To Tom Friedman: Why Does Everyone Hate Us?

Dear Tom Friedman,

Thanks for your invitation to comment on "Why does everyone else hate us?" (IHT June 2, 2003). I am 57 years old, born and raised in USA, and have lived in France once (1980-85), and in England twice (1968-70, and 1990 to the present), so I have a somewhat European perspective on this question. Here are my thoughts:

First, I think it is more productive to ask why so many non-muslim foreigners disagree with us, rather than why they hate us. There is an unfortunate tendency in public debate to descend too quickly below the substance of an issue into the pit of ad hominem argumentation. You have earned widespread respect as a columnist by focusing on substance more than most of your colleagues, but you are nonetheless guilty of occasional lapses into the ad hominem pit which I, as a faithful reader, feel duty bound to bring to your attention.

Anti-American sentiments of the kind that erupted during the international debate over the wisdom and justice of invading Iraq have a long history, predating the end of the cold war and the emergence of USA as a hyper-power. These sentiments have been aroused by many things over time. To name a few:

Palestine

Many people around the world believe that USA policy in Palestine has been unjust. In 1949, many felt that, while the creation of a national home for Jews in Palestine had been a just and compassionate thing to do, the UN Security Council's decision to partition Palestine, create Israel and grant it sovereignty over 55% of the land was simply an injustice and not, as Chaim Weizman testitied before the UN Special Commission on Palestine a year earlier, a "lesser injustice" (compared to the injustice of the plight of the 250,000 Jews in refugee camps in Germany). Aand many people also thought it unwise, since it would clearly lead to war. People believed that the Security Council's decision was dictated by the Truman Administration with the support of the Stalin administration, and held USA responsible for the result. Ever since, most people have held USA responsible for funding, arming and giving political support to Israel's inexorable drive to realise the "manifest destiny" of rule from Dan to Beersheba.

Vietnam

Many people felt and still feel that the Vietnam War was an unwise, unjust, myopic exercise of American military power. You recently commended the Bush Administration's "muscular, principled" foreign policy. In the eyes of many, the Vietnam War is a tragic illustration of the dangers of combining American muscle with American principles. If you have any doubts about these dangers, just ask Robert McNamara.

Imperialism

The story of Colin Powell's remark at a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury has made the rounds. When asked (not by the Archbishop) whether the US design for Iraq was not another exercise of American imperialism, Powell reportedly said, ""Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." Though these are noble words, they beg facts of which many people around the world are very much aware: the USA currently has military bases in 58 countries. As of 1988 (the most recent year for which I could find figures in a brief surfing session, but I'd be surprised if the number has gone down since then) there were 794 such bases. I am told that the WSJ reported the other day that the Pentagon has decided to establish a "highway" of permanent bases from Germany to Korea.

Then consider the most recent National Security Strategy declaration that the US reserves the right to project military power anywhere it finds necessary to protect national security (as defined at the sole discretion of the USG), and that no nation in the world must ever again be allowed to challenge USA's military hegemony. Putting these things together, it seems a little silly for USG spokesmen and apologists to affect a wounded posture when foreigners brand us as imperialist. True, unlike the 18th-19th century European imperialists who sought to colonize and rule mainly for economic gain (though the colonial powers usually also insisted theirs were "civilising missions"), the objective of our imperialism has always been plainly to impose our principles (democracy, rule of law, defense of human rights as we understand them, and free market economics). Mandelbaum is right to point out that most people accept that our imperialism is more benign than the 18th-19th century variety. But given our insistence on the right to impose our principles by force if necessary anywhere we choose, our allocation of $400 billion per year to assure the means to do this, our declaration that we will not tolerate the emergence of any rival power who might restrain us from doing this, and our ability to persuade ourselves that almost any means justify these ends (Vietnam in the 1960's, Latin America in the 1970's), Colin Powell should neither be surprised nor take umbrage when foreigners apply the "I" word to us unflatteringly.

Capitalism

Outside the USA, Socialism is not dead, nor should it be. The American people by and large believe that the ideological war declared by Karl Marx has been lost by Marx's adherents and won by us. The people of no other country on earth (including the UK) believe this by and large. Elsewhere, majorities or large minorities believe in a social contract that requires the state to be far more aggressive than it is in the USA in defending the individual against what would happen to him if capitalism were otherwise allowed to have its way. This is one reason why the goals of US imperialism -- democracy, rule of law, human rights and free market economics -- make many people unhappy. Fourteen years after the collapse of the Soviet union, there are lots of people in Russia and elsewhere in eastern Europe, including especially East Germany, who continue to believe that that they lost more (in the form of social solidarity and security) than they gained (in being liberated from totalitarian states and seeing the police stations replaced everywhere by shopping malls). Given this ambivalence about the net benefit of the triumph of USA's ideals, you can see why it makes many people angry when we declare the right and the intention to use unilateral force to impose those ideals anywhere we chose.

Religion

Since we are not talking about why the Islamic world hates us, there is less to say about this. But it is worth noting that Europeans are by and large rather more secular than Americans. As they look across the Atlantic, the secular Europeans are becoming increasingly anxious about the role they see religion playing in the formation of state policy. While the legal and institutional separation of church and state is far more developed in the USA, Europeans believe that the influence of religious interest groups on US government policy -- especially the Christian right and the Jewish supporters of Israel -- is far more pronounced than in Europe.

A Few Other Things

As everyone knows, the rest of the world is angry at the Bush Administration for refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, for refusing to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, for refusing to require US pharmaceutical giants to offer drugs at discounted prices in the third world, for refusing the ratify the treaty banning land mines….

Now back to your Brief Theory of Everything. I think you are overstating the degree to which USA's critics in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America feel that the exercise of American power in Afghanistan and Iraq feel that they themselves have been affected by the exercise of that power. I think most people felt that the elimination of the Taliban and the scattering of al-Qaeda's leadership made them somewhat more secure, certainly not less. I think most people felt that the elimination of Saddam Hussein made them somewhat less secure -- by further inflaming Islamic fundamentalist passions -- but only marginally so. These people aren't upset with USA because they feel USA's unilateral military actions a threat to them. They are upset because they feel that more and more of USA's actions are either unwise or unjust. They are upset because they disagree both with guiding principles of this Administration's foreign policy, and with the muscular means by which we are pursuing those principles.

Here are my ideas for managing USA's relations with the rest of the globe:

• Adopt a more principled and muscular approach to rolling back Israeli's progressive occupation of more and more of Palestine;

• Renounce the use of unilateral military force to replace repressive regimes with democratic ones, and announce that overthrowing repressive regimes is still an important goal of American foreign policy, but that in future USA will only pursue this goal when a substantial majority of the UN supports us;

• Re-assert the right to take unilateral military action where there is a meaningful risk to USA's national security;

• Acknowledge that this was not the case in Iraq, and that both in foresight and in hindsight, a policy of intrusive inspections would have been far wiser than the course we chose to pursue.

To George W Bush: Why I Will Sing

I’m going to try to put this subject to bed — at least for a while. I’ve decided to attend the White House event because I’m curious, because I can sing for W and still feel the way I do about the man, his war and his Administration, and because I can bring Lily with me. I’m no longer as angry as I was at the stupidity of the adventure because the cost in human life and suffering (so far) has been near the lower end of the range of possibility. So far as that goes, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I still feel like Grandfather in Peter in the Wolf, skulking at the rear of Peter’s victory procession and mumbling, “Yes, but what if Peter had not caught the wolf? What then?”

But I still have a list of gripes against the man, the war, and the Administration, and I’m going to write them down here once again, and then get on with my life:

Bait and Switch

Unilateral, pre-emptive military force to eliminate a threat against a nation’s security is much easier to justify than the use of force to bring freedom and democracy to another nation that’s ruled by a tyrant. Before 9/11, a very small minority of Americans thought that regime change was a sufficient cause for war in Iraq. But within days after 9/ll, this Administration began beating the drums of war in Iraq with the justification that this was an integral part of the war against Islamic terrorism – meaning that USA national security was at stake. In speech after speech, the people were told that if we didn’t rid the world of this man now, sooner or later he would wreak havoc on us all.

The Administration never produced a shred of evidence for any connection between Saddam and Islamic terrorism (not for lack of trying) and by now most everyone understands that Saddam’s regime was no more compatible with organisations like al-Quaeda than it was with things like free press and elected parliaments. But a majority of Americans decided they didn’t need any evidence, because terrorism had become a reality on American soil, and the Commander in Chief had to be given the benefit of the doubt. (After all, he has so much more information than we do…). The bait of national-security-war-against-terrorism was set, and two-thirds of Americans took it.

But not the Europeans. The Europeans challenged the logic of the Administration’s call for war, insisting that before a war to eliminate the threat could be justified, we should first find evidence of the threat and, if we could find it, see if it could be eliminated without war.

This sounded pretty reasonable to just about everyone in the world except two-thirds of Americans and half the Brits. The Bush Administration branded the European objection as treacherous because Americans fought and died at Somme and Omaha Beach. The Administration launched the war, eliminated Saddam’s regime in three weeks, and is now working to rebuild Iraq into a democratic society ruled by law (but not by Islamic law) and respecting human rights.

So far, however, no WMD. So now the Administration’s supporters (e.g. Tom Friedman writing in the NYT) are telling us that even if no WMD are ever found, the war was justified, because it eliminated a brutal tyrant who caused unimaginable suffering to his people. Though this bait attracted little interest before 9/11, the game is now afoot to switch it in place of the national-security-war-against-terrorism bait which appears to have vanished along with the WMD.

Was It Worth It?

OK, so maybe the Administration can be charged with slight of hand[1] to build support for regime change, and maybe the Administration’s outrage and contempt at the European stance (“they oppose us only out of frustration at their own weakness…”) was a bit unfair, but isn’t Friedman now right? Won’t the war have been justified if we succeed in replacing Saddam’s regime with democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights?

My answer is, well, yes, I suppose so, but I can think of many things the Administration could have done in the world that would have been more justified than this war – things that would have yielded much greater benefit than a successful rebuilding of Iraq, and would have cost a lot less. The reason I can only say, “I suppose so,” rather than “of course,” is because some 150 American and British soldiers and several thousand Iraqis were killed, and to me it’s not obvious that this price was worth paying to buy freedom for the Iraqi people. I suppose so, but I’m not sure how to weigh these things together.

So what could we have done that would have made the world better off than this war has done, and cost less? Well, for example, this morning I read in the Economist that health experts have calculated that over the next twelve years, over five million lives could be saved from death by malaria by spending $25 billion, which is around one-third of what the war in Iraq will cost this year. We don’t yet know what the rebuild will cost, but let’s guess $50 billion (Rumsfeld got very upset a while back when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress he thought it would be $400 billion). That makes a total cost of $125 billion for the war. Now, suppose we can find four other diseases like malaria (I bet we can if we look) where we can save 5 million lives for a cost of $25 billion. We could then save 25 million lives for the same amount of money it cost to buy the freedom of 25 million Iraqis. If you look at it this way, the war may have been justified, but was it a wise use of $125 billion???

Who Do We Want to Be?

There are plenty of other things the taxpayers might rather do with their $125 billion: a free year at college for every student in America; a year of job training for every unemployed person in the USA; a year of free drugs for all Americans over 60? This Administration did not want to define these choices. It opposes Big Government to solve problems at home, but embraces Big Government to solve problems abroad.

The most disturbing thing for me is the way in which this Administration has played on the people’s fear, insecurity and anger in the aftermath of 9/11, has set about making this the defining issue of the Administration, and been so successful in doing this that victimisation has become the defining characteristic of Americans in their relations with the rest of the world. We have become what the Administration wants us to be: a nation with a chip on its shoulder – haunted by the conviction that we have been unfairly targeted by terrorists, and stabbed in the back by former allies for whom we have made sacrifices in the past.

A man was walking to his car in a dark parking lot one night, and noticed another man searching the ground on his hands and knees beneath the streetlight illuminating one corner of the lot. The first man asked the second what he was doing. “I’m looking for my wallet,” was the reply. “Where did you drop it?” asked the first. “Over there,” said the second, pointing to the darkness on the other side of the lot. “So why are you looking here?” asked the first. “Because this is where the light it,” replied the second.

In going after Saddam, the Bush Administration picked a fight it could expect to win, rather than the fight that needs winning. The elimination of Saddam Hussein has accomplished nothing at all in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalist terror that brought us 9/11. It has distracted attention and diverted resources from more pressing problems at home (education, jobs, medical care and deficits) and abroad (Israel and North Korea). It has enshrined unilateralism, even where national security is not threatened, as the guiding principle of American foreign policy. And it has destroyed the global consensus on the moral authority of the USA that began with our entry into World War I.

In short, it was a foolish and irresponsible thing to do. But that’s no reason not to sing.

________________________________________________________________

[1] Perhaps a more apt analogy than bait-and-switch for an administration led by the former owner of the Texas Rangers would be the hidden ball trick. In his own playing days, W was a pitcher, and I’m sure he used this trick many times. It works like this: the opponents have a man on first. The first baseman goes to the mound to have a little huddle with the pitcher (W). While this conference is going on, W slips the ball into the first-baseman’s glove without anyone noticing. The first baseman returns to first base. W goes into his stretch, pretending to have the ball in his glove. The runner takes his lead, and the first baseman tags him out. Voila! The hidden ball trick.

To George W. Bush: Why I Won't Sing

Dear George:

Thanks for the invitation to the Class of 1968 Whiffenpoofs to sing for you at the White House. Unfortunately, I can’t participate. Here’s why.

I don’t remember much of what Kingman Brewster said in his welcoming speech to the freshman class of 1968 in September 1964, but in broad outline it was the usual one about what a great opportunity we had been given, and what a great responsibility went with it.

If he had just been talking about the responsibility to serve and to lead, I would be delighted to sing for you, because you have served and led more in the last 6 years than the rest of our class combined.

But as I remember Kingman Brewster, it’s more likely that he would have talked to us about the responsibility to think before you serve and lead. He would have told us that the main  purpose of our four undergraduate years would be to learn how to think, that learning to think is hard work, and that learning to think will make your head hurt. 

I don’t think you were listening, George. You among us were given the greatest opportunity to serve and to lead imaginable. But you have failed in your responsibility to think before you lead. Your head doesn’t hurt. That’s why I won’t sing.

None of us has been surprised to see how calm and self-assured you are about pursuing this war. You show the calm of a leader who has achieved moral clarity. And moral clarity is the surest sign of someone who has never learned how to think. Leaders who achieve moral clarity say things like, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Or things like, “we must destroy that village in order to liberate it.”  Leaders like this tend to have followers who say, “My country, right or wrong.”

Does a leader endowed with moral clarity count costs and benefits before deciding whether a war is justified? I don’t think so. The leader endowed with moral clarity divides the world into two categories: Evil, and everything else. In opposing Evil, he abhors moderation and compromise, for compromise with Evil is Evil. All of this is very clear in his mind. As he enters the war against Evil, this leader is at peace with himself. He cannot conceive that the path he has chosen might lead him to Hell. Chatter about whether means justify ends is noise that obscures moral clarity. What is clear is that liberation of the village is just, and that moderation and compromise are damnable.

The way I see it, in all your moral clarity, you are sending several divisions up the road to Baghdad with the best possible intentions, to embark upon the mother of all liberations to be achieved, if necessary, by the destruction of that city and, if necessary, most everyone in it.

Am I a pacifist? If I were a pacifist, my case would be that all wars are immoral, this is war, therefore this is immoral. That is not my case. I think the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda needed to be fought, and you fought them well. And I’m not saying your war against Saddam is immoral or unjust. I’m saying it is stupid and irresponsible – an ill-conceived adventure whose risks far outweigh the possible benefits, a roll-the-dice approach to foreign and military policy on a scale our nation has never seen.

Sure, Saddam is evil. But I don’t believe that an evil regime should be taken out at all costs. It depends on the evil, and on the cost. In this world, evil and cost exist in varying degrees.  Think about evil as something that has degrees, as do the costs of defeating evil. If you think hard enough about this, George, it should make your head hurt. I don’t think you have, and I don’t think it does. That’s why I won’t sing for you.

You told us, “The cost of doing nothing would be far greater than the cost of regime change.” But since no serious person was arguing that we should do nothing about Saddam Hussein, this was a silly thing to say.  Obviously the real issue is whether the balance of cost, risk and reward with continued inspections would be better than the balance of these things with an attempt at regime change by war. I don’t think you ever tried to make the case that the cost/risk/benefit balance of an attempt at regime change was better than balance for inspections. I think your case went about as far as a shrug and a smirk: “Inspections don’t work.”

But why don’t they work? Don’t you think you should at least explain to those you have asked to die for regime change why a world with Saddam still in power, still oppressing his people, with no nuclear program, no means other than suitcases for delivering chemical & biological weapons (if they exist), and hundreds of inspectors with international backing prowling the country at will – why such a world is so dangerous or so evil as to justify death in battle for hundreds of Americans and many thousands of Iraqis? Not to mention the collateral damage to Iraqi civilians, to institutions of international governance, and to what America stands for in the eyes of the rest of the world? 

Do you really believe there is a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, as about half of the American people do? I know you would dearly like to believe it, but unfortunately the 375,000 members of the intelligence community who work for you haven’t come up with anything very convincing. And I don’t think it’s because they’re under-funded. Is it that you know things you can’t tell us without endangering the lives of informers, so we just have to trust you?  George, please don’t tell me we’re going to war because of what we have heard from informers.

If you were a thinking leader, you would understand and explain this to your people: that the evil of Saddam Hussein – a ruthless oppressor of ethnic and religious groups within his country, and an aggressor against his neighbors – is entirely different from the evil of al-Quaeda – a stateless clan of Muslim fanatics bent on vengeance against the Infidel, as directed by the book and the mullah.  In pursuing the war on al Quaeda – a legitimate war of self-defense in the aftermath of 9/11 – America should spend 75% of its resources cracking the networks, and 25% of its resources going after states that support the networks. And of the resources spent going after the states that support the networks, 75% should be spent on Pakistan, 20% on Saudi Arabia, and 5% on everyone else. If the objective is the defeat of al Quaeda, going after Iraq should be about as important as going after Tunisia.

So why have you decided on a policy of regime change by war? The best answer you can offer, given the absence of any meaningful connection with al Quaeda or meaningful evidence of WMD, is that we will be liberating an oppressed people from their suffering. It’s a worthy cause, George, as it was in Vietnam, but how worthy? How much loss of life is it worth? Are there any risks that after we take out the regime, we might find the people(s) of Iraq more resistant to the ideals of democracy, civil society and the rule of law than we hope? Or that the transition to these institutions might take longer, be more expensive, and produce a more imperfect result than we hope?  Or that neighboring autocratic Arab states might fail to fall over one by one (like dominoes) under the pressure of a democratic Iraq? Or that Muslims around the world will react to America’s forcible liberation of Iraq with deepened hostility to Americans and American ideals? Or that the cancer of al Quaeda mutates and proliferates into new and more virulent strains?

It should make your head hurt to ask yourself these questions, George, but you’re not asking, and I know why: to you, a world with Saddam in power and under inspection lacks moral clarity. Such a world is a compromise with Evil. End of story. Kingman Brewster would be ashamed of you, George, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Your head should hurt, but it doesn’t. That’s why I won’t sing.

Dan Badger

London

April 17, 2003