The New Republic

Glad to see Wieseltier publishing here. I liked his essay, but I especially liked this sentence: "A chest full of medals hardly denotes a brain full of truths." It brought a smile to my face. Keep 'em coming Leon.

- arnon1

January 29, 2013 at 12:43am

To the websites digital mavens: Fix the fucking comments box! Begin with fixing the paragraphing hell you placed us in. Did you ever read a whole page full of prose where there were no paragraph breaks? If you want people to read your magazine and post on line, you gotta make it a little more posting comments friendly. Thanks.

- arnon1

January 29, 2013 at 12:48am

Yes, "even in our current woes, societies and movements in trouble look to us," but can we really come to the aid of all the societies and movements who look too us, even if they are all worthy? Isn't the question to whom to we say yes (and yes in what magnitude) and to whom do we say no? Even under Eisenhower and, to a much larger extent Obama, we are still saying yes to societies and movements in trouble, just in a smaller degree and to a somewhat smaller universe of societies and movements than we would under a less "realist" administration.

- sharib

January 29, 2013 at 4:35am

Oh come off it Leon, - no mention of the Orwellian abuse of the word "freedom" by the lazy, anti-empricists that are the ridiculous "neo-cons?" Please name one instance when these preening fools have been or done the first thing well, honestly or correctly - and I'm a big supporter of American interventionism! It's not much to ask the the minimum standards of competence and decency be met, which never occurred during their shameful, wasteful reign. Their slaughtering of our reputation for some semblance of intelligence and foresight in military affairs isn't worth note to you in this piece? Why? Which brings me to this - if you think Obama should lead invasions of Syria and Iran, then just have the courage to say so openly and make an argument how this can logically be done (which you argued forcefully against quite recently, in fact), we're listening. What is it exactly that you believe Leon? It isn't clear. Stop inferring that your confusion in what you're really advocating for how somehow Obama's fault for his"detachment" rather than the obvious difficulty of easy platitudes in these circumstances. You're not even making sense.

- WandreyCer

January 29, 2013 at 6:45am

What the Rumsfeld doctrine recognizes, if only accidentally, is that 1500 years of sectarian strife cannot be overcome by high-minded dreams of democracy. Not in Iraq. Not in Syria. And not in the entire middle east. For the committed, there is no room for the heretic; for Sunni Muslims, who comprise roughly 85% of Muslims worldwide, there is no room for Shia heretics. When the last of the minority dictators is defeated in Syria, the sectarian strife will divide nations as well as Muslims, as Iraq and Iran, the two with majority Shia populations, will stand alone. This will make the region far more vulnerable to regional war, but it will make it easier to separate friend from foe for westerners who prefer the simplicity of nation-states.

- rayward

January 29, 2013 at 8:13am

Leon's caricature of Eisenhower is ignorant. Think about two key events: 1) the overthrow of elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 in league with the British; and 2) the overthrow of elected President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1956. Both had devastating long-term consequences for both the US and the countries we intervened in, but neither was the act of a passive President. His strictures on Hagel are not any better.

- JackR

January 29, 2013 at 10:30am

The one not making sense is Wandrey, but then no one looks for sense in her post which is full of incoherent invective but empty of sense. Orwell himself is guilty of the abuse of language and is no god that one should kowtow to.

- arnon1

January 29, 2013 at 10:40am

What would Mr. Wieseltier have us do, start little proxy wars with Russia and China all over the globe? Take sides in sectarian battles that have nothing to do with us, and in which both sides hate us? I believe we've tried that already, and it did not work out well -- for us or for democracy. It would suit Mr. Wieseltier's personal desire to play a real-life game of Risk with U.S. taxpayer dollars, but that's about it.

- ATLeft

January 29, 2013 at 12:16pm

'We cannot save societies that do not wish to save themselves, but we can significantly affect the likelihood of their emancipations.' Not. We can somewhat affect them, Leon. They'll still be the same old tribal societies that they've been for millenniums. What you interventionists lack is a sense of history. You're pretty educated, but history is not your specialty. The news in modern society proves that some 'nation states' never progress toward your vaunted democracy. In fact, many of them regress into barbarity. And not just in the Middle East. And you got Ike wrong. He was an interventionist. JackR mentioned the Iranian and Guatemalan incidents. Eisenhower also okayed the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, which was considered by the Soviets to be an invasion of their 'sacred' air space; he laid out plans for the invasion of Castro's Cuba; and he did the same for Viet Nam. Did I leave out anything? Probably. I agree with arnon. Fix this Comments mess! Now!!! Please?

- magboy47.

January 29, 2013 at 12:18pm

I notice Mr Wieseltier, like most interventionists, makes little or no mention of how the United States is to pay for his many, many expensive [in lives and treasure] interventions. Mr Wieseltier's understanding of economics is risible. Our ability to finance the many wars Mr Wieseltier wishes to wage is directly related to the health and wealth of our economy and our fiscal situation. I also notice that Mr Wieseltier, like most of today's interventionists, only seems particularly interested in interventions in one particular part of the world. To use his own words, "irony or hypocrisy?" Unable to argue honestly against President Obama's national security policy, he settles for mis-representing it. President Obama is not withdrawing from the world -- such a thing is virtually impossible for the United States and even if it were possible, it would take many, many years to accomplish. It is the view of President Obama, the overwhelming majority of the American people and most national security experts not directly in the pay of Ruper Murdoch that there are many ways for the United States to engage in the world and military force is the least desirable of those many ways. Attempting to assist democrats around the world is an enterprise fraught with danger -- and enormous expense. First, one must identify those democrats. Mr Wieseltier and people like him seem to assume that the democrats are easy to spot -- just side with whichever forces oppose the government you dislike. Of course, as we know, the real world operates quite differently. Genuine democrats are very difficult to find, frequently numerically insignificant and quite often rather unpopular with the local population. Mr Wieseltier, formerly so enthusiastic about a certain Mr Chalabi, simply ignores this or does not understand it at all. In fact, it is abundantly clear that Mr Wieseltier understands almost nothing about our national security policy. Unable to admit his own grievous errors -- for he does not recognize ever having made such a thing -- he continues to advocate policies that have failed and failed very, very expensively for ourselves and the people we decided needed our "help." "Realism" in the national security context, is simply an honest and obvious understanding that what the United States can accomplish in other nations is very limited. We struggle to govern ourselves decently so what chance have we to set other civilizations on the correct course? It can be done, but only in very limited circumstances and Syria, to use the example dearest to Mr Wieseltier's heart this month, is a prime example of a country unsuited for the world-remaking ambitions of the Neo-conservatives. [The fact that Mr Wieseltier denies being a Neo-conservative is delightful, particularly since he so famously denied it in a letter urging leniency for Scooter Libby!] I am uncertain who, apart from Mr Wieseltier himself, decided that this cultural critic was qualified to guide this nation's national security policy -- more qualified than President Obama or President Eisenhower! -- but this nonsense has truly run its course. It's clear by now Mr Wieseltier's arguments are not a parody of a silly man who thinks himself quite important, as many of us originally assumed. He actually means this stuff. That being the case, he should be writing for The Weekly Standard or National Review or the Washington Free Beacon.

- DC Spence

January 29, 2013 at 12:52pm

“ More sad cyber bullying Arnon? You feeling manly now? I normally love Leon's writing and usually tell him so effusively. He wrote a deliberately provocative piece, which is more than welcome - advocacy is a robust enterprise and I look forward to his voice in all things. But Arnon, anyone has the right to find his thinking uncharacteristically flabby and poorly unsupported and to tell him so. You think he wouldn't do the same back? And doesn't regularly? Hint: he's an intellectual badass arnon, an argumentative rigorous thinker of the first order. He can take it and doesn't need your simpering attempts at defense. No one does. If it makes you feel like the tough guy please carry on, I don't mind. You seem to have no other way to communicate than to bizarrely personalize disagreements in the manner of a hysterical fourteen year old girl about to burst in to tears at someone not liking her favorite pop star - in a comments section of a magazine no less. I's pathetic. All this while constantly bemoaning the unfairness of the world on poor you, of course. The whole hypocritical shtick is always a sad and embarrassing display. I take it you're not a fan of Orwell? That's entirely your right, not everyone is. You could try discussing why, or why you disagree with my frustrations with Leon's thinking here - but without invective or petty personalization or wrenching of garments if you're capable, which seems unlikely. It's too lazily easy for you, too easy of a fix because you don't have to take the consequences because of the modern coward's manner in which you attack - from behind a computer screen. You often attack what you see as the lack of intelligence in whoever is the target of your ire that day. And yet, I've seen little evidence that you're qualified to question anyone's intelligence, especially through all of your name calling, tears and whoa. You think this is substance I guess. Not very intelligent.

- WandreyCer

January 29, 2013 at 1:00pm

"The Obama-Rumsfeld lineage is only one of the ironies of the new foreign policy consensus. There is also the bizarre enthusiasm of progressives for the amoral likes of Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. And richest of all is their sudden reverence for Chuck Hagel, whom none of them admired, and rightly not, when he was in the Senate" This is precious and is the reason why leftists here are going after Wieseltier.

- arnon1

January 29, 2013 at 1:16pm

Although it is lazy thinking, I am always pretty sure that I can take whatever is Leon is saying about foreign policy, and flip it, and agree with that. God forbid we have a Commander in Chief that doesn't like to get involved in quagmires.

- CAinDC

January 29, 2013 at 1:46pm

Forty or so years ago, when I was in 9th grade, the national debate topic was 'Whether Congress should prevent unilateral military intervention in foreign countries." There must be something both good and bad about it for us to keep arguing about it.

- Nusholtz

January 29, 2013 at 1:55pm

"that...we are exempt from assisting in the building of nations abroad, that fiscally speaking it is them or us, is momentously wrong." One wonders if Wieseltier is complaining that Obama hasn't acted as interventionous as Leon would like or that Leon would like more robust spending on all foreign interventions regardless the cost to the American tax payer that somehow responsible for every foreign conflagration. Time and again, the actors in the ME, Africa complain that we don't do enough to help them but when help is offered (even at some lightweight level) the charge of American hegemony and imperialism is thrown about. Personally I find the 'realist' thinking that has infiltrated our foreign policy of late to be tad more thoughtful and purposeful than the belicose "heavy footprint" of the Bush Doctrine. We'd be marching on Syria by now. Quite frankly, I find it narrowly fitting that Leon would have the US do the heavy lifting of re-arrangement by force and forceful policies in the ME and African continent when these very regions have no desire for "our" help outright and honestly should be doing their own heavy lifting for a change. I guess it would have been wishful thinking, that in the revamp and relaunch of TNR that a re-boot of Leon would be forth-coming but it appears that old habits do die hard.

- singlspeed

January 29, 2013 at 2:33pm

If the United States does not determine to assist democratic struggles around the world, But what is it that Leon thinks we should do? Hey, I am all in favor of the Peace Corps but I somehow doubt that is what he is thinking about. Is this just code for invade and occupy? I don't know about anyone else but 12 years and a few trillion lighter exactly what has that gotten us? And I think the Gadhafi clan wishes the make believe Obama that Leon laid out actually exists.

- blackton

January 29, 2013 at 3:39pm

I agree wholeheartedly with the reasoning in the third paragraph culminating in this incisive proposition:...The merit of a view owes nothing to the biography of the individual who holds it, even if it confers a certain pathos.... And I agree with its application to Hagel, though I think his nomination is a minor matter. He'll do Obama's bidding even as he repudiates past positions to curry Senate favor. But all that aside, there's a deep ambivalence and confusion running through this piece, which flaws it to my mind. And that is this: is Wieseltier really proposing nation building as a prescription for American policy? Without specifics, without setting out the perimeters bounding that prescription, what it should be including at least generically, Wieseltier's ambivalence is manifest, almost unconsciously so. Abdication in Syria is a theme he returns too, and each time specifics are demanded of him, and each next time, as here, there is on that score silence, no appraisal of the enemy forces to Assad, their incipient Islamism and how to navigate that in such American help as declaims for but fails to specify. to And he fails to distinguish clearly and analytically between military involvement and nation building, runs them together, not specifying when he's talking about one or the other at different points in h is argument. For example Rumsfeld's burden in Iraq was military. The aftermath, after military victory, ought to have involved the State Department in conjunction with the military. Planning for the aftermath seemed effectively to go missing in action. But Wieseltier doesn't sufficiently disaggregate that or even deal with in his first paragraph.

- basman

January 29, 2013 at 3:47pm

Wieseltier is a complex writer who does not deal in single or simple propositions. Sometimes his writing is full of what Keats called “negative capability” a doctrine that has yielded various interpretations but most agree that at its center is the notion of the ability to hold two contradictory perspectives in the mind at the same time without favoring either one. The best poets and fiction writers are capable of deploying negative capability and so do the best essayists. Wieseltier has made the mistake of choosing to write and publish essays in a literary magazine which also deals in socio-political- and economic issues. It draws a mixed readership which because of our extremely poor education system is incapable of making fine distinctions. As Wandrey shows readers here for the most part think that either one is for something (war, peace, and economic program: gun control, birth control, etc. or one is against it. These people will always misread poems, fiction, playa, essays which deploy negative capability. I hate to go any further here since the system will not separate paragraph and any readings depend on paragraph distinctions. This must eb TNR’s revenge on the reader who habitually attacks a writer they disdain.

- arnon1

January 29, 2013 at 9:32pm

I will also say that phrases like "“ I notice Mr Wieseltier, like most interventionists..." falsify this writer's views. LW is not like "most interventionists" in the same way that he is not like most people on the right, the left, or the center. The use of ignorant phrases like that shows how little those who use understand what they read.

- arnon1

January 29, 2013 at 9:36pm

"More sad cyber bullying Arnon? You feeling manly now?" More cyber idiocy from Wandrey. You may not realize this, but "feeling like a man" is not my goal in life as feeling like a bigoted feminine pacifists seems to be yours.

- arnon1

January 29, 2013 at 9:40pm

Wandrey says that she "normally" like LW's writing. I don't know when that is the norm since she normally only posts here comments that show her contemptuous view of his writing. And the only reason she calls him a "neocon" is because LW is Jewish. To her all neocons believe one thing and that is intervention, intervention, and more intervention. For this dubious realist the time to intervene is when we are attacked. The murder of 60 thousand civilians in Syria is not a good enough reason to create a coalition to protect civilians from the murderous rage of the Assads and their ilk against the Suni Muslims.

- arnon1

January 29, 2013 at 9:46pm

Mr. Wieseltier writes "The merit of a view owes nothing to the biography of the individual who holds it, even if it confers a certain pathos." Nonsense. Biography first of all isn't pathos. It's ethos and it means everything. Mr. Wieseltier might very well be "right" about Hagel but his epistemology is all wrong. Too much Plato and not enough Aristotle or better still too much Socrates and not enough Isocrates.

- TRIVERS

February 1, 2013 at 7:52pm