At least they did most of the time, with Vietnam an especially telling exception. The Vietnam War was not uncertain and unsatisfying. It was stupid and catastrophic. An accounting of what the United States got wrong in Vietnam would require an essay longer than Kagan’s. The things that the United States got right in Vietnam can be reduced to a single sentence: Cynically proclaiming that “peace with honor” had been achieved, it left.
Now back in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the intellectual forebears of Robert Kagan decried this decision to cut American losses. Leaving implied the acceptance of failure. Such a failure, they insisted, would hand the Communists a great victory. United States credibility would suffer permanent damage. The Soviets would seize the initiative. Dominoes would topple. The United States would find itself isolated and alone.
None of those gloomy predictions—similar in tone to Kagan’s own forecast of “increasing conflict, increasing wars over territory, greater ethnic and sectarian violence, and a shrinking world of democracies” as the inevitable price for any lapse in American globalism—turned out to be accurate, of course.
Instead, the nation that Kagan describes as committed to doing “what no nation had ever been able to do” actually did what every great power does when it loses a war. It licked its wounds and left it to others to lick their own. That the United States made next to no effort to aid the Vietnamese and others adversely affected by the war speaks volumes about the definition of “global responsibility” that actually prevailed in Washington. But however cynical, leaving—more accurately abandoning—South Vietnam turned out to be a smart move. Doing so facilitated this nation’s military, economic, and political recovery.
With the end of the Cold War, according to Kagan, Washington’s commitment to promoting a liberal world order reached new heights. The signature of US foreign policy during the 1990s was renewed activism. A series of armed interventions ensued. “All aimed at defending and extending the liberal world order,” Kagan writes, “by toppling dictators, reversing coups, and attempting to restore democracies.”
As Hemingway’s Jake Barnes might put it, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” In fact, during the post–Cold War decade, with the Persian Gulf now the epicenter of US military activity, “extending the liberal world order” lagged well behind other, more pressing considerations. Priority number one was to ensure the safety and well-being of the distinctly illiberal Saudi monarchy. Priority number two was to contain Shiite-majority Iran. Fear of delivering Sunni-controlled Iraq into the hands of its own Shiite majority muted US enthusiasm for democratizing that country. If the choice was between stability and democracy, Washington preferred the former.
Still, if as Kagan regretfully notes (and recent polls affirm), Americans today show signs of being “world weary,” it’s not the events of the 1990s that have induced this weariness. No, if Americans appear disinclined to have a go at overthrowing Syria’s Assad or at restoring the Crimea to Ukrainian control, it’s due to their common-sense assessment of what US policy in very recent years has produced.
On this subject, astonishingly, Kagan has almost nothing to say. “A generation that does not remember the Cold War,” he observes, “but grew up knowing only Iraq and Afghanistan, is going to view America’s role in the world differently.” But what should this generation (not to mention generations that do remember the Cold War) make of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? What lessons does Kagan himself take from those wars? On this he is mute.
The reticence is uncharacteristic. Back in 1996, in a famous Foreign Affairs article co-authored with William Kristol, Kagan identified “benign global hegemony” as the proper basis for US policy. It was incumbent upon the United States to exploit its Cold War victory. Armed with a combination of “military supremacy and moral confidence,” Washington needed to put existing and potential adversaries in their place. The idea was “to make clear that it is futile to compete with American power.” Permanent dominion was the goal. To settle for anything less, Kagan and Kristol wrote, was to embrace “a policy of cowardice and dishonor.”
Even before September 11, 2001, Kagan was among those fixing their sights on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as the place to validate this approach. The events of 9/11 reinforced his determination along with his sense of self-assurance. Writing with Kristol in April 2002, he declared flatly that “the road that leads to real security and peace” is “the road that runs through Baghdad.”
George W. Bush took that road. Yet much to his considerable chagrin, Bush discovered that it led to rather considerable unpleasantness. As it dragged on, the Iraq War exposed as hollow any American aspirations to global hegemony. Left behind when US troops finally withdrew was their reputation for military supremacy. Meanwhile, as reports of prisoner abuse, torture, and the killing of noncombatants mounted, American moral confidence lost its luster. As for the Iraqis themselves, although few Americans are inclined to take notice, today they enjoy neither security nor peace.
On all of these matters, Kagan chooses to stay mum. That is his privilege, of course. Yet in exercising that privilege he forfeits any claim to be taken seriously. As with members of the Catholic hierarchy who hoped that the clergy sex-abuse scandal would just blow over or investment bankers who shrug off the economic collapse of 2008 as just one of those things, without accountability there can be no credibility.
William Buckley once remarked that the country would be better off governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. Here’s a corollary: When it comes to foreign policy, the president of the United States would be better served to consult a few reasonably informed citizens from Muncie, Indiana, than to take seriously advice offered by seers such as Robert Kagan.
If experience has brought President Obama to share in this view—as his recent ruminations on foreign policy appear to suggest—then more power to him.
7
Boykinism
Joe McCarthy Would Understand
(2012)
First came the hullaballoo over the “Mosque at Ground Zero.” Then there was Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, grabbing headlines as he promoted “International Burn-a-Koran Day.” Most recently, we have an American posting a slanderous anti-Muslim video on the Internet with all the ensuing turmoil.
Throughout, the official US position has remained fixed: the United States government condemns Islamophobia. Americans respect Islam as a religion of peace. Incidents suggesting otherwise are the work of a tiny minority—whackos, hatemongers, and publicity-seekers. Among Muslims from Benghazi to Islamabad, the argument has proven to be a tough sell.
And not without reason: although it might be comforting to dismiss anti-Islamic outbursts in the United States as the work of a few fanatics, the picture is actually far more complicated. Those complications in turn help explain why religion, once considered a foreign policy asset, has in recent years become a net liability.
Let’s begin with a brief history lesson. From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, when Communism provided the overarching ideological rationale for American globalism, religion figured prominently as a theme of US foreign policy. Communist antipathy toward religion helped invest the Cold War foreign policy consensus with its remarkable durability. That Communists were godless sufficed to place them beyond the pale. For many Americans, the Cold War derived its moral clarity from the conviction that here was a contest pitting the God-fearing against the God-denying. Since we were on God’s side, it appeared axiomatic that God should repay the compliment.
From time to time during the decades when anti-Communism provided so much of the animating spirit of US policy, Judeo-Christian strategists in Washington (not necessarily believers themselves), drawing on the theologically correct proposition that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same God, sought to enlist Muslims, sometimes of fundamentalist persuasions, in the cause of opposing the godless. One especially notable example was the Soviet-Afghan War of 197
9–89. To inflict pain on the Soviet occupiers, the United States threw its weight behind the Afghan resistance, styled in Washington as “freedom fighters,” and funneled aid (via the Saudis and the Pakistanis) to the most religiously extreme among them. When this effort resulted in a massive Soviet defeat, the United States celebrated its support for the Afghan Mujahedeen as evidence of strategic genius. It was almost as if God had rendered a verdict.
Yet not so many years after the Soviets withdrew in defeat, the freedom fighters morphed into the fiercely anti-Western Taliban, providing sanctuary to al-Qaeda as it plotted—successfully—to attack the United States. Clearly, this was a monkey wrench thrown into God’s plan.
With the launching of the Global War on Terror, Islamism succeeded Communism as the body of beliefs that, if left unchecked, threatened to sweep across the globe with dire consequences for freedom. Those whom Washington had armed as “freedom fighters” now became America’s most dangerous enemies. So at least members of the national security establishment believed or purported to believe, thereby curtailing any further discussion of whether militarized globalism actually represented the best approach to promoting liberal values globally or even served US interests.
Yet as a rallying cry, a war against Islamism presented difficulties right from the outset. As much as policymakers struggled to prevent Islamism from merging in the popular mind with Islam itself, significant numbers of Americans—whether genuinely fearful or mischief-minded—saw this as a distinction without a difference. Efforts by the Bush administration to work around this problem by framing the post-9/11 threat under the rubric of “terrorism” ultimately failed because that generic term offered no explanation for motive. However the administration twisted and turned, motive in this instance seemed bound up with matters of religion.
Where exactly to situate God in post-9/11 US policy posed a genuine challenge for policymakers, not least of all for George W. Bush, who believed, no doubt sincerely, that God had chosen him to defend America in its time of maximum danger. Unlike the communists, far from denying God’s existence, Islamists embrace God with startling ferocity. Indeed, in their vitriolic denunciations of the United States and in perpetrating acts of anti-American violence, they audaciously present themselves as nothing less than God’s avenging agents. In confronting the Great Satan, they claim to be doing God’s will.
Waging War in Jesus’s Name
This debate over who actually represents God’s will is one that the successive administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have studiously sought to avoid. The United States is not at war with Islam per se, US officials insist. Still, among Muslims abroad, Washington’s repeated denials notwithstanding, suspicion persists and not without reason.
Consider the case of Lieutenant General William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin. While still on active duty in 2002, this highly decorated Army officer spoke in uniform at a series of some thirty church gatherings during which he offered his own response to President Bush’s famous question: “Why do they hate us?” The general’s perspective differed markedly from his commander-in-chief’s: “The answer to that is because we’re a Christian nation. We are hated because we are a nation of believers.”
On another such occasion, the general recalled his encounter with a Somali warlord who claimed to enjoy Allah’s protection. The warlord was deluding himself, Boykin declared, and was sure to get his comeuppance: “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” As a Christian nation, Boykin insisted, the United States would succeed in overcoming its adversaries only if “we come against them in the name of Jesus.”
When Boykin’s remarks caught the attention of the mainstream press, denunciations rained down from on high, as the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon hastened to disassociate the government from the general’s views. Yet subsequent indicators suggest that, however crudely, Boykin was indeed expressing perspectives shared by more than a few of his fellow citizens.
One such indicator came immediately: despite the furor, the general kept his important Pentagon job as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, suggesting that the Bush administration considered his transgression minor. Perhaps Boykin had spoken out of turn, but his was not a fireable offense. (One can only speculate regarding the fate likely to befall a US high-ranking officer daring to say of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “My God is a real God and his is an idol.”)
A second indicator came in the wake of Boykin’s retirement from active duty. In 2012, the influential Family Research Council (FRC) in Washington hired the general to serve as the organization’s executive vice-president. Devoted to “advancing faith, family, and freedom,” the council presents itself as emphatically Christian in its outlook. FRC events routinely attract Republican Party heavyweights. The organization forms part of the conservative mainstream, much as, say, the American Civil Liberties Union forms part of the left-liberal mainstream.
So for the FRC to hire as its executive vice-president someone espousing Boykin’s pronounced views regarding Islam qualifies as noteworthy. At a minimum, those who recruited the former general apparently found nothing especially objectionable in his worldview. They saw nothing politically risky about associating with Jerry Boykin. He’s their kind of guy. More likely, by hiring Boykin, the FRC intended to send a signal: on matters where their new executive VP claimed expertise—above all, war—thumb-in-your eye political incorrectness was becoming a virtue. Imagine the NAACP electing Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as its national president, thereby endorsing his views on race, and you get the idea.
What the FRC’s embrace of General Boykin makes clear is this: to dismiss manifestations of Islamophobia simply as the work of an insignificant American fringe is mistaken. As with the supporters of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who during the early days of the Cold War saw communists under every State Department desk, those engaging in these actions are daring to express openly attitudes that others in far greater numbers also quietly nurture. To put it another way, what Americans in the 1950s knew as McCarthyism has reappeared in the form of Boykinism.
Historians differ passionately over whether McCarthyism represented a perversion of anti-Communism or its truest expression. So, too, present-day observers will disagree as to whether Boykinism represents a merely fervent or utterly demented response to the Islamist threat. Yet this much is inarguable: just as the junior senator from Wisconsin in his heyday embodied a non-trivial strain of American politics, so, too, does the former special-ops-warrior-turned-“ordained minister with a passion for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Notably, as Boykinism’s leading exponent, the former general’s views bear a striking resemblance to those favored by the late senator. Like McCarthy, Boykin believes that, while enemies beyond America’s gates pose great dangers, the enemy within poses a still greater threat. “I’ve studied Marxist insurgency,” he declared in a 2010 video. “It was part of my training. And the things I know that have been done in every Marxist insurgency are being done in America today.” Explicitly comparing the United States as governed by Barack Obama to Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s China, and Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Boykin charges that, under the guise of health reform, the Obama administration is secretly organizing a “constabulary force that will control the population in America.” This new force is, he claims, designed to be larger than the United States military, and will function just as Hitler’s Brownshirts once did in Germany. All of this is unfolding before our innocent and unsuspecting eyes.
Boykinism: The New McCarthyism
How many Americans endorsed McCarthy’s conspiratorial view of national and world politics? It’s difficult to know for sure, but enough in Wisconsin to win him reelection in 1952 by a comfortable 54 percent to 46 percent majority—enough to strike fear into the hearts of politicians who quaked at the thought of McCarthy fingering them for being “soft on Communism.”
Ho
w many Americans endorse Boykin’s comparably incendiary views? Again, it’s difficult to tell. Enough to persuade FRC’s funders and supporters to hire him, confident that doing so would burnish, not tarnish, the organization’s brand. Certainly, Boykin has in no way damaged its ability to attract powerhouses of the domestic right. FRC’s recent “Values Voter Summit” featured luminaries such as Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, former Republican Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Representative Michele Bachmann—along with Jerry Boykin himself, who lectured attendees on “Israel, Iran, and the Future of Western Civilization.” (In early August, Mitt Romney met privately with a group of “prominent social conservatives,” including Boykin.)
Does their appearance at the FRC podium signify that Ryan, Santorum, Cantor, and Bachmann all subscribe to Boykinism’s essential tenets? Not any more than those who exploited the McCarthyite moment to their own political advantage—Richard Nixon, for example—necessarily agreed with all of McCarthy’s reckless accusations. Yet the presence of leading Republicans on an FRC program featuring Boykin certainly suggests that they find nothing especially objectionable or politically damaging to them in his worldview.
Still, comparisons between McCarthyism and Boykinism only go so far. Senator McCarthy wreaked havoc mostly on the home front, instigating witch-hunts, destroying careers, and trampling on civil rights, while imparting to American politics even more of a circus atmosphere than usual. In terms of foreign policy, the effect of McCarthyism, if anything, was to reinforce an already existing anti-communist consensus. McCarthy’s antics didn’t create enemies abroad. McCarthyism merely reaffirmed that communists were indeed the enemy, while making the political price of thinking otherwise too high to contemplate.
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