“Bush’s Useful Idiots” and their Canadian cousins

In the September 26^{th 2006} edition of the London Review of Books, prominent US historian Tony Judt published an essay entitled Bush’s Useful Idiots. Judt delivers a scathing and incisive post mortem on the death of liberalism in America. His essay could just as easily apply to the death of liberalism in Canada.

Judt has harsh words for American liberal intellectuals who have remained silent or switched sides during the tyranny of the Bush administration. So too for the Democratic Party. So too in Canada where liberal intellectuals have chosen silence or been marginalized. Canada’s Liberal party, like its Democratic counterpart has opted for a liquidous existence. For either country to see the dissolution of its political parties into oligarchic cheerleaders is alarming; but for Canada this has even more dire consequences: Not only a serious erosion of democratic values but also national sovereignty.

In the book The Unexpected War, Henry Crompton, the CIA operative in charge of covert operations against the Taliban, states:

It is really important that we define the enemy in narrow terms. The very thing we should not do is let our fears grow and inflate the threat.

David Kilcullen, another US official, confirms Crompton’s view:

You don’t play to the enemy’s global information strategy of making it all one fight… You say actually there are sixty different groups in sixty countries who all have different objectives. Let’s not talk about bin Laden’s objectives-lets talk about your objectives. How do we solve that problem? You’ve got to define the enemy as narrowly as you can get away with.

Then too, the RAND Corporation, among others, has just issued a report which concludes:

The U.S. approach to countering al Qa'ida has focused far too much on the use of military force. Instead, policing and intelligence should be the backbone of U.S. efforts.

Politicians, ideologues along with Bush’s useful idiots have done the very opposite, they have globalized and inflated the War on Terror to suit their political agenda. In order to justify grotesque military spending, serial warfare, torture; abuse of international law, constitutional rights, civil liberties and domestic laws, they have defined this fatuous war not as narrowly as possible but as broadly as possible and given the enemy powers of persuasion and a lethality it didn’t know it was capable of. Dividing the world into the camps of good and evil they manufacture the culture of fear and indifference. Fear and indifference being two of the most powerful and seditious weapons a populace can grant ruling elites and we have been all too generous and uncritical.

Neoconservatives, who saw grand opportunity with the collapse of the Soviet Union, had to postpone their grandiose ambitions for global domination during the Clinton administration until the arrival of the Bush administration. Coincidentally or not, the timing of 9/11 was perfect; the “Pearl Harbor” they needed to implement their War on Terror-a war that had to be inflated and broadened such that their neo-imperialist ambitions could be veiled as a crucial war on terror. To pull off the ruse required the silence of the lambs- the mainstream media was more than compliant; liberal intellectuals and politicians in both countries fell silent or became cheerleaders. Our populations were all too willing to buy into the culture of fear and indifference.

The War on Terror also became a good excuse to consolidate the ramparts of the homeland for the US through establishing Fortress North America. In the cause of a specious need for further security-with economic union thrown in for good measure- Canada and Mexico were invited to give up large chunks of their sovereignty in this fraudulent game- and have been more than accommodating.

Judt recalls German-American historian Fritz Stern’s observation that the death of liberalism, the “extinction of that spirit” marks the beginning of the death of a republic, or for that matter a confederation. One of Stern’s major academic accomplishments was tracing the rise of Nazism in his home country. In a speech at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York City, January 10^th 2005 he stated:

But the rise of National Socialism was neither inevitable nor accidental. It did have deep roots, but the most urgent lesson to remember is that it could have been stopped. This is but one of the many lessons contained in modern German history, lessons that should not be squandered in cheap and ignorant analogies. A key lesson is that civic passivity and willed blindness were the preconditions for the triumph of National Socialism, which many clearheaded Germans recognized at the time as a monstrous danger and ultimate nemesis.

There can be no doubt that “civic passivity and willed blindness” are an epidemic affliction suffered by Liberals in Canada and Democrats in the US.

These illiberal times are transnational and part of America’s hegemonism. The Blair government was an immediate casualty. Canada’s moribund Liberals cower on the Opposition benches, afraid of their own shadow, and harbor one of Bush’s idiots listed in Judt’s indictment; Michael Ignatieff, formerly of Harvard now a Liberal Member of Parliament.

There is the brash assumption by many that the passing of the Bush administration and the election of a Democratic president by the name of Barack Obama will magically revitalize liberalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. The office of the US presidency is captive to a very powerful and well entrenched status quo and no one man no matter how talented or charismatic is going to change it. If Obama does indeed have ambitions of being a reform president he is going to have to see a dramatically reformed and revitalized Democratic party spurred by a new wave of liberal intellectuals who are willing to get down and dirty and not pull their punches. The same applies for Canadian Liberals. They have been sleep walking for too long and if they aspire to replace the seditious Harper minority government in any meaningful way they too are going to have to pursue a renewed and inspired liberalism.

The damage done by the Bush administration happened over the period of a decade, and the precursors that created this administration were building for decades before, namely the far-right in America seizing control of the political agenda through massive funding, establishing think tanks and grassroots organization. To clear the wreckage is going to take an equal amount of time and an equally monumental effort.

America is more than willing to do battle on foreign soil, but now it must battle on its own soil and the battle will be ideological, rehabilitating the soul of the country; no helicopter gunships, no civilian casualties, no C-130 gunships raking the landscape. If it wants to lead the world it must first prove itself worthy. Serial warfare, flouting international law, subverting the United Nations and naked unilateralism are not acceptable options.

Canada, quite modestly, can be a more genuine friend by not being a kowtowing sycophant- sovereignty not exercised is sovereignty lost.

The pious West has a missionary zeal to export democracy to other parts of the world, but it is clearly time to look in the mirror as we slouch toward oligarchy, see our party systems and legislatures in serious decay and adopt an outrageous xenophobia against enemies largely manufactured and with exaggerated capabilities. The wizards of the West might want to consider that the vaunted War on Terror might better be directed at political corruption and ineptitude on the home front rather than chasing a few ragtag Taliban around the hills and dales of Afghanistan.

Historian Stern concluded his speech by stating:

Every democracy needs a liberal fundament, a Bill of Rights enshrined in law and spirit, for this alone gives democracy the chance for self correction and reform. Without it, the survival of the democracy is at risk. Every genuine conservative knows this.

He can say so with considerable authority as he saw liberalism die in his homeland and replaced by a brutal fascist regime. For every democracy depends on a robust competition between liberal and conservative views of the world. Where liberals(or any other political faction) are willing to abdicate this essential role and indulge in “civic passivity and willful ignorance” a society can easily slip into being an oligarchy, a plutocracy and ultimately become fascist.

It is timely that Stern should stipulate every genuine conservative for the neoconservative clique that dominates the Bush administration has no regard for liberalism or good government as they are quite willing to squelch liberalism and regard government as the enemy. It is an aberrant and pernicious form of conservatism yet its agenda goes virtually unchallenged by a compliant media, genuine conservatives and co-opted liberals.

If Canadians are so foolhardy as to grant Harper’s conservatives a majority we would quickly find out the depth and breadth of their seditious nature. Even as a minority government it has started to further dismantle the country and deliver the remnants into North American Union.

There can be no doubt that politicians of every ilk find war, the free market economy, free wheeling corporatism and the interests of powerful lobbies much more captivating than serving the rather mundane national and public interests but served they must be. Equally so, they have found it too easy to capitulate rather than force vigorous debate or mount real opposition. In reality, electorates are offered no real choice as they have been abandoned by self-serving political elites joined at the hip who are mere mimics.

Liberals must rouse themselves from their mesmerized state

and start being liberals again. As Judt rightly concludes in his essay it is liberals who count now more then ever:

It is the liberals, then, who count. They are, as it might be, the canaries in the sulphurous mineshaft of modern democracy. The alacrity with which many of America’s most prominent liberals have censored themselves in the name of the War on Terror, the enthusiasm with which they have invented ideological and moral cover for war and war crimes and proffered that cover to their political enemies: all this is a bad sign. Liberal intellectuals used to be distinguished precisely by their efforts to think for themselves, rather than in the service of others. Intellectuals should not be smugly theorizing endless war, much less confidently promoting and excusing it. They should be engaged in disturbing the peace.- their own above all.