War

Via the comments section of Reihan Salam's The Current offering about Georgia and Russia, striking and unsettling pictures from that conflict. I warn you that there are some extremely graphic and disturbing images within them. But I think it's profoundly important that we remain as close as we can to the actual realities of a particular conflict when we discuss it, while remaining cognizant of the fact that we can't ever really understand the incredible damage of war through pictures or video or second-hand accounting.

War is always brutal and horrible and ugly. This is a fact that people treat as banal and obvious, and yet I find again and again that in casual discussion it's effectively forgotten. This is one of those strange principles where, when people are asked, they will say that yes of course, they believe it-- and then proceed to speak and act in a way that completely undermines that notion. John McCain says he hates war, and yet he demonstrates again and again that he treats the concept with little gravity; indeed, he has made many jokes about war and bombing and invasion on the campaign trail. This is disturbing in anyone. It's even more so in a decorated war hero like McCain. It's a prevalent thing, sadly, among our chattering class. The more orthodox niches of the conservative blogosphere often appear to be in a contest to see who can take war less seriously than any other.

As I say often, the commonly held notion that our punditry and political analysis have great variety within them isn't really true, and that as much as any group of bloggers or commentators or pundits may have various disagreements, there are many, many issues where there is a very limited range of acceptable positions if you're to be taken seriously as a commentator. Indeed, that's precisely what is denied to those who are broadly opposed to military intervention, the designation of seriousness. Matt Yglesias has done great work to point out how notions of Very Seriousness limits the foreign policy dialogue and de-legitimates dissent. But then Yglesias himself is a self-styled interventionist. Perhaps he must be, to continue to make a career in punditry. There are many positions you can hold and be within the acceptable framework as a public commentator. You can be, for example, an unapologetic, unreconstructed neoconservative, and many are, and continue to receive the greatest awards the profession awards. But you cannot be a pacifist, not if you want to be a professional pundit, not if you want to be a part of the club.

Well, I'm not a pacifist, and anyway my interest in the club remains largely tangential. My whole political intellectual life though it has been made clear again and again that the degree and frequency with which someone advocates the application of military power are enormously important to the kind of reception he or she will have, and the kind of traction he or she can generate as a respectable, intelligent thinker. When I look at pictures like this I am snapped back out of the surprisingly small, inbred world of American political intellectual life, and again find myself marveling at how such a simple truth as the undesirability of war can be so obscured by careerism, rhetoric and fashion.

What to say about Reihan's argument in the Current? I don't have much insight into his particular prescription for resistance to Russian influence by Georgians, although I find it deeply strange that we have come so far since 9/11 where open advocacy of terrorism is rather unremarkable, provided the government which is the target of that terrorism is an American antagonist. On a larger level, I remain deeply confused about how the average member of the punditocracy at once vehemently opposes Russia's coercive efforts (as Reihan calls them) in Eastern Europe, but strongly supports America's Cuban policy specifically and Latin American policy in general. The Monroe Doctrine is, again, an explicit statement of American hegemony and manipulation in the Western hemisphere. We practice precisely the same kind of economic aggression, internal manipulation through espionage, support for separatist groups and coups, diplomatic warfare and out and out military intervention in Latin America when it suits our purposes. This doesn't excuse Russia's actions. It does condemn our own, and calls into serious question the intellectual integrity and seriousness of many in our pundit class. I'm sure I sound like a broken record on this, but I haven't seen anything approaching a coherent explanation for this double standard. I wish the question would gain more traction among people who are more influential and more widely read than I.

Look at the pictures, if you don't mind their graphic nature. It's so important to always remember the reality of what war is when we discuss it in the media and national conversation.