Heads in the Sand

Matthew Yglesias

Description

"A very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care."
—Ezra Klein, staff writer at The American Prospect

"Matt Yglesias is one of the smartest voices in the blogosphere. He knows a lot about politics, a lot about foreign policy, and, crucially, is unusually shrewd in understanding how they interact. Here's hoping that his new book will introduce him to an even wider audience. Once you discover him, you'll be hooked."
—E. J. Dionne, author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right and Why Americans Hate Politics

"Matthew Yglesias is one of a handful of bloggers that I make a point of reading every day. Heads in the Sand is a smart, vital book that urges Democrats to stop evading the foreign-policy debate and to embrace the old principles of international liberalism--to be right and also to win."
—Fred Kaplan, author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power

"Reading foreign policy tomes is seldom included among life's pleasures, but Yglesias has concocted a startling exception. Heads in the Sand is not just a razor-sharp analysis cum narrative of the politics of national security in general and the Iraq war in particular, it's also an enthralling and often very funny piece of writing. Though he administers strong antidotes to the haplessness of his fellow Democrats and liberals, there's more than a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down."
—Hendrik Hertzberg, Senior Editor, The New Yorker, and author of Politics: Observations and Arguments

Fast-rising political commentator Matthew Yglesias reveals the wrong-headed foreign policy stance of conservatives, neocons, and the Republican Party for what it is—aggressive nationalism. Writing with wit, passion, and keen insight, Yglesias reminds us of the rich tradition of liberal internationalism that, developed by Democrats, was used with great success by both Democratic and Republican administrations for more than fifty years. He provides a starting point for politicians, policymakers, pundits, and citizens alike to return America to its role as leader of a peace-loving and cooperative international community.

Sujets

• Public Policy
• Political Parties
• Political Process
• International Relations
• Political Science
• Matthew Yglesias
• Republican Party
• Democratic Party
• General officer
• Republican Party (United States)
• List of political parties in the United States
• Politics of the United States
• Political party
• Democrat
• General
• GOP

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781620458679
• Langue: English

Extrait

Heads in the Sand
Heads in the Sand
How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats
MATTHEW YGLESIAS

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Copyright 2008 by Matthew Yglesias. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Yglesias, Matthew, date.
Heads in the sand: how the Republicans screw up foreign policy and foreign policy screws up the Democrats/Matthew Yglesias.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-620-45867-9 (cloth)
1. United States-Foreign relations-2001- 2. Political parties-United States. 3. Democratic Party (U.S.) 4. Republican Party (U.S.: 1854-) I. Title.
JZ1480.Y45 2008
327.73-dc22
2007044574
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of my mother, Margaret Karen Joskow
CONTENTS
Preface: The Eternal Recurrence of Tom Friedman

Acknowledgments

1. The Real Liberal Tradition

2. The Nationalist Alternative

3. A Tale of Two Wings

4. See No Evil

5. Opportunism Knocks

6. Evasive Action

7. The Democracy Fraud

8. After Victory

9. In with the Old

Epilogue: Surge to Nowhere

Notes

Index
PREFACE
THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE OF TOM FRIEDMAN
Writing in the November 20, 2003, issue of the New York Times , the columnist Thomas Friedman, probably the most influential foreign affairs commentator in the country, opined that the next six months in Iraq-which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there-are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time. 1 This was a bold proclamation, and the world waited with bated breath for the outcome. But on the June 3, 2004, episode of NPR s Fresh Air , Friedman expressed impatience with anti-war liberals who wanted to see the war brought to an end. What I absolutely don t understand, he said, is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of-I know a lot of these guys-reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it s over. I don t get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what s the rush? Can we let this play out, please?
Obviously, it did play out. Just as obviously, it wasn t over one month later and it wasn t over six months later. Instead, on the October 3, 2004, edition of Face the Nation , Friedman told host Bob Schieffer that what we re gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war. Two months later, Friedman s patience with the war was running thin, as he wrote in his Times column that Improve time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won t be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile. 2
Thus a full year after Friedman first proclaimed the next six months to be decisive, he determined that the next few months were going to be decisive. Were they? Well, no. On the September 25, 2005, edition of Meet the Press , Friedman announced to Tim Russert that we re in the end game now. In particular, I think we re in a six-month window where it s going to become very clear and this is all going to preempt, I think, the next congressional election-that s my own feeling-let alone the presidential one. Three days later in his Times column he mused Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won t, then we are wasting our time. 3 Back on Face the Nation on December 18, 2005, he said We ve teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it s going to come together. Two days later, he repeated the point on PBS s Charlie Rose : We re at the beginning of, I think, the decisive, I would say, six months in Iraq, OK, because I feel like this election-You know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately, Charlie, what Iraqis make of it. Then, on the January 23, 2006, edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show , Friedman said, I think we re going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding-in which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out-or whether it really is a fool s errand.
But two months after he appeared on Face the Nation , on the February 2 edition of NBC s Today , Friedman hadn t changed the time frame. Instead, he argued that the next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq. And on the May 11, 2006, edition of Hardball , Friedman extended the window, telling Chris Matthews that I think that we re going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months-probably sooner-whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we re going to have to just let this play out.
Two and a half years after Friedman first told the American people that they were facing a decisive six-month period in Iraq, the columnist still thought we were six to twelve months away from knowing for sure. The columnist s habit of ever-shifting goalposts then became the subject of a report by the lefty media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). 4 The FAIR account gave birth to the term Friedman Unit (FU), in the blogosphere, meaning a six-month window of opportunity in Iraq with the implication that, like Friedman, the speaker would never actually pull the plug. Thus when Zalmay Khalilzad, then the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, told NPR s All Things Considered , that the next nine months are critical back on June 29, 2005, he was predicting that we were 1.5 FUs away from having a better grasp on the Iraq situation. I dubbed the phenomenon The Eternal Recurrence of Tom Friedman, referencing a passage from Nietzsche:

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hour-glass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust! Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.
For the past five or six years, American liberals have been in the first of Nietzsche s scenarios, gnashing our teeth and cursing at demons as we watch the same mistakes get made over and over again.
On September 11, 2001, the country was attacked by terrorists who murdered thousands of innocent people. Shortly-indeed, almost immediately-after that, George W. Bush and his allies in and out of government began an effort to use the sense of crisis created by the attacks to begin implementing a radically unsound approach to world affairs, an approach whose most famous manifestation has been a tragically failed effort to invade and transform Iraq. In those early post-attack months, a very broad and influential swathe of the American establishment, including many leading voices of the center-left like Friedman, chose to essentially go along with Bush and his ideas. Friedman himself explained shortly after the invasion on Charlie Rose that what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house from Basra to Baghdad, saying basically Which part of this