The NATION
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051024/altermanthe liberal media | posted October 6, 2005 (October 24, 2005 issue)
The First Time Was Tragedy...
Eric Alterman
<<snip>>
Outrageous even by his own considerable standards, George W. Bush has tried to hijack Roosevelt's World War II legacy for his own, most recently at a speech in San Diego commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of V-J Day. The obvious difference between FDR's and Bush's wars is necessity. True, FDR led the nation into war by less than forthright means, but he did so because he knew that Germany and Japan were genuine and unavoidable threats to American security and prosperity. Bush chose war for reasons of ideological fanaticism, coupled with personal pique and historical ignorance rather than any verifiable threat. The Administration's repeated demonstration of dishonesty and incompetence vis-à-vis Iraq helps explain why, despite desperate propaganda efforts--and little Democratic opposition--a mere 33 percent of Americans currently voice support for his handling of the war.
Second, while superpowers fighting wars do a lot of things that most of us wish they wouldn't, FDR managed to do them while advancing the image of America as the world's protector and defender of freedom and democracy. This perception grew tarnished during the cold war, particularly at the time of the war in Vietnam, but never to the point that our allies questioned the fundamental arrangements upon which world security and economic prosperity rested. Bush's war, on the other hand, has destroyed much of the good will that America built up among our allies during two world wars and afterward. In the late 1990s the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, symbol and spokesperson for a humane, social-democratic liberal Europe, told me in unequivocal terms that America's protection of European democracy had been necessary and valuable during the last half-century. (He would not extend the argument into the Third World.) And yet under Bush, America's image has fallen so far, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, that totalitarian China is more admired than we are by most European nations, and we are more isolated than at any time since perhaps the end of slavery.
Bush's ability to deceive the nation into an unnecessary war rested in part on his willingness to lie but also on war agitators' deployment of the discourse of Wilsonian internationalism. Rutgers historian Lloyd Gardner notes that Americans are used to hearing that democracy travels well, that democratic institutions can be established easily, that other people want to be like Americans "once the bad people are removed." The phenomenon leads LaFeber to term US politicians' linguistic attachment to Wilsonianism less "a policy than a disease."
Bush has had a great deal of help in this endeavor, from the right-wing punditocracy as well as from politically naïve and ahistorical liberal hawks. Few gave much thought to the likely consequences of "democracy promotion" in Iraq: greater hatred for America and Israel, coupled with a strategic coup for the theocratic ambitions of Iran's medieval mullahs. As the Administration's incompetence slowly transforms Iraq into an ungovernable terrorist training camp, we may be forgiven our nostalgia for a "juggler" who, for all his flaws, had the good sense to address genuine threats with the kind of creativity and competence that right-wing Republicans these days seem to reserve only for criminal enterprise.
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