an unlikely word to use, I know: it has
an unhappy provenance, associated forever with the McCarthyite hunt for
reds under the beds, purging anyone suspected of "un-American
activities". Besides, for many outside the US, the problem with
this war is not that it's un-American - but all too American.
But that does an injustice to the US and its history. It assumes that
the Bush administration represents all America, at all times, when in
fact the opposite is true. For this administration, and this war, are
not typical of the US. On the contrary, on almost every measure, they
are exceptions to the American rule.
The US was, after all, a country founded in a rebellion against
imperialism. Born in a war against a hated colonial oppressor, in the
form of George III, it still sees itself as the instinctive friend of
all who struggle to kick out a foreign occupier - and the last nation on
earth to play the role of outside ruler.
Not for it the Greek, Roman or British path. For most of the last
century, the US steered well clear of the institutions of formal empire
(the Philipines was a lamentable exception). Responsibility was thrust
upon it after 1945 in Germany and Japan. But as a matter of deliberate
intent, America sought neither viceroys ruling over faraway lands nor a
world map coloured with the stars and stripes. Influence, yes; puppets
and proxies, yes. But formal imperial rule, never.
Until now. George Bush has cast off the restraint which held back
America's 42 previous presidents - including his father. Now he is
seeking, as an unashamed objective, to get into the empire business,
aiming to rule a post-Saddam Iraq directly through an American
governor-general, the retired soldier Jay Garner. As the Guardian
reported yesterday, Washington's plan for Baghdad consists of 23
ministries - each one to be headed by an American. This is a form of
foreign rule so direct we have not seen its like since the last days of
the British empire. It represents a break with everything America has
long believed in.
This is not to pretend that there is a single American ideal, still
less a single US foreign policy, maintained unbroken since 1776. There
are, instead, competing traditions, each able to trace its lineage to
the founding of the republic. But what's striking is that George Bush's
war on Iraq is at odds with every single one of them. Perhaps best known
is Thomas Jefferson's call for an America which would not only refuse to
rule over other nations, it would avoid meddling in their affairs
altogether. He wanted no "entangling alliances". If America
wished to export its brand of liberty, it should do it not through force
but by the simple power of its own example. John Quincy Adams (before
Bush, the only son of a president to become president), put it best when
he declared that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to
destroy". Could there be a better description of Washington's
pre-emptive pursuit of Saddam Hussein?
The Jeffersonian tradition is not the only one to be broken by
Operation Iraqi Freedom. Last year the historian Walter Russell Mead
identified three other schools of US foreign policy. Looking at them
now, it's clear that all are equally incompatible with this war.
Those Mead calls Hamiltonians are keen on maintaining an
international system and preserving a balance of power - that means
acknowledging equals in the world, rather than seeking solo, hegemonic
domination. So Bush, whose national security strategy last year
explicitly forbade the emergence of an equal to the US, is no follower
of Alexander Hamilton. Jacksonians, meanwhile, have always defined
America's interests narrowly: they would see no logic in travelling
halfway across the world to invade a country that poses no immediate,
direct threat to the US. So Bush has defied Andrew Jackson. Woodrow
Wilson liked the idea of the US spreading democracy and rights across
the globe; banishing Saddam and freeing the people of Iraq might have
appealed to him. But he was the father of the League of Nations and
would have been distressed by Washington's disregard for the UN and its
lack of international backing for this war.
Which brings us to a key un-American activity by this Bush
administration. Today's Washington has not only broken from the
different strands of wisdom which guided the US since its birth, but
also from the model that shaped American foreign policy since 1945. It's
easy to forget this now, as US politicians and commentators queue up to
denounce international institutions as French-dominated, limp-wristed,
euro-faggot bodies barely worth the candle, but those bodies were almost
all American inventions. Whether it was Nato, the global financial
architecture designed at Bretton Woods or the UN itself, multilateralism
was, at least in part, America's gift to the world. Every president from
Roosevelt to Bush Senior honoured those creations. Seeking to change
them in order to adapt to the 21st century is wholly legitimate; but
drowning them in derision is to trash an American idea.
The very notion of unprovoked, uninvited, long-term and country-wide
invasion is pretty un-American, too. When it thinks of itself, the US is
a firm believer in state sovereignty, refusing any innovation which
might curb its jurisdiction over its own affairs. Hence its opposition
to the new international criminal court or indeed any international
treaties which might clip its wings. Yet the sovereignty of the state of
Iraq has been cheerfully violated by the US invasion. That can be
defended - the scholar and former Clinton official Philip Bobbitt says
sovereignty is "forfeited" by regimes which choke their own
peoples - but it is, at the very least, a contradiction. The US, which
holds sovereignty sacred for itself, is engaged in a war which ignores
it for others.
The result is a sight which can look bizarre for those who have spent
much time in the US. Americans who, back home, resent even the most
trivial state meddling in their own affairs are determined to run the
lives of a people on the other side of the planet. In New Hampshire car
number plates bear the legend, Live Free or Die; a state motto is Don't
Tread on Me. If a "government bureaucrat" comes near, even to
perform what would be considered a routine task in Britain, they are
liable to get an earful about the tyranny of Washington, DC. Yet
Americans - whose passion for liberty is so great they talk seriously
about keeping guns in case they ever need to fight their own government
- assume Iraqis will welcome military rule by a foreign power.
Talk like this is not that comfortable in America just now; you'd be
denounced fairly swiftly as a Saddam apologist or a traitor. The limits
of acceptable discussion have narrowed sharply, just as civil liberties
have taken a hammering as part of the post-9/11 war on terror. You might
fall foul of the Patriot Act, or be denounced for insufficient love of
country. There is something McCarthyite about the atmosphere which has
spawned this war, making Democrats too fearful to be an opposition
worthy of the name and closing down national debate. And things don't
get much more un-American than that.
j.freedland@guardian.co.uk
