[Peace-discuss] Is Bush Unhinged?

[Morton K.Brussel]

A great article, Carl, as you say.

But how will he, Higgs, vote, if he does?  And of course, this is a 
discourse on the fatuity of Bush, less on general policy matters, with 
which the left seems more concerned.

MKB

On Mar 22, 2004, at 11:19 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> [Here's some more of my campaign to suggest that the anti-war movement 
> has
> allies on the Right -- principled conservatives often bitterly opposed 
> to
> the neocon group dominating Bush administration policy.  Robert Higgs 
> is a
> principal in the libertarian Independent Institute and editor of The
> Independent Review. Have you heard this point put so clearly on the
> soi-disant Left?  --CGE]
>
> 	Is Bush Unhinged?
> 	by Robert Higgs
>
> Before you conclude that I myself must be unhinged even to raise such a
> question, ask yourself this: If a man talks as if he has lost contact 
> with
> reality, then might he actually have done so? Granted that this
> possibility deserves evaluation, then consider President George W. 
> Bush's
> rhetoric in his March 19 speech to diplomats and others at the White
> House.
>
> The president begins by stating his interpretation of the recent 
> bombings
> in Madrid, reiterating one of his recurrent themes of the past two and 
> a
> half years: "[T]he civilized world is at war" in a "new kind of war." 
> The
> concept of war, of course, ranks high among evocative metaphors. Not by
> accident have politicians declared wars on poverty, drugs, cancer,
> illiteracy, and an assortment of other alleged enemies. A society at 
> war,
> as William James observed in 1906 in his call for the "moral 
> equivalent of
> war," finds a reason for unaccustomed solidarity and – here's where 
> the
> politicians come in – for unaccustomed submission to central 
> government
> authority. James himself, after all, was arguing that "the martial 
> type of
> character can be bred without war." Political leaders are always 
> seeking
> to establish such character, with themselves in command of the 
> battalions
> of "disciplined" subjects. Insofar as the so-called war on terrorism
> merely represents the latest attempt to bend the war metaphor to an
> obvious political purpose, we might well dismiss the president's
> rhetorical flourish as nothing but the same old same old.
>
> Bush, however, will allow no such dismissal. "The war on terror," he
> insists, "is not a figure of speech." Well, I beg your pardon, Mr.
> President, but that is precisely what it is. How can one go to war 
> against
> "terror," which is a state of mind? Even if the president were to take
> more care with his language and to speak instead of a "war on 
> terrorism,"
> the phrase still could not be anything more than a metaphor, because
> terrorism is a form of action available to virtually any determined 
> adult
> anywhere anytime. War on terrorism, too, can be only a figure of 
> speech.
>
> War, if it is anything, is the marshalling of armed forces against
> somebody, not against a state of mind or a form of action. Wars are 
> fought
> between groups of persons. We might argue about whether the United 
> States
> can wage war only against another nation state, as opposed to an
> indefinitely large number of individuals committed to fanatical 
> Islamism
> who in various workaday guises are living in scores of different
> countries. The expression "war on certain criminals and conspirators of
> criminal acts" would fit the present case better and would entail far 
> more
> sensible thinking about the proper way to deal with such persons. The 
> idea
> of war, obviously, calls to mind too readily the serviceability of the
> armed forces. Hence the application of such forces to the conquest of 
> Iraq
> in the name of "bringing the terrorists to justice," although that
> conquest was actually nothing but a hugely destructive, immensely
> expensive diversion from genuine efforts to allay the threat posed by 
> the
> Islamist maniacs who compose al Qaeda and similar groups. "These 
> killers
> will be tracked down and found, they will face their day of justice," 
> the
> president declares, speaking as always as if only a fixed number of 
> such
> killers exist, rather than a vast reservoir of actual and potential
> recruits that is only augmented and revitalized by actions such as the
> U.S. invasion of Iraq. It would be a boon to humanity if the president
> could be brought to understand the distinction between waging war and
> establishing justice.
>
> Whatever our understanding of the president's "war on terror" might be,
> however, he definitely parts company with reality when he states, 
> "There
> is no neutral ground – no neutral ground – in the fight between
> civilization and terror, because there is no neutral ground between 
> good
> and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death." Of course, this
> Manichean pronouncement echoes the administration's previous 
> declaration
> that everybody on earth is either with us or against us – and if they
> know what's good for them, they'll fall into line with our wishes. 
> Aside
> from the undeniable fact that some nations simply prefer, as did the
> Spanish people (as opposed to the Aznar government), to avoid the 
> blowback
> of U.S. interventions around the world, the president's insistence on
> equating U.S. policy with good, freedom, and life and all alternative
> policies with evil, slavery, and death represents the sort of childish
> bifurcation one expects to find expressed by a member of a youth gang, 
> not
> by the leader of the world's most powerful government. To raise but a
> single example, though a highly relevant one in this context, can any
> dispassionate person argue that the U.S. position on the
> Israeli-Palestinian conflict is entirely good, whereas every 
> alternative
> position is entirely evil?
>
> Observers endowed with humane moral sensibilities recognize that there 
> is
> plenty of evil to go around in Israel and elsewhere. In Iraq, for 
> example,
> the U.S. government bears clear responsibility for killing and injuring
> thousands of noncombatants in the past year – not to mention the
> horrendous mortality and suffering it brought about previously by
> enforcement of the economic sanctions used to cripple that country for
> more than a decade. Some people maintain that the price was worth 
> paying,
> that ultimately the good obtained will more than compensate for the 
> harm
> caused in the process, but even if one accepts that assessment for the
> sake of argument, it remains true nevertheless that much harm was 
> caused,
> that the burden of responsibility for evils perpetrated must be borne 
> by
> the U.S. side as well as by the demonized enemy (Saddam Hussein having
> been made out after 1990 as "another Hitler"). International conflicts 
> in
> the real world do not often divide neatly into nothing-but-good versus
> nothing-but-evil. For the president of the United States to employ 
> such a
> juvenile characterization raises the possibility that his mind is so
> immature that he ought to be removed from office before he propels the
> world into even worse disasters.
>
> Seemingly aware of previous criticism, the president declares that "the
> terrorists are offended not merely by our policies – they are 
> offended
> by our existence as free nations." I myself have seen no evidence to
> confirm such a statement; certainly the president has adduced none. I 
> have
> seen, however, the translated testimony of one Osama bin Laden, who in 
> a
> famous October 2001 videotape objects to U.S. support for Israel in the
> Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi
> Arabia, and to U.S. economic sanctions and other hostile actions 
> against
> Iraq – that is, to various U.S. policies. "Millions of innocent 
> children
> are being killed in Iraq and in Palestine and we don't hear a word from
> the infidels. We don't hear a raised voice," says bin Laden. In my 
> ears,
> this statement sounds like an objection to U.S. policies. I have seen 
> no
> evidence that bin Laden or any other known Islamic terrorist takes 
> offence
> at our very existence, provided that we mind our own business in our 
> own
> homeland.
>
> In the president's mind, however, every deviation from adherence to his
> promulgated national-security policy of U.S. world domination and
> preventive warfare represents a dangerous form of appeasement: "Any 
> sign
> of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence, and invites
> more violence for all nations. The only certain way to protect our 
> people
> is by early, united, and decisive action" – that is, by global 
> military
> intervention by the United States, with all other nations serving as 
> its
> lackeys. In the neoconservative vision to which the president has been
> converted, time stands still: It is always 1938, and if we fail to 
> bring
> all our military might to bear preventively against the Hitler du 
> jour, we
> shall certainly be plunged into global catastrophe.
>
> Waxing positive, the president credits recent U.S. and allied military
> actions with bringing about "a free Afghanistan" and the "long-awaited
> liberation" of the Iraqi people. He maintains that
>
> the fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence,
> aggression, and instability in the Middle East. . . . [Y]ears of 
> illicit
> weapons development by the dictator have come to the end. . . . [T]he
> Iraqi people are now receiving aid, instead of suffering under the
> sanctions. . . . [M]en and women across the Middle East, looking to 
> Iraq,
> are getting a glimpse of what life in a free country can be like. . . .
> Who would begrudge the Iraqi people their long-awaited liberation?
>
> This effusion evinces a tenuous grip on reality. Nobody begrudges the
> Iraqi people their freedom, but many of us have serious doubts about 
> just
> how much freedom those long-suffering people really have. Their 
> country is
> occupied by a lethal foreign army whose soldiers roam freely, breaking
> into homes and mosques at will, maintaining checkpoints that often 
> become
> the venues of unjustified killings, carrying out police activities by
> employing such means as aerial bombardment and bursts of heavy 
> machine-gun
> fire. If this unfortunate scene is the "glimpse of what life in a free
> country can be like" that others throughout the Middle East are 
> getting,
> then woe unto anyone who yearns to stimulate those Middle Easterners to
> seek freedom. "With Afghanistan and Iraq showing the way, we are 
> confident
> that freedom will lift the sights and hopes of millions in the greater
> Middle East," the president states. If he really harbors such 
> confidence,
> one can only note how ill-founded it is.
>
> The president seems to have no idea of what a free society consists of.
> Violent military occupation and the complete absence of the rule of law
> totally invalidate any claim that either Iraq or Afghanistan is now a 
> free
> society. At present Iraq is awash with violence perpetrated by 
> resistance
> fighters and occupation forces and with criminality of all sorts 
> unleashed
> by the disruptions associated with the war and by the U.S. dissolution 
> of
> the old police apparatus. "We will not fail the Iraqi people, who have
> placed their trust in us," Bush declares. But they never placed their
> trust in us in the first place; they simply suffered our invasion and
> occupation of their country. In any event, we have already gravely
> disappointed the hopes that many Iraqis held for life after the 
> overthrow
> of Saddam Hussein's regime. The country is rife with resentment and
> hostility, and the people are eager for U.S. forces to get out. 
> Although
> the president maintains that "[w]e've set out to break the cycle of
> bitterness and radicalism that has brought stagnation to a vital 
> region,"
> one cannot help concluding from the facts on the ground that the 
> upshot of
> the U.S. invasion and occupation has been just the opposite, that U.S.
> actions in Iraq have only poured fuel on the fires of terrorism there 
> as
> well as in the wider world.
>
> It is disconcerting for me to listen to the president's speeches. I get
> the unsettling feeling that the man inhabits another world in which 
> things
> are the exact opposite of how they seem to me. Of course, I may be the 
> one
> whose perspective is askew. Unlike Bush, I cannot claim that the 
> Almighty
> has licensed my position. Yet I fear that time will tell in favor of my
> view of the matter – a view shared, of course, by most people on the
> planet, indeed, by nearly everybody who has not been bribed, 
> intimidated,
> or blinded by partisan loyalty to the Bush administration. For now, 
> this
> difference of views might seem to be nothing more than that – just 
> one
> man's opinion jousting with another's – but reality has a way of 
> passing
> definite judgment, and I will not be surprised if Bush's pronouncements
> ultimately come to be seen as having no more substance than a bad 
> dream.
>
> March 22, 2004
>
> Robert Higgs is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent
> Institute and editor of The Independent Review. His most recent book is
> Against Leviathan.
>
> Copyright © 2004 LewRockwell.com
>
> Find this article at: http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs24.html
>
>
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