In my earlier diary, "Conservative priorities: Elite rhetoric vs. base voter reality", I wrote:
In yesterday's "Idiot wind" diary discussion, bystander called attention to a recent blog post by Matt Yglesias, focused on this passage:
| From a Keynesian standpoint, I believe that with the economy depressed it's better to spend the money in Afghanistan than not to spend it. |
There was a whole lot else wrong with that post, I thought. Enough to do a diary about.
This is that diary.
To begin with, bystander linked to a diary by charles davis, "Beltway liberalism in 24 words", which says in part:
[T]here's something wrong -- something sick, really -- with Ygelsias' war-as-stimulus argument that strikes me as far more offensive than the fact that some fiscal conservatives are hypocrites when it comes to the National Security State. If you believe the war in Afghanistan is vital to protecting America, well, go ahead and make your case. Explain why pushing the couple dozen or so members of al-Qaeda allegedly still in the country over to Pakistan, while creating new enemies with each errant air strike, actually makes us safer.
What you shouldn't do in a debate over war, at least if you want to maintain your status as a Non-Despicable Person, is argue that bombing and occupying a foreign nation makes good economic sense. Even if it were true as an academic point, it's grotesquely out of place in a discussion of matters of life and death. War, if it can ever be justified -- and I have my doubts -- can only be so on the grounds that it is absolutely necessary to protecting human life: there is no other choice, it's a last resort.
This is a pretty obvious and morally compelling point, which really goes to the heart of what's wrong with neoliberalism generally: it is, all too often, an ideology of calculations in which "market forces" and other process gobbledegook utterly displaces questions of morality.
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| It's not that morality plays no role for neoliberals: it's an input, a variable, a side issue--it can take on any number of forms... except that of an actual moral imperative. There is one exception, of course: the moral imperative to keep moral imperatives at bay, except in defense of would-be neoliberal order. I say, "would-be neo-liberal order" because, for the most part, neo-liberalism is devoted to trying to "rationalize" the neo-colonial world order that others have created, but which neo-liberals think that they can do a far superior job in running.
While Bush was in office, this took on a particularly ludicrous form, when neo-liberal hawks, epitomized by the New Republic, supported the invasion of Iraq based on the ludicrous premise that Bush's war was fought for their reasons, not his, and would be directed toward their ends, not his. Under Obama, they've taken a somewhat different, but equally fallacious stance, pretending that innocent civilians killed for their reasons, corrupt officials bribed for their reasons, and make-believe allies hostile to their reasons will produce progress toward their ends by some sort of magical formula they never quite manage to explain.
Turning in particular to the diary at hand, Yglesias begins:
Priorities
People who believe that the war in Afghanistan is important to the long-term interests of the United States of America are absolutely, unequivocally correct to vote to spend tens of billions of dollars on it notwithstanding the adverse impact that has on the deficit. I think we should be clear about that. If you think this war is important, then you should blow up the deficit to get the job done. Under current circumstances, it would be completely insane for the government to not do something important simply because of the deficit. Situations can arise when the deficit should be considered an independent consideration that's given weight, but that time is not today.
So rather than note the hypocrisy of the several hundred House deficit-whiners who voted yesterday for a deficit-ballooning war appropriation it's worth just worth dwelling on what counts as a priority for the United States of America today. Is Afghanistan important? Sure. Does it matter? Sure.
This is a truly heinous, if obli que and torturous argument, depending on an entire galaxy of counterfactuals. One big part of that galaxy is the false supposition that conservatives are just liberals with a different set of policy preferences: given their different preferences, they they behave just like liberals would. That's the unavoidable subtext of the first sentence:
People who believe that the war in Afghanistan is important to the long-term interests of the United States of America are absolutely, unequivocally correct to vote to spend tens of billions of dollars on it notwithstanding the adverse impact that has on the deficit.
Yet, the very same week that Yglesias wrote that, Republicans blocked a bill primarily composed of small-business tax cuts, as TPM reported:
All 41 Senate Republicans yesterday filibustered a jobs package comprised largely of tax cuts.
You read that right. Republicans filibustered tax cuts.
By the GOP's own admission, the underlying legislation has broad bipartisan support. It would create a $30 billion Treasury-backed fund to help community banks issue loans to small businesses and provide entrepreneurs with $12 billion in tax cuts -- a Republican kind of bill if ever there was one.
But Republicans had been threatening for weeks to stop it, unless they were offered a chance to offer amendments on issues like border security, capping federal spending, and the estate tax -- all of which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held to be non-germane to the issue of job creation.
Moral: conservatives are not just liberals with a different set of policy priorities. They are fundamentally different in how they are wired. Winning power is their primary concern. Policy is a means to that end, rather than power being a means to the end of implementing good policy.
There are all sorts of reasons that different sorts of liberals and their fellow-travelers make the mistake of believing that conservatives are just liberals with a different set of policy priorities, but whatever Matt's personal reasons, the belief serves to impute a false presumption of moral seriousness to the business of organized mass murder, since that is, after all, what war is.
In theory, President Obama recognizes this. He campaigned saying that he did not oppose all wars, pointing to the Civil War and World War II as examples of good and necessary wars, wars that he could and would support. Implicit in this stance is the recognition that war is inherent evil, and that it needs a truly compelling moral rationale in order to be justified, which is the same basic moral outlook that stands behind traditional Roman and Catholic just war theory. But in practice, there is virtually never a just war: there is just war: just mass murder and its improvised justifications. If one truly believes in just war, then one must be scrupulous about its requirements, but no such scruples are involved in Matt's argument--or anywhere else in the neo-liberal universe, for that matter.
Just war theory has six requirements: - Just Cause;
- Proper Authority;
- Right Intention;
- Reasonable Hope for Success;
- Proportionality;
- Last Resort
Some of these points may be debatable, but given that fewer than 100 al Qaeda operatives are in Afghanistan, given the fact that we're mostly fighting the Taliban, who have never attacked us on our own soil, given the high civilian casualty rate, and given the fact that the more civilians we kill, the more Taliban supporters, if not terrorists we create, the last four points cannot possibly be met. The pretense of just war is thus clearly a sham. Which is why war supporters avoid debating it, and instead simply try to strengthen the impression of serious moral purpose, just as Matt does in this diary.
Of course hypocrisy is devastating to claims of moral seriousness, which is why Matt needs to take the growing heat off of deficit chickenhawks who form the bulk of war supporters:
If you think this war is important, then you should blow up the deficit to get the job done. Under current circumstances, it would be completely insane for the government to not do something important simply because of the deficit. Situations can arise when the deficit should be considered an independent consideration that's given weight, but that time is not today.
So rather than note the hypocrisy of the several hundred House deficit-whiners who voted yesterday for a deficit-ballooning war appropriation it's worth just worth dwelling on what counts as a priority for the United States of America today. Is Afghanistan important? Sure. Does it matter? Sure.
Note that Matt not only takes the heat off of deficit chickenhawks, he actively takes their side, and subtly shifts his voice until ultimately he is speaking for himself, not them. This becomes most clear just after this passage, when suddenly dons his reasonable detached wonk persona:
Is the performance of a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Khost Province more important to the long-term interests of American citizens than the performance of the Riverside County Public Schools? I don't think so.
This is what launches him on the trajectory that eventually leads to his vile invocation of Keynes to justify war. The shifts in Matt's perspective and voice are subtle, the sorts of things that serious writers and readers are attentive to, but that most are not. They are the kinds of habitual deception that have become so commonplace in our political discourse that they are scarcely ever commented on, even by writers and readers skilled enough to recognize them in the other contexts. And yet they speak directly to the moral vacuity at the heart of all our politics. It's not that Matt is a particularly bad guy. He's not. But neither is he a morally serious critic of the policies he writes about. Which, of course, is why he's given so much credibility--which he then returns in spades. |
