Grim wrote:When you feel that Bacevich is "left" do you mean that liberals are realistic. I would argue that there is no "left" or right to the American situation as presented by Bacevich, only reality and delusion, trial and error. The domination of the right with fundamentalist Americanism as a key to popular support is mirrored by the lefts natural role in the government structure as opposition. There is nothing inherent about being a liberal that would have prevented Afghanistan and Iraq.

There's a worldview, which I largely agree with, associated with the contemporary American left. Bacevich shares that world view, at least with regard to matters involving the military and foreign policy. While I personally feel that that viewpoint corresponds to reality better than centrist or conservative perspectives, labeling it as leftist is more clear and less confrontational when addressing an online audience with differing beliefs.

A core component of the leftist philosophy is opposition to virtually all military action. (Where there have been leftist military organizations, most present-day American leftists are pacifists.) Military activity is viewed as immoral, since it usually leads to increased suffering, often among innocent civilians, instead of improving the situation. People on the left would rather avoid military action, cut defense spending, and post fewer soldiers overseas.

Though I personally had my doubts about invading Afghanistan after 9/11, it was clear that any electable US administration would attack a country that provided a haven to Osama bin Laden. However, launching a preemptive war against Iraq was such an extreme and boneheaded measure that only a right-winger like W would propose it. However, once it was on the agenda, far too many Democrats voted in favor of starting the war, and almost all of them continued to fund it.

Though the book jacket calls Bacevich a conservative, his depiction of the world is surprising close to Noam Chomsky's. It's not clear to me what definition of "conservative" would include Bacevich.

JulianTheApostate wrote: Though the book jacket calls Bacevich a conservative, his depiction of the world is surprising close to Noam Chomsky's. It's not clear to me what definition of "conservative" would include Bacevich.

His category interests me, too. Either he keeps his conservatism pretty well hidden (as he does his religious affiliation), or we have to look back to the classical conservatism of people like Edmund Burke, and indeed to Bacevich's mentor, Reinhold Niebuhr. He also could be that currently rare bird, a member of the Christian left.

You mention Chomsky. As I reviewed this chapter, it struck me how radical is Bacevich's view. He begins by calling Washington dysfunctional, but his evaluation of our central government turns out to be much worse than that. Washington actually endangers our welfare. It is an extreme view, and one can see why he puts the word "crisis" in every chapter title I find myself being just a bit cautious in going all the way along with him. He makes strong assertions, and this is not the type of book where elaborate proof is offered for the assertions. Rather, the book is a polemic.

If Bachevic is correct in calling our situation a crisis, it will take a president bent on addressing it two terms to even make a start, it would seem to me. That is assuming that any president can wield enough power to turn things around.

JTA: Though the book jacket calls Bacevich a conservative, his depiction of the world is surprising close to Noam Chomsky's. It's not clear to me what definition of "conservative" would include Bacevich.

DWill: His category interests me, too. Either he keeps his conservatism pretty well hidden (as he does his religious affiliation), or we have to look back to the classical conservatism of people like Edmund Burke, and indeed to Bacevich's mentor, Reinhold Niebuhr. He also could be that currently rare bird, a member of the Christian left

.

Chomsky's conservatism, which I think is a sibling of Bacevich's, involves commitment to the founding ideals of classical liberalism: individual liberty, public responsibility, freedom of expression, and the necessity for creative work and critical inquiry. I think they are siblings: not twins. Chomsky makes the case that the natural (and correct) evolution of classical liberalism would be a kind of libertarian socialism...an enlightened anarchism or anarcho-sydicalism dependent upon wide-spread participatory democracy in all areas of life.

I'm not sure, but I haven't discovered Bacevich's ideas concerning participatory democracy beyond electoral politics. Chomsky argues that all structures of domination require confrontation and challenge: authority in all shapes and sizes must prove its validity before imposing its will. Legitimate authority (in the workplace, the academy, the marketplace, the family, the forest reserve...) rests upon democratic participation of those impacted by decision making. Notice, this is not simply an electoral event that limits political power to elected officials: it is an all-pervasive attitude and practice...a continual criticality and constant confrontation with authority in whatever role it takes.

I think there is a deeper fraternal link between Chomsky and Bacevich, and I think DWill alludes to it by identifying Bacevich as perhaps part of the Christian Left: it is a link to those ancient Jewish Prophets who served as pugnacious pains in the ass to royal and ecclesiastic centers of power...and who also castigated the masses for abandoning righteous ways of living...who predicted terrible fates for all involved unless radical change took place...who identified the role of the intellectual as the voice of justice and reminder of moral accountability...who envisioned what a righteous society would look like and challenged all to adjust their lives accordingly.

Dissident Heart wrote:Chomsky's conservatism, which I think is a sibling of Bacevich's, involves commitment to the founding ideals of classical liberalism: individual liberty, public responsibility, freedom of expression, and the necessity for creative work and critical inquiry.

You're defining conservatism vastly differently than the way most contemporary Americans think about it. While Bacevich's views may not fit into any standard category, it's ridiculous to call him a conservative.

Instead of trying to pigeonhole him, we should discuss Bacevich's ideas and whether his arguments are sensible.

JulianTheApostate wrote:

Dissident Heart wrote:Chomsky's conservatism, which I think is a sibling of Bacevich's, involves commitment to the founding ideals of classical liberalism: individual liberty, public responsibility, freedom of expression, and the necessity for creative work and critical inquiry.

You're defining conservatism vastly differently than the way most contemporary Americans think about it. While Bacevich's views may not fit into any standard category, it's ridiculous to call him a conservative. Instead of trying to pigeonhole him, we should discuss Bacevich's ideas and whether his arguments are sensible.

Conservatism is a useful term to discuss, in that its meaning is contested. Bacevich is a conventional American patriot. Christ Almighty, his son was killed in Iraq. Conservatism means building on what we have, with respect for existing institutions. It is contrasted to radicalism which calls for replacement of what we have by something different.

Bacevich sees Bush as the radical, with Bush departing markedly from conservative tradition, but exploiting the class basis of conservative tradition as a device to steal the Republican Party and achieve his deluded radical ends of world domination.

In quoting Niebuhr, a mainstream Christian prophet, Bacevich is arguing that conservative America has the resources to engage in dialogue with the national security state, which at least since Eisenhower has sought to appropriate the meaning of conservatism for its rather wild purposes.

I am not sure that DH is right to call Chomsky conservative, as my superficial understanding of Chomsky's views is that he is more socialist than market oriented.

I see the economic view of support for free markets as a defining characteristic of conservatism, and by this standard Bacevich is no radical. Rather, he is looking to how to make capitalism work, observing that the national security state has stolen resources which should have been invested to produce wealth. Capitalism has always had its buccaneers, and Bacevich is calling them to account.

I don't know, Robert. The terms conservative and liberal are indeed confusing. They seemed to have traded places over time, with liberals formerly in favor of free market, laissez faire economics and conservatives less gung ho about the accelerated change that unbridled capitalism would bring. Bacevich does call us back to origins to a great extent (even though he tells us there was a worm in our apple from the start). That is the sense in which I find him conservative. A free-market kind of modern conservative? I didn't hear him talk about this in the book. Touting the free market might conflict just a bit with his thesis that proifligacy got us into the mess we're in. Profligacy could have been enabled by the free market, which seemed to be functioning just wonderfully to keep our supply coming.

Chomsky's conservatism challenges tyranny in all its forms: especially as it takes shape in the workplace and corporate boardroom.

Reinhold Niebuhr appears to be a very quotable writer. Of course, Bacevich sprinkles his insights throughout the book. One I especially like. on p. 122: ""the whole drama of history is enacted on a frame of meaning too large for human comprehension or management." The truth of the statement should be a prerequisite for election to high office, Bacevich says. The opposite belief constitutes a large part of the hubris whose bad effects we're now seeing. I would also add that snap characterizations of of history, of which we're all probably guilty, are always suspect, for the reason Niebuhr states.

On the same page, Bacevich convicts us, the American people, more than any other party as responsible for the nation's woes. We have "allowed our democracy to be hijacked." He could have added, "while we weren't looking." We've refined our entertainments to such a degree that we have no time to pay attention. I recall that Charles DeGaulle despaired that getting the French people to sacrifice seemed an impossiblity, faced with 200 different types of cheeses. We have a similar situtaion, not with cheese, but with our 500 channels of TV.

Ah, ye olde political debate!

A defining point of liberalism includes that:

"Liberals define liberalism itself as 'freedom', so they rarely think consent is required for the imposition of a liberal society. In fact, most would say it can not be imposed, inherently. After the Cold War this belief has acquired a geostrategic significance: many western liberal-democrats now believe, that a war to impose a liberal-democratic society is inherently just. This belief influences interventionist policy, but as yet no war for the sole purpose of liberalization has been fought."

This goes against what I would previously defined a liberal as, I always assumed that to be a liberal was to accept things as they are and to move forwards to a more accepting social order for the benefit of all people. But it is true that liberals also as a matter of definition would believe that:

"Liberalism is therefore inherently hostile to competing non-liberal societies - which it sees not simply as different, but as wrong. In the last 10 years, Islamic society has replaced the Communist state, as the perceived 'opposite' to a liberal society."

These technical points-of-facts seem to run contrary to what Bacevich and Chomsky's message continually delivers potentially meaning that neither is truly a liberal. However, does Bacevich, a former army official, ever debate the necessity of war under appropriate situations, or of protecting American freedoms? Not directly he talks rather about his great concern that the notion of exceptional America responsibility/legitimacy to act out of turn with the rest of the world has gone beyond the limits of the system by which it was created, especially considering the results and consequences. A liberal would feel that any action is necessary to spread the democratic form of freedom and realize the ideological ends of the system.

When he talks of "the crisis of profligacy," he never actually denies that the people had the rights do do as they wish all along, rather that the results of their blinded and unleashed inhibitions should have been rationally moderated. Again I feel that the liberal would advocate freedom for the members of his ideological group at any cost to the outsiders.

He talks about limits of power, and the undesired consequences of the exceptional American questioning the necessity of it for equivalent American freedoms, saying that exceptionalism is false and dangerous in the sense that it is woefully misguided.

"...neoconservative hearts certainly beat a little faster, as they undoubtably did when he went on to declare the United States to devote itself to 'ending tyranny in our world.' Yet Bush was simply putting his own gloss on a time-honoured conviction ascribing to the United States a uniqueness of character and purpose." (Limits of Power pg 18 )

Where I think that the liberal would see that the motivation for action as an acceptable extension of liberal-democratic ideology would find outrage only in the apparent lack of competency during execution of this expression: the interactive system of Americanism.

Finally, and most importantly in my view, he shows concern that as a result of recent American history the people have lost a measure of their freedoms, where in fact the defense of the required yet unintended loss of necessary freedom is what I see as a motivating rational behind his entire book. The end of American Exceptionalism ie The end of American Freedom as we Enjoy it. I believe that this is technically a conservative arguement: that the loss of certain freedoms currently taken for granted will be a necessary yet acceptable result of the current atmosphere.

"Liberals believe that the form of society should be the outcome of processes. These processes should be interactive and involve all members of society. The market is an example, probably the best example, of what liberals mean by process. Liberals are generally hostile to any 'interference with process'. Specifically, liberals claim that the distribution of wealth as a result of the market is, in itself, just. Liberals reject the idea of redistribution of wealth as a goal in itself."

"Liberals therefore reject any design or plan for society - religious, utopian, or ethical. Liberals feel that society and state should not have fixed goals, but that 'process should determine outcome'. This anti-utopianism became increasingly important in liberal philosophy, in reaction to the Communist centrally-planned economies: it anticipated the extreme deregulation-ism of later neoliberalism."

To respond quickly to another comment it is to my imperfect understanding that market liberalism is typified by the free-market rather than conservatism which would favour regulations.

All quotes except the one from Limits of Power lifted from:

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Trea ... alism.html

I am sure there are many holes in this reasoning so please flame away I am interested in where this goes. Unless it is off topic.

In his book The New American Militarism Bacevich says in the preface that:

"Only upon leaving the army...as much in response to deeply felt religious convictions as anything else, I became a self-described conservative."

"Today, I still situate myself culturally on the right. And I continue to view the remedies proffered by mainstream liberalism with skepticism. But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute."

"Certainly, someone for whom service in Vietnam did not figure as a formative experience or who does not share my own Catholic conservative inclinations might well interpret the same facts differently."