Sorry, neocons (and paleocons), Bush is still not a neocon

In defending President Bush’s Iraq policy, I have repeatedly pointed out that the anti-war right is both mistaken and demagogic to equate the president’s agenda with the global democratist agenda of some neoconservatives, since the president had not embraced that agenda and was primarily concerned with the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the aftermath of Mr. Bush’s February 26th speech at the American Enterprise Institute, however, some people seem to have gotten the impression that this time he had indeed adopted the “democratize the world” plan and had defined the Iraq war as the first step in it.

Had the president done that, the position of the anti-war right would have been strengthened. They would now have been at least somewhat justified in their approach of ignoring the immediate and limited question of what to do about Hussein’s WMDs, and instead attacking Bush over his “real” agenda of imposing American-style democracy on the Muslim Middle East by every intrusive means at his disposal including the use of military force. Had the president done that, it would have harder for moderates like me to defend his Iraq policy.

In fact, notwithstanding some of the spin following the speech, including from the neocons themselves (who, like all activist groups seeking to advance their cause by influencing the president, want to make it appear as though the president is completely on their side), the president did not make the Iraq war into part of a “democratize the world” agenda, at least not in the neoconservatives’ sense of the term. He expressed the hope that a freed Iraq would serve as a model and inspiration to other Muslim and Arab countries to move away from despotism and adopt more free and law-abiding and democratic systems, but he said nothing about imposing our will on them by military force to make them do that, a policy which some neoconservative have explicitly urged, and which they undoubtedly were hoping—unsuccessfully, as it turns out—that he would embrace in his AEI speech.

Here is the part of his speech where the president discussed the Muslim nations beyond Iraq:

The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. They encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. And there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the Middle East. Arab intellectuals have called on Arab governments to address the “freedom gap” so their peoples can fully share in the progress of our times. Leaders in the region speak of a new Arab charter that champions internal reform, greater politics participation, economic openness, and free trade. And from Morocco to Bahrain and beyond, nations are taking genuine steps toward politics reform. A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region. (Applause.)

It is presumptuous and insulting to suggest that a whole region of the world—or the one-fifth of humanity that is Muslim—is somehow untouched by the most basic aspirations of life. Human cultures can be vastly different. Yet the human heart desires the same good things, everywhere on Earth. In our desire to be safe from brutal and bullying oppression, human beings are the same. In our desire to care for our children and give them a better life, we are the same. For these fundamental reasons, freedom and democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror. (Applause.)

Now some of us traditionalist conservatives and cultural realists may regard the president’s hopes and assumptions as pollyannish; but at bottom they remain hopes and assumptions, not a Wilsonian plan to remake the world.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 28, 2003 09:30 AM | Send