Dinesh D'Souza - America: Imagine a World without Her (27 page)

In order to answer it, we must consider the central principle of foreign policy—the principle of the lesser evil. This principle says it is legitimate to ally with the bad guy to avoid the worse guy. The classic example of this was in World War II. The United States allied with Stalin—a very bad guy—because another bad guy, Hitler, posed a greater threat at the time. In the same vein, the United States was right to support the Shah of Iran, and when under Jimmy Carter we pulled the Persian rug out from under him, we got Khomeini. The Shah was a pretty bad guy, a dictator who had a secret police, but Khomeini soon proved himself a far worse guy. American and Iranian interests would have been better served if Khomeini had been prevented from coming to power. During the 1980s, the United States briefly allied with Saddam Hussein. This was during the Iran-Iraq war. Again, Saddam was the bad guy and Khomeini was the worse guy.

When America provided arms to Osama bin Laden, he was part of the mujahedeen, a Muslim fighting force seeking to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. The mujahedeen could never have succeeded without American aid. Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire. It was a spectacular triumph of American foreign policy. Of course no one knew that bin Laden and his minions would subsequently make
America their main target. We see here a danger of “lesser evil” thinking: lesser evils are still evils. The bad guys you support today may turn against you tomorrow, as bin Laden did. Bin Laden may have been a “good guy” in fighting the Soviets, but he remained a “bad guy” seeking the eventual destruction of both the Soviet empire and what he took to be its American equivalent. So was America wrong to back the mujahedeen? No. At the time, radical Islam was not a major force in the world and we did not know bin Laden’s intentions. Foreign policy does not have the privilege that historians have—the privilege of hindsight. And even in hindsight America was right to do what it did.

What went wrong in Vietnam, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq? In Vietnam, America miscalculated its self-interest. Of course the South Vietnamese were threatened by the North. Of course Vietnam would be worse off if it went Communist. But America committed large numbers of troops because it believed its vital interests in deterring Communist aggression were at stake. In fact, America had no vital interests in Vietnam; it was a drain on American resources rather than an intelligent use of them. So Vietnam was a stupid war, but it was not a wicked war. America had no intention to rule Vietnam, or to steal the resources of the Vietnamese people; America had no colonial designs on Vietnam. Still, Vietnam was an irresponsible use of American power—on this the progressives are right.

The Iraq War, undertaken by George W. Bush, was also a mistake. I supported the war at the time, because I believed the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs). In retrospect, that proved to be false. I don’t understand how a country can invade another country based on the suspicion that they have WMDs. We should not have gone in unless we
knew
they had WMDs. Having said that, the Bush administration assiduously sought to
rebuild Iraq after Saddam’s ouster. The problem was that this proved to be a difficult and costly enterprise. Far from stealing from Iraq, America returned to the Iraqis the keys to the oilfields, and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in restoring order and commerce to that country. Far from acting like a colonial occupier, America’s intention from the beginning was to get in and get out.

Over the past few decades, America has intervened in a half-dozen countries, from Libya to Grenada to Afghanistan to Iraq. In every case, America has acted in a most un-colonial way. First, America did not take resources from those countries; rather, it expended resources to improve them. Second, America was planning its exit almost immediately after its intervention, looking for the quickest, safest way to get out. Progressives don’t seem to recognize this. They often make lists of countries America has invaded and occupied. But they never consider the simple question, “If America was the evil colonial occupier of all these countries, why don’t we own them?” The reason is that Americans have no interest in acquiring foreign real estate. We never have, and I’m convinced we never will. As Colin Powell memorably put it, the only ground America has sought abroad in the aftermath of war is sufficient ground to bury our dead.
⁸

At its core, American foreign policy is based on two simple precepts: (a) don’t bomb us and (b) trade with us. This is all that Americans want from the rest of the world. A more benign foreign policy can hardly be imagined. America should not and does not oppose the rise of other powers, as long as they are peaceful trading powers and not violent conquering powers. In the future, America should be more cautious about committing troops abroad. How then can we assist other countries to become free? The people in those countries must take the initiative. They must recognize the value of freedom. In general, we won’t fight for their freedom. They must fight,
but we can help. This was precisely the Reagan Doctrine of the 1980s. The mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the contras in Nicaragua are the ones who fought tyrannical regimes in their own countries. America did not send troops, but we did assist in other ways. And both resistance movements were successful. The Reagan Doctrine provides a good rule for America in the future: it steers a healthy middle course between reckless intervention and irresponsible indifference.

In the beginning of this chapter, I quoted Jeane Kirkpatrick’s wry remark that “Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is.” Kirkpatrick meant this half-jokingly, but only half-jokingly. On the balance, America has been a great force for good in the world. From World War II to the Cold War to innumerable smaller involvements, America has simultaneously protected its self-interest while also making the world a better place. While America has made its mistakes, in no circumstance over the past hundred years has it gone abroad to conquer and plunder. In no case has America stolen the wealth of any other country. The allegation of some progressives that America is an evil empire is not simply wrong—it is obscene. For foreigners to make such allegations is one thing; for Americans to falsely accuse their own country is another. If America declines, new powers will rise to take its place. Then the world—and perhaps even the progressives—will miss the leadership of the kindest, gentlest superpower in world history.

CHAPTER 14

THE BIGGEST THIEF OF ALL

Any government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the active support of Paul.
¹

G
EORGE
B
ERNARD
S
HAW

T
here is a scene in the movie
Casablanca
in which a suspicious-looking man approaches a tourist and warns him about the danger of pickpockets. He says there are “vultures everywhere” and, while the tourist nods appreciatively, the man reaches into the tourist’s jacket pocket and takes his wallet. In this chapter, I examine the institutional equivalent of that thief: the federal government. While posing as the pursuer of thieves, and the restorer of stolen goods, the government is actually the biggest thief of all. In fact, progressives have turned a large body of Americans—basically, Democratic voters—into accessories of theft by convincing them that they are doing something just and moral by picking their fellow citizens’ pockets.

Imagine a fellow who has worked hard to achieve a good position in a company or who has built a successful firm. He is watching TV
one evening when policemen show up at his door and start carrying away his furniture, his TV, and his other possessions. When he demands to know what’s going on, they inform him that he is a thief. Since he has never been convicted of anything, the man is nonplussed, but the police assure him that, while the specific time of the theft is unclear—it could have been through his business, or through his country’s actions abroad, or through something his ancestors did—nevertheless he is no longer entitled to what he has, and the government is now going to confiscate it. Such a man, accused of robbery, will naturally feel that he is being robbed. In the name of correcting a supposed injustice, a grave injustice is being inflicted on him. Such is the situation facing all successful people in the age of Obama. The biggest thief—they are beginning to suspect—is not America or capitalism but the suave scoundrel in the White House. Moreover, he and his fellow progressives are turning honest Americans into thieves.

How does an honest man become a thief? Consider a person who works hard loading luggage at an airport or cleaning the floors of an office building. When such people leave work, they see successful people being driven around in limousines or eating in fancy restaurants. Immediately they wonder, “Why does that guy have what I don’t?” This question is immediately followed by feelings of frustration and inferiority. These are very powerful and natural feelings, and they are worth examining more closely.

We feel inferior to others when we realize we are not as good as they are. Now in an aristocratic society, this type of feeling is actually rare. Aristocratic societies impose superior and inferior status on people, but this does not make the ones lower down feel inferior. If this is a surprise, it shouldn’t be. In caste-bound societies, the lower orders know they are simply there because of birth or ill luck. They just got the short end of the stick. Consequently they can console
themselves by thinking: if I were lucky like that other guy, I’d be just as rich and accomplished as he is.

In a free and competitive society, where there are equal rights under the law, and where people perform to the extent of their abilities, such consolations are not available. A society of free competition is like a race where everyone starts on the same line: the guy who hits the finishing tape first really is better. It’s hard for losers to deal with this. Not only do they feel inferior, this feeling makes them hate those who are successful. Thus they begin to secretly nurture the emotion that will guide their political behavior from now on, the emotion of envy. In a sense they become like Iago, who says of Cassio, “He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.”
²
Because Cassio is beautiful, Iago must bring him down in order to bring himself up, to make himself feel better.

Back to the hard-working fellow who, rather than hate himself for being inferior, begins to resent his successful fellow citizens. At first this resentment is inarticulate, and has no legitimate outlet. Then along comes the progressive, the Obama type. This Obama is no less envious than the ordinary worker. Why? Not because Obama isn’t talented. It’s because Obama isn’t talented in any of the things that it takes to succeed in a commercial society. Obama cannot do what Steve Jobs does. He cannot run a business; never has. Even with the full resources of government, he could not put up a working healthcare website. Consequently Obama develops a fierce envy toward his entrepreneurial superiors. He knows that he has talents, but they are other talents: the talent for rhetoric and mobilization, an ability to work up the mob. He decides to put these talents to use to bring down the hated entrepreneur, to establish his superiority through government control.

So the envious Obama type says to the envious person: You are actually not envious; you are indignant. (This is precisely how he
feels himself.) And you have good cause to feel resentful and even enraged. That successful person has been stealing from you. You work just as hard as he does, and yet he makes off with all the gains. Actually you have produced just as much as he has, and so the gains belong equally to you. And I am here to restore you to justice. If you vote for me, I will use the power of the government to take away the other man’s possessions. I will then give some of those possessions to you. Obama omits to mention, of course, that through this process he becomes more powerful. He, not you, exercises the levers of government control. He is using you to achieve his own objective, which is the conquest of the wealth creators. Yet to assuage your envy and resentment you recruit him to go to work for you, to take money from others and put it into your pocket.

This is how a righteous man becomes a thief. His envy is an invisible vice that had previously traveled in secret. The progressive contribution is to give that envy political cover, to permit it to travel under the passport of morality. Now the man who felt bad about himself gets to feel good about himself,
even while indulging his envy
. In a triumph of vice masquerading as virtue, the fellow eagerly supports progressives in using the power of the state to confiscate and seize the earnings of those who have contributed the most and earned the greatest rewards. The result is most pleasing: the envious get to enjoy some of that loot, all the while thinking they have struck a blow for social justice. As for the government, in the name of fighting theft—a theft we have shown to be largely nonexistent—it has under progressive rule become itself a burglar. This is burglary of a kind that is normally found in Third World countries; the burglars have the police on their side.

Since Obama was elected, conservatives and libertarians have been making elaborate critiques of government, critiques that seem to go nowhere. Let’s examine why this is so. The first critique is that
government is inefficient. This is obvious, as any visit to a post office, department of motor vehicles, or immigration office can easily demonstrate. Government is notorious for wasting money and this is not simply the consequence of bad government; it is a problem intrinsic to government itself. Basically, whatever the government does, it does badly. This is just as true of the Defense Department as of the Housing or Labor departments. Part of the reason is that government means bureaucrats spending someone else’s money. Naturally they are profligate with it; it’s not their money. Besides, they are not subject to market forces—consequently, there is no “bottom line.” Private investors who make bad decisions get punished for them; bureaucrats who make bad decisions suffer no such consequences. Private initiatives that don’t work get canceled, but with very few exceptions—to paraphrase Reagan—government programs are the closest thing to eternal life we’ll see on this earth.