"Of Thee I Sing: Noisy Mediocrities" by Richard Sale

 

National conceit governs the world.  No country views itself with impartial eyes.
No country ever gives a full and solid account of its shortcomings, its
failures, its lack of skill and essential capacities.

In order to belittle each other, every country relishes holding up another’s failures, likes to endlessly deride, to depict a rival nation in dark colors as the seat of all the evil in the world – America has done this to the point of exasperation.  Yet you learn nothing by dwelling on your idea that you virtues, habits, and victories are superior in meaning and majesty to everybody else’s, yet we Americans continue to do this to the point of nausea.

I have just read two articles whose clumsy language and oceanic complacency irked me t the bottom of the soul. One of them was by Sebastian Junger urged that the United States striker Syria and the other was a retort to Russian leader Putin’s Op-ed in the New York Times.

We have two schools of conceit here. The first school makes us feel invulnerable
in our righteous purposes to the extent that we feel that we are able to correct
the wrongs of the world through brute force, our action to be driven and
excused by our superior “values” and our selfless worship of humanitarian aims.
It is not American welfare that we pursue, it is the worlds. The second article
is a school for helping to develop more insidious and commonplace and
impenetrable national vanity.

Sebastian Junger in The Washington Post wants us to strike Syria for its crimes against its citizens. Never mind that brute force always destroys more than it builds: let’s try another war to make justice reign on Earth. Never mind that it is not permissible to erect the human drama in terms of straight rights and wrongs. Never mind that every collective conflict is a war between a half right that is too willful and a half right that is too proud.  Never mind the fact that each of us is restricted to a very narrow vision, gravely conditioned by time, temperament and age, and by the platform on which we happen to be standing. Never mind the thought that it is extremely dubious to view any enemy as the seat of all evil in the world and indulge the grievous sin of having an eye for nothing in a rival country but its crimes. Never mind the thought that all wars, at bottom, are judgments on all of us.

Junger asserts: “At some point, pacifism becomes part of the machinery of death, and
isolationism becomes a form of genocide. It’s not a matter of how we’re going to explain this to the Syrians. It’s a matter of how we’re going to explain this to our kids.”

This is a Samantha Power idea; Samantha has always had a tendency to utter unilateral
statements.

But since when does pacifism -- an ideology -- turn into the machinery of death? At
what point does “isolationism become a form of genocide?”  Is there no place for simple skepticism in Junger’s equation? Is skepticism at bottom isolationism? Of course not.
Junger’s argument is absurd. It resembles hitting a note at the far end of the
piano and hitting another note at the other far end and having no knowledge of
the notes that lie in between that act to make music out of noise. There is an
enormous swathe of knowledge that lies between the two notes, and in this
article, they are completely ignored. Qualifications, gradations, modulations,
delicate analysis -- all are missing.

Junger says, “It’s a matter of how we’re going to explain this to our kids.” Ah, yes
-- appealing to the historical verdict of your kids.

First of all, your kids won’t remember. Trust me. I have a grandson who is thirteen.
He is very sensitive in temperament, alert to undertones, quickly maps the
outline of the personality before him, is thoughtful plus he had a wonderful,
imaginative sense of humor. If a joke hints at a target of ridicule he
instantly grasps it. He is a delight. He is also attending a top rated school
in Denver, and is taking religious classes. I asked him were his teachers
telling him about the Bible.  I got a blank stare.  I said do you know about
Exodus, the escape of the Israelites from Egypt which founded the Hebrew
religion which helped to form Western Christianity. He hadn’t heard of any of it.
So I would worry about his verdicts on U.S. national interests in Syria,
especially since he will not be able to name three nations that border that
country in twenty years.

Sen. Paul’s Brainlessness

I don’t mean to be rude, but Sen.  Rand Paul sings in his op-ed a deafening song
of America’s endless and ceaseless self praise and he does this while
displaying the most dismal moral nearsightedness. To belittle another country,
to hold up its failures, to depict a nation in dark colors as the seat of all
the evil in the world – America has done this to the point of exasperation.
Iran, the Russians, Islamics, the Serbs – any of us can run down a long list.

Yet when the leader of another country, like Russia, holds up a mirror to our own failures, weaknesses, defaults and shortcomings, we reply with stiffly dignified rage because when you prick the overinflated balloon of American vanity, you are sure to suffer buffeting, sudden vicious
wind gusts as a result. 

It never seems to occur to Rand Paul that perhaps Putin likes to strut while sitting down because he has his own national audiences and its pretenses to satisfy when he speaks.  He is speaking to satisfy Russians, not touchy Americans.

Listening to Paul, you would think that Americans never owned slaves. You would think
that America didn’t massacre its Native Americans. Paul has apparently
forgotten that we launched a war against Spain on false pretenses and in 2003,
made the same mistake in Iraq.  We did after all lose the Vietnam War. We didn’t win the Korean War. In other words, there are blemishes on our path to perfection.

Those failures should the focus of endless self-questioning rather than a pretext for
applause.  No matter. Never mind.

In actuality, the things we fail at are probably more conducive to developing our
character than our successes.  A success makes people feel that they have their stamped their ticket for good and all, forgetting that a success is not an end, but beginning. But that’s for another
time.

In Sen. Rand Paul’s case, we first have to deal with an atrocity of language.

“Mr. Putin’s second mistake is to focus on the speck in the eye
of the United States, while ignoring the plank in his own.”

This is startling maladroit. Whoever wrote that, they possess an
absolutely tin ear for the English language? I had to read this three times. This
simile is so jarring, attracts so much attention to itself, it makes us frown in
puzzlement until erases its own intended impact.  Russia gloating over “...the speck of the eye in the United State while ignoring the plank in his own?” It’s hard to repair this. 
Why not speak of “the speck in the eye of the United States while ignoring
the hat pin in its own?” or something a bit more nimble and expressive. Or skip
it altogether. Paul is trying to create drama by means of contrast but to have
impact you need at least some finesse and skill in English.  He has none.

He accuses the United States of alarming interventions in foreign countries. Paul says, “While I certainly have my bone to pick with our foreign policy over the last 15 years, the Russian President is the least qualified person I can think of to make this argument with a straight face.”

Paul’s arrogance reaches its apogee in this sentence. He then moves on.

“We went to war in Afghanistan because they were harboring those
who attacked us on 9/11. Mr. Putin’s cohorts went to war there three decades
earlier for no legitimate reason.”

This insults the Russians, it insults us, and it insults history.

The fall of the Shah of Iran and Khomeini’s Islamic terror contributed to starting a civil war in Afghanistan in 1979 that the Soviet’s couldn’t control.  Just like the American
invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Soviet war in Afghanistan began as a case of social
engineering that led to barbarism. For years the Russians supported the non-
–Marxist government of Prince Mohammed Daud who had set up a constitutional
monarchy in 1953. But twenty years later Daud threw the king out and made
himself President and concentrated on building up a united Marxist party.

Trouble started in 1977 when three factions of the People’s Democratic Party, led by Brebak Kamal, Mur Muhammad Taraki and a man named Hafizullah Amin. Amin, who was a math teacher, took command and his first act was to shoot thirty members of the Daud family before his eyes, then he killed Daud.  Huge areas of villages were burned to the ground. Kamal accused Amin of being bloodthirsty and heartless, and Amin packed Karmal off to Prague.

Things got worse. During 1979, the American ambassador was
murdered and thirty Russian advisors were skinned alive by the Moslem shrine of
Kandahar. The word went out from Moscow that Amin had to be gotten rid of, but
during a lively discussion at the Soviet Embassy, Taraki was somehow shot. The
murder stung Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev because he had recently told Taraki
he was Moscow’s coming man.  Brezhnev was enfeebled but he was also infuriated, and he wanted a military response. The Soviets undertook Operation Zenith to determine popular reaction to a Soviet invasion to scout popular reaction if the Russians came in, found it was
favorable, and Operations Oak and Storm were launched on Christmas Eve.

The Russians were playing a long term game. For a long time, it
had treated the threat of the Islamic revival lightly, but within the Soviet
Union the Islamics had a birthrate much higher than that of the Russians and
many of them were traditional enemies of Russia. They were hardly in love with
Communism.

So to resist the increasing power of the Islamics was, in Russia’s eye, a legitimate reason for going to war. Their invasion was supposed to be a short-term affair, but it was anything but.  CIA Bill Casey had found the weakness in the Soviet occupation and began to exploit it by arming the Mujahedeen. After three years of war, the Russians were in possession of the main towns and roads but little else. Much like America in Vietnam, the war had become a guerilla war which
the Russians fought with gunships, tanks, bombing, napalm chemical warfare. The
war created 1.5 million refugees, etc. The Soviets lost the war after the United States began to smuggle Stinger missiles to the Islamic opposition who used them n to down Soviet helicopters. This war would be the chief event that led to the disintegration of the Soviet empire. The Hammer and Sickle was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin at the close of 1991, marking the
end of the Soviet Union.

Rand Paul’s statement that the Russians went to war there three
decades earlier for “no legitimate reason,” dishonors history, as I said, and
dishonors America and it dishonors the Russians. Paul and people like him bring
no critical sprit to the examination of political events.  They have a false and inflated sense of
importance because they belong to groups who merely echo each other, presenting
themselves as the true moral and material power in the world. Their purpose is
to annoy, thwart, insult and mislead and they tend to regard any contradiction
as depraved and incorrigible.

The more idiotic a statement is, the more they see it as proof of their zeal and
attachment to their party.  To be a loyal party member means that you soon become a mere cipher who follows the orders of your own group, never suspecting that most groups are home to noisy
mediocrities. The inner sense allegiance of belonging to a party overpowers any
vestige of individual moral sense and capacity for judgment. The members of any
ideological group become callous and rigid and pitiless and think they are excused
from any criticism because of the infallibility of their views. They met
counter arguments with either perfect apathy or virulent scorn.

If America were truly exceptional, it would not turn to tiny entities like Sen.
Paul to espouse its virtues.

Comments

[turcopolier]

ALL

a great piece but I have to say that the characterization of the VN War as a war against guerrillas is incorrect.

It was a war against:

- The political apparatus of the communist party complete with its murderous agitprop teams
- Local VC guerrillas (the least formidable forces)
- Full time VC combat units of battalion (500 men) and regimental (1,000 men) in size.
- The North Vietnamese Army which deployed a dozen divisions and division equivalents to the South . These units had a lot of heavy equipment including artillery and tanks.

In addition to all this the air war in the North was intense. The NV Air Force had MIG-21a, MIG-19s, MIG- 17s and a lot of anti-aircraft missiles.

[William R. Cumming]

The complexities of a world where simple explanations convince some of their merit. Thanks Richard for the reminder.

[robt willmann]

Mr. Sale,
A little typo: after the subheading "Sen. Paul's Brainlessness", the first sentence starts, "I don't mean to be rude, but Sen. Ron Paul sings in his op-ed ...." You seem to mean Sen. Rand Paul, and his editorial in Time Magazine and/or on its website, and not former Congressman Ron Paul.

[Lamoe2012]

This reads article makes some very good points. To say the Russians invaded Afghanistan for no legitimate reason boggles the mind. I like Ron Paul, but like a lot of Americans he looks at America though rose colored glasses.

That said somebody, I forget who once said "we are all hero's in out own play" That's the case with people as with nations. People as with nations are loth to give credit when credit is due.

The US has came a long way since the Nineteenth Century. The Russians have came a long way since the end of the Soviet era, but the Russians have had a much darker road to travel a Civil War, The Soviet era, The end of the Soviet era, Stalin, a World War, I believe from a demographic stand point The Russians are still paying for. I believe the world owes both nations a great debt. The Russians for stopping Hitler, and proving to anybody not delusional and willing to look with an open mind proving that Communism doesn't work. The United States, for holding the line against Communism, and for government by the working Joe holding the vote works (or at lest used to). Both nations still have a long way to go.

[robt willmann]

"The NV Air Force had MIG-21a, MIG-19s, MIG-17s and a lot of anti-aircraft missiles"--

And, as I understand it, Russian pilots to fly some of them and Russian air controllers with which they would communicate. In fact, I was told that the Russian pilots insisted on having Russian controllers in Vietnam.

[Basilisk]

Mr. Sale,
I greatly enjoy your writing, but your research might need some help. I could recommend Peter Tomsen, "The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers."

It's Babrak Karmal, and Nur Mohammed Taraki, and the mistakes in the names are only minor.

[kao_hsien-chih]

The idea that "other people" do things for no good reasons, but "we" do things for good reasons is, unfortunately, a disease that infects so many people in every nation. We (defined broadly) don't know other peoples' histories, their values, their morals, generally what constitutes "legitimate" reasons for them. No doubt that there are many around the world who say we, the US, got involved in any number of our ventures for "no good reasons." As my mother likes to say (supposedly a Korean proverb), every grave has a corpse in it. People do things for reasons that are, in context, "important." A smart policy planner has to recognize this fact, even if he or she may not agree that those are, given his or her beliefs, "important enough," because, in the end, "the other people" (to whom they are important) are makers of history too...

[walrus]

T.S. Eliot succinctly encapsulated the problem in "Gerontion" (1920).

"fter such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, 35
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed, 40
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues 45
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes."

Does anyone not see the irony in Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians? Russia harbouring an American whistle blower? America arming itself with all the trappings of a police/surveillance state?

Almost as bizarre as Australia chairing the U.N. Security Council at present.

[Tyler]

This was not Ron - this was his son Rand.

I wonder how much of his piece was agitprop for the Tea Party types and how much he really believed. Listening to Mark Levin's show, he had on a guest host who continually referred to Putin as a "KGB thug" and couldn't get over the fact that Putin was in the KGB and therefore was totally unAmerican.

What is "American" nowadays? Miley Cyrus licking teddy bears? Abortion on demand with post partum abotion coming our way? Every sexual taboo broken in the name of freedumb? There's definitely a certain denial on the part of many conservative figures that we are not moral exemplars and the world doesn't want their daughters becoming whores and their sons turned into overweight children who play video games into their 40s. The polarity has changed - we now push godless democracy and consumerism, while the Russians are stepping up in the name of Christ. This reality is too much for many, ergo "KGB thug" when Putin cracks the whip on a bunch of deluded women for daring to defile Orthodoxy's highest cathedral.

I've said on here before that Putin's game is much more than the black or white paradigm that a majority of America is unable to see past. Call Putin an autocrat or an enlightened despot, and you'd get a lot of blank looks I'd imagine.

[Charles I]

Exceptionalism requires no critical spirit. Thanks very much for yours.

[Tom in Texas]

Thank you for your thoughtful article, Mr. Sale. As to Sen. Paul's juxtaposition of "plank" and "speck", the words are not his, but from the Gospel of Matthew, 7:5 New International Version: "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." http://biblehub.com/matthew/7-5.htm So the op-ed delivers a Gospel-approved shout-out to American Exceptionalism. Paul knows the Christian audience he is (in part) targeting (i.e., "dog-whistling") will get the reference, and feel properly righteous.

[optimax]

Junger must think Switzerland is the most genocidal nation on earth.

[jerseycityjoan]

I am more than ready to pass the baton, but to whom?

The US may stick its nose into too many things, but it also provides a lot of help and resources that there's general agreement should be provided.

I do not see how we will stop unless other countries or group(s) take over. I am certainly tired of us unilaterally doing a lot of world rescue and absorbing the costs for it.

But what's the alternative?

[Jose]

Respectfully, the American people want to believe in the divine righteousness of our belief rather than deal with the profane wickedness of our disbelief.

[confusedponderer]

I read a bit about atrition rates in Vietnam. The US military has never seen anything like that since then. Good for them.

In WW-II the US were at times badly mauled by German units. Losses in Kore were often severe. In Vietnam, beyond the ground war, the US last faced an effective air defence that caused some serious fleet attrition.

One could argue that as a result of the historical distance, the US have forgotten - thanks to skill of arms, a professional army that doesn't represent society at large, immense spending and superior technology - that war has to it also a receiving end and how that feels like.

Contrast these wars with who they US are fighting right now.

If the calls for the US to, finally, bomb Syria - because not doing so would indicate US weakness to Syria, Iran - are any indication, today the 'Ledeen doctrine' appears to eventually have found bipartisan acceptance.

"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,"

You only do that with countries that can't fight back of course, so that the use of military force comes at 'little cost', as long as you're not in the army of course (but they have all signed up for it, and thus no right to complain I remember being told in 2003).

And if US urges, for instance the Cheneyite urge to attack Russia over Georgia, are any indication, the US feels currently so powerful that they consider Russia nother such pushover.

And yet ... like the Rusians before them, the US failed to impose their will on Afghanistan. And the US failed to impose their will on Iraq.

That there are limits to America's power and limits to what force can accomplisn appears to be something that yet has to sink in. In addition the messianic sense that America is called upo to right the world's wrongs, there are delusions of American military omnipotence abound.

All this is often being further obfuscated by moralistic babble of having to spread Freedom (tm) (neo-con/Republican variant) or an asserted responsibility to protect (Liberal variant), and a general sense that America MUST do something.

Arguably, and curiously, all this benevolence on the receiving end feels like 1000 pound bombs all the same.

[r whitman]

Can someone give me links to Jungers and Pauls statements referred to in the article.

[MRW]

But he could easily be nominated for President in 2016, and he could win. "Rand Paul stood up for America and Americans when everyone else wanted to get us into more war." Add the pre-August 31 sound bytes. He's the Son of Ron, and there's an affection there because of it.

This time Clinton said "I support my President," instead of her full out support for Iraq; however, that's not the same as saying no more war when it's not popular.

Great post, BTW.

[turcopolier]

CP

I don't think that "attrition" is the right term to apply to US casualty rates in VN. However many we lost there were always more coming across the pond in an unending stream of commercial airliners. Unit strengths never fell. Losses were always replaced. The attrition took place in public and political will in the US. pl

[robt willmann]

Senator Rand Paul's editorial, Time magazine--

http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/13/sen-rand-paul-president-putin-america-is-exceptional/

Sebastian Junger's editorial is probably here, at the Washington Post--

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sebastian-junger-a-syria-strike-in-the-name-of-peace/2013/09/12/cad370d2-1af1-11e3-8685-5021e0c41964_story.html

[confusedponderer]

Fair point.

[confusedponderer]

Afterthought:
I think that one of the key insights I have taken away from SST over the years is to give far more attention to the extent to which US foreign policy is indeed driven by partly subconscious messianism and triumphalism, ranging from economic matters to foreign policy and military matters.

The cynics don't offer plausible explanations - saying it is about oil or money or arms trades or some mother material interest cannot explain the fervor, tenacity and treasure Americans sink into endeavours, let alone the red hot indignation over an attempt at criticism that was at full display in 2002/2003. In the end the materialists fail to take into account human agency.

The mere idea to openly formulate as a policy goal 'regime change', just as if the national sovereignty characterising the Wespfalian system doesn't matter, is in itself a grand conceit, underlining the American claim to hegemony - and the mainstream doesn't even give it a second thought in DC, suggesting that the underlying claim to global leadership is utterly self evident to them. Indeed, who else?

And needless to say, if anybody else came along, that nation is inevitably being characterised as a 'threat' (not to the US proper, but as a threat to 'US dominance').

Think China. Think Russia. Think the EU. Think Japan. Ponder India. Ponder Brazil.

[Babak Makkinejad]

All:

Forty years of war has regressed Afghanistan.

Used to be that a male teacher in a provincial town could dress himself in European-style pants without it being an issue.

Now wearing such pants has become a point of debate as to whether it is or is not against Sharia.

On the other hand, the traditional "Shelwar" is a remnant of the pre-Islamic times; you can see men wearing such pants on the frescos of Persepolis or Taqi-Bostan.

I think it will be decades of peace before Afghanistan gets back to something corresponding to what obtained there in 1975.

I do not think there is any country in the world that has the power to expedite that.

[Matthew]

Tyler: Even worse: How can someone ratioally respond to Junger's idiocy? 5.4 million people have died in the Congo during their civil war. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War

No one--not even Samantha Power--has yelped about our responsibility to protect the Congolese.

Humanitarian interventionalism is the ultimate oxymoron.

[Matthew]

Walrus: The cynics realize that "values" can be effective weapons.

[Fred]

Those Congonlese dead are black. Samantha Power is equally unconcerned about the 1,000,000 dead North Koreans, but they died of starvation and their country has both a large army and nuclear weapons so don't expect conern from the R2P crowd.