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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Suma who wrote (73197)	4/1/2005 6:35:25 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Message 21189769

To: Suma who wrote (73197)	4/2/2005 8:38:48 AM
From: Crimson Ghost	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Without Reservation A biweekly column by Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.) Just Say No ... to Empire The slow leak of neoconservative policy makers from the ship of state has begun. The shifting of former State Department Under Secretary for Arms Control John "Armageddon Man" Bolton to the United Nations and the shedding of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul "Cakewalk" Wolfowitz to the World Bank are now old news. The American taxpayer and soldier are indeed safer for these new assignments. The World Bank and the UN are like the human appendix – once useful but no one can remember why. Particularly today as Washington insists on breaking both domestic laws and treaties, and ignoring financial realities. Defense Under Secretary for Policy Doug Feith has also announced his resignation. The Iraqis liberated (to death, in some cases) under his grand scheme of peace through punishment and democracy by debilitation in Iraq will likely not notice Feith's departure, but it should be celebrated by the rest of us. But the ship of U.S. empire – according to Robert Kaplan – is still steaming forward. Kaplan wrote over a year ago, It is a cliché these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire – different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless. It is time to move beyond a statement of the obvious. Our recent effort in Iraq, with its large-scale mobilization of troops and immense concentration of risk, is not indicative of how we will want to act in the future. So how should we operate on a tactical level to manage an unruly world? What are the rules and what are the tools? Our American Republic is hanging by a thread. Some argue it's already gone. Not a single American was asked if they preferred empire over republic. And yet the question of the day remains, "How do we manage an unruly world?" The point of empire is control. Centralized control of commerce, resources, and people and their choices. It's understandable that a nation made up of hardy immigrants and independent argumentative souls has a bit of a problem adapting to the new role as master of the universe. It is both illiberal and unconservative at the same time. But empire is uniquely neoconservative, or as Claes Ryn has explained it, Jacobin. The vicious and anti-religious ideology-trumps-humanity perspective of our modern American Robispierreans is an ugly thing. And yet it remains the view from Washington. Bob Novak mentioned again this week that Wolfowitz and presumably others in the administration do not like the term neoconservative, believing that it is just a way of being anti-Semitic. Interestingly, the topic of Novak's article is that Secretary of State Condi Rice is powerful, doesn't listen to the neoconservatives, and will be frustrating them with her intention to withdraw troops from Iraq. Thanks, Bob. You said it all. The term neoconservative is a political label, self-identified and celebrated by political scientists and philosophers like Irving Kristol – and it has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. It does have to do with the new kind of empire that Kaplan embraces and George W. Bush seems to believe that all Americans support. John Mearsheimer wrote fifteen years ago that we would surely miss the Cold War. Neoconservatives missed the Cold War more than all others. Modern neoconservatism exists as a political construct only in the face of a constant and dangerous enemy. Fear, terror, over-centralization and empire – all are alien to the American tradition and should be soundly rejected, one by one. Instead, George W. Bush continues to hold them close and even celebrate them. The shedding and stripping of leading neoconservatives from core U.S. policy circles is a good thing for our country. What we really need to cast away is an unseemly fear of "enemies" that leads to our own criminal lawlessness, at home and abroad. We need to drop wrongheaded ideas of terror as only conducted by evil people, and pay more attention to that conducted by the state – ours and theirs (our torture-buddy allies comes to mind). We need to return to decentralization at home and, like our forefathers in this country and the Iraqi people these days, question and challenge and perhaps fight well-dressed bureaucrats from Washington who say they are only "here to help." And we need to define empire in terms that are accurate, not glorified or sugar-coated. It isn't about what is good for the world – empires never are. It is about what is good for the emperors. Americans of all people ought to be a bit insulted, if not enraged, that empire is pursued in the name of our cherished Republic. Americans need to "just say no" to empire – the sooner the better. When we do, we might just find that it is a house, or perhaps, empire of cards. © 2005 Karen Kwiatkowski Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski can be reached at karen@militaryweek.com.