Moral Authority?

Though it has been badly shaken by President Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan (and dramatically ratchet up both drone strikes, and, or so it seems, anyway, covert operations in Pakistan), the liberal internationalist narrative about American power has emphasized the discontinuities between the Bush and Obama administrations. On this account, the United States under President Bush over-reached radically—taking advantage of the country’s continuing belief in its own exceptionalism and the goodness of its intentions; its undeniable role as the world’s sole military superpower and status as the issuer of the world’s reserve currency; and its unique capacity to use both its hard and soft power to globally constructive ends to pursue overly-militarized, unilateralist policies that could only lessen the leadership America had exercised since the end of World War II. All of this was at the dawn of a multi-polar world age in which it was inevitable that U.S. power and influence would diminish, at least comparatively.

Despite their (willful?) blindness to the striking continuities between candidate Obama’s positions on foreign policy and those of President Bush, liberal advocates did see quite clearly that the United States of the early-21st century simply could not impose its will on the rest of the world as it had done in the past. What seemed most welcome to them was that Obama seemed committed to restoring America’s moral authority, which they argued, had been squandered by the Bush administration through its promiscuous use of military force; its legendary disregard for the “decent opinions of mankind”; and its delusional mindset that started from the premise that America could impose its will on allies and enemies alike as completely as it had (supposedly) been able to do during the Cold War.

And, in fairness, this was indeed the line that candidate Obama returned to during the 2008 campaign, and the line that President Obama has emphasized many times in many speeches during the year he has been in office—most notably in his December speech at West Point and when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. At West Point, he argued that the strength of America’s values are “the source, the moral source of America’s authority.” It remains an open question whether he was doing more than paying lip-service to his administration undertaking a serious re-set of U.S. foreign policy—as many liberals still hope and believe—or whether—as I believe—this values talk was a way of trying to provide the National Security State and America’s informal empire, which long predates and alas will probably long outlast the cumulative tenures of both presidents Bush and Obama, with a moral warrant (or moral flag of convenience, depending on your view). That is, at least until nemesis comes knocking, as it will.

What is more interesting to me is why both liberals who continue to have high hopes for the president’s commitment to seriously rethink foreign policy and those who now see him, to put it charitably, as a figure whose resolve and commitment are dramatically out of sync with his opinions and good intentions, seem to find the invocation of America’s moral authority credible, let alone dispositive, to use one of Vice President Biden’s favorite adjectives? After all, the normative understanding of moral authority is that it is something that can be possessed by religious institutions, leaders of those institutions, or individuals, whether believers or non-believers, who are viewed as moral exemplars, but emphatically not by secular states—particularly imperial ones like America whose record in the world, viewed dispassionately, is a mixed one: abominable in Latin America, pretty awful in Asia, disastrous in the Middle East, ambiguous in Africa, and quite good in Europe. So while it is clearly not a category mistake for Catholics to hold that the Pope has moral authority, what can it possibly mean for President Obama to speak of the United States’ moral authority?

The answer, alas, is simple: On a very profound level, this assumption is one more piece of the collateral damage from the pernicious creed of American exceptionalism—the profoundly ingrained belief in this country that, as Damon Linker has put it, the United States has been “empowered by providence to bring democracy, liberty, and Christian redemption to the world.” President Bush certainly thought this; we know this because he said similar things on many occasions, most eloquently in his Second Inaugural. And of course, President Obama and his “progressive” supporters would for the most part omit the religious dimension. But that does not make their narrative any less theological—not, of course, in the creedal sense, but in the typological one that the great conservative philosopher (and former Marxist) Leszek Kolakowski employed when he described Marxism as a chapter in the history of religion —a secular eschatology, which is “a doctrine of human salvation presented in pseudo-scientific terms.”

The term “category-mistake” was coined by British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in the late 1940s. It is conventionally defined as ascribing a property to a thing that cannot possibly have that property. A classic, Philosophy 101 example is that to say a horse is a biped is a mistake, but to say that a horse is binary is a category mistake; and, as such, far more serious because it is not an error of perception or knowledge, but a fundamental misunderstanding of reality. Speaking of America’s moral authority is just as serious a misunderstanding, but of course with real world consequences whose damage to the U.S. and to the world have been, and continue to be, incalculable.

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Bringing the marshes back, or trying to, anyway

It’s difficult, I know, to have rational thoughts about Iraq these days. We’re being told the troops are being withdrawn on schedule–British troops left earlier this year—but the bombings continue on a regular basis, and it’s not at all clear what will happen after US troops are no longer actively patrolling the country. The political dimensions of what the new Iraq will look like remain very unclear, especially since there is no new government actually in place, except for the fact that Iran is a lot more influential under the new government than it ever was under their sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein. There has been some movement in making Iraq more like America, however—Iraq is now back among the world leaders in executions. So one is left with rage and frustration over the waste, the carnage, the millions displaced, the hundreds of thousands dead, the geopolitical wreckage that will take decades to repair.

The fact that there are some bright spots might not—and does not—compensate. But bright sports there are. One is the tale of the Iraq marshes, and the efforts by Azzam Alwash to restore them. Back in the day when the marsh dwellers supported an uprising against Saddam, Saddam retaliated by draining the marshes. Well, one of the developments since Saddam’s ouster has been that the marshes are coming back, bit by bit. It’s a small victory, to be sure, but small victories should be celebrated when they come along, simply because there are so few of them ot begin with. We’ve been following this story for some time, and can’t help but feel a bit better about this little corner of Iraq. As the Der Spiegel story notes:

Of course, this isn’t just any old marsh. Alwash is fighting for a marsh which Biblical scholars believe is the site of the Garden of Eden, and which some describe as the cradle of civilization. The Mesopotamians settled in the fertile region in the fifth century B.C., and within a few centuries it had become the site of an advanced Sumerian civilization. Scholars believe that cuneiform was invented in the region, as were literature, mathematics, metallurgy, ceramics and the sailboat.

Only 20 years ago, an amazing aquatic world thrived in the area, which is in the middle of the desert. Larger than the Everglades, it extended across the southern end of Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers divide into hundreds of channels before they come together again near Basra and flow into the Persian Gulf. For environmentalists, this marshland was a unique oasis of life, until the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, had it drained in the early 1990s after a Shiite uprising.

And of course the recovery of the marshes is not going smoothly. The US government has cut off further funding. It’s still in the middle of a conflict zone, so outside experts often can’t actually come to the area to advise:

The situation seems to have calmed down somewhat recently. Basra is not as safe as Sulaymaniyah, but neither is it as dangerous as Baghdad. But security is a relative concept. Is the risk worth it? Can conservation even function in a country like this?
Alwash is used to bombs going off. “As long as you are at least 100 meters (about 330 feet) away, it’s just part of daily life.” He tries to explain how he feels: “For the first time in my life, I have the feeling that my work really helps people, and that I’m not just working to make money for my family and myself. That’s fulfilling.”

But still, this is something to celebrate, and support:

Nowadays, when Awash is traveling in the marsh of hope, he sometimes encounters images of his childhood. In Al-Hammar, a labyrinth of waterways leads through dense, meter-high reeds and comes together to form larger lakes. Dewdrops glisten on the reeds, rustling as they recede alongside the passing boat. A crescent moon fades away as the sun grows stronger. Tiny fish dash through the water, fleeing a water snake. And the birds are back: night herons, pied kingfishers, purple herons, little grebes, black-tailed godwits and marbled ducks.

Reed huts surrounded by sleepy water buffalo stand on small islands. Men and women with sunburned faces and long robes glide through the water in boats, cutting reeds, occasionally raising their hands in greeting

.

There are numerous difficulties ahead, as the article points out—reduced flow from the Tigris and Euphrates because of Turkey’s plans for more dams, and Iraq’s development of its own oil reserves in particular pose longer term threats. Still, one can’t help but admire Alwash’s efforts, and wish him well. Given the sordid history of the area over the past several decades, and the uncertainties he, and the marshes, continue to face, he will need all the support he can get.

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