In the main, I agree with Scott Lemieux’s argument:
In other words, in the context of whisteblowing (as opposed to elections), opponents of the contemporary national security state are allies of liberalism even if they themselves aren’t liberals. [Edward] Snowden may have all kinds of nutty and objectionable political views, but that doesn’t make him wrong about the NSA, and unlike Rand Paul he actually did something about it. As Henry [Farrell] says, until Snowden runs for Congress it’s those actions we should evaluate. [Sean] Wilentz’s conflation of the national security state with the “liberal state,” conversely, does liberalism no favors.
I’m not really interested in Sean Wilentz’s wanking, but the relationship of liberals to the national security state is an interesting topic. On the one hand, there is the progressive critique of U.S. foreign policy, as well as a near-universal consensus that we spend too much on “national security” in all its permutations, and not enough on social welfare (broadly interpreted) and infrastructure.
On the other hand, liberals need to make a convincing argument that they should be entrusted with our nation’s foreign policy and defense. And that’s been a theme for me over the years, because my goal is not for liberals to perpetually be locked in the counterculture, on the outside looking in, pointing disapproving fingers at the state. My goal is for liberals to reestablish themselves as The Establishment. We want to run this country, not bash it.
But the countercultural habits the left has developed work against us, both for how we are perceived by others (as untrustworthy and weak), and for the goals we set for ourselves (lacking sufficient ambition and vision).
We need to remember, the goal is to run this country, and run it well.
No. Liberals should stop thinking they have something to prove or to apologize for. We’re on the right side, not only of good policy, but of public opinion. The public doesn’t want its phone calls and texts vacuumed up en masse by the NSA. The public didn’t want war with Syria and doesn’t want war with Iran. We need to be on the offensive on these things, bashing the out of control spies and the warmongers at every turn, instead of cringing and apologizing.
I think you are imagining an argument that I didn’t make.
Then why the bit I quoted? Do you agree we’re past all that?
No. I see no evidence the progressives have decisive influence in the Democratic Party. They are treated as unserious, and with good reason, because they don’t tend to see themselves as serious contenders to run the Pentagon and national security apparatus. Rather, they tend to see those things as an enemy.
They are treated as unserious, and with good reason, because they don’t tend to see themselves as serious contenders to run the Pentagon and national security apparatus.
Says who? You? So we’re not serious unless we want to attack Syria and Iran? Or we’re not serious because we think Henry Kissinger is scum and should be rotting at The Hague in shackles?
I’m kinda with you on the merits, but I think this is best read as another chapter in Boo’s book about the progressive ambivalence regarding wielding power–and on that, I think he’s right, if only because it’s exactly how I personally feel. I’m much happier criticizing power than welding it–but there’s no reason that the progressive movement couldn’t both:
a) fight to ensure that Kissinger, Bush, Cheney, etc., are investigated for possible war crimes, and
b) fight to run the Pentagon ourselves (though to run it our way).
I think Boo’s saying we’re strong on A, weak on B.
So Obama is seen as “unserious” for backing out of strikes on Syria and for negotiating with Iran? By whom? Surely only by the slaves to AIPAC, who are unfortunately powerful in but certainly not representative of the party (or of Jewish opinion, either.)
It’s time to go on the offensive against this crap. Even the conciliatory Obama is getting there rapidly.
To some degree I agree with you; they are treated as “unserious,” though I see this as a relic of the past that can and will be ignored in the future — thanks largely due to demographics, younger people such as myself, and Obama showing the way to 270, and evidenced by our rising stars being more known for their more liberal economics ala Brown, Warren, and Sanders; IOW we can ignore those pants-wetting assholes who “we” believed needed to be placated with war and/or welfare reform.
Why you think this is for good reason, however, is simply beyond me.
Isn’t it interesting how conventional thinking keeps running us directly into disastrous domestic policy, foreign policy, and national security policy. A couple hours spent with Michael Glennon’s papar “National Security and Double Government” clears away the liberal versus conservative bullcrap around national security policy. The Massachusetts ACLU link in my “Who is in charge?” diary has a link to the the PDF file for Michael Glennon’s study.
The national security state, which has gobs of appropriations for propaganda aimed at US citizens, defines the appearance of strength to which both parties scramble. There have been as many liberal hawks as conservative hawks. So we are not talking about liberalism in our anxiety over electability on national security policy.
Essentially what has been preferentially winning elections are voter answers to a tension among the following questions:
Will the candidate hesistate to go to war when it is really necessary? McGovern was framed to fail this one.
Is the candidate willing to order killing? Every post-World War II President who has not been in a war has had to go through this initiation sooner rather than later in order to get credibility with the US military.
Is the candidate willing to bully in the national interest of the United States? Gore and Dukakis likely failed this one.
Does the candidate appear to have good judgement under pressure? Goldwater was framed to fail this one; Carter likely lost in 1980 on this one; McCain paradoxically failed this one; Mitt failed this one although it was hidden among his many other failures.
Is the candidate reckless? Goldwater’s fondness for tactical nukes sunk him on this one.
Opposition to the growth of the national security state is totally different from any of these considerations, which means that an argument for how to do national security that protects America (watch out for the “American interests” camel’s nose of corporate imperialism) and reduce substantially the cost and power of the national security state is possible.
Liberals like Dean Acheson, George Kennan, George Ball, and Hubert Humphrey created the architecture of the national security state in the face of conservative and isolationist Republican critics (but not Cold War Republicans like Richard Nixon). And the seduction of military Keynesian struck deep in the Democratic Party during the Truman administration.
Before 1968 and certainly before 1970, it was not liberals but that coalition called “the New Left” that were critical of the national security state. The first notice that the dynamic of “war without end” got was in an article in the 1966-1970 period by Carl Oglesby (I’m going on memory here) who pointed out the implication of treating the “domino theory” as projection. (There was still a lot of even centrist talk about “rolling back Communism” in those days.) Liberals really were nowhere to be found on this. Of course “liberals” were the foil for conservative propaganda from the first.
After Bush-Cheney? Really? Isn’t it the neo-conservatives who need to come hat in hand and explain how that would avoid another fuck-up overextension? “Humble foreign policy” my ass.
Don’t forget that not all of the military industrial complex was on board with Bush/Cheney’s Iraq project; that doesn’t make them supporters of ratcheting back on NSA spying or drones or entrenchment in other countries.
The current dynamic in the United States is that the response to failure to “protect the homeland” is give the national security state more of everything it wants: more resources, more spying capability, more entrenchment in other nations’ affairs, more deference in general. With that set up, they simply can’t be discredited; success means that they’re right about everything, failure means “WHY DIDN’T YOU PANSY-ASS LIBERALS LET US PROTECT YOU!!!”. This makes any attempt to roll back this stuff perilous because if anything goes wrong, and it will, the rollback will be blamed (whether it actually had anything to do with it or not), thus potentially discrediting everything about those doing the rolling back.
My argument and now Glennon’s go quite bit deeper than the Bush-Cheney misadventures, born of the idea if you’ve got this big huge powerful military why don’t you actually use it for something and see what it can do. I guess we found out why. Then folks know that the sole superpower can’t handle two insurgent wars and that if it’s your country, you just have to grind them down like Vietnam did.
Glennon and I argue that the legislation put in place by the Truman administration has made the national security state increasing autonomous of the Constitutional government. Glennon further argues that the national security state is self-conscious of this autonomy but by nature being technocrats willing to operate behind the scenes and let the Constitutional functions of government go through the motions of appropriation and oversight and judicial review and operational command. And there is an institutional culture that is in denial that they are really operating autonomously with respect to the other branches of government. Glennon’s analogy is with the way the UK monarchy and parliamentary system coexist with the fiction of the monarch as the ruler of Britain.
The main point of his analysis is that whatever happens, the national security state still grows in power and claims on the federal budget. And you get the silly displays like DiFi running cover for the NSA when her job is to conduct Congressional oversight.
Post WWII modern conservative cannot compete on domestic policy because what is politically popular runs counter to their principles. So they have politicized foreign policy, including charges of treason but most charges of “softness”. Before the sexual politics of that charge got decoded, lots of liberals got very worried. It is a charge that liberal are not “real men”. Bullies and killers. Sharpies. The same sort of vetting goes on in business suites for executive jobs. And women have to have the “animal spirits” and “jugular instinct” in order to be credible national security advisors–exactly what folks hate most about Condoleeza Rice, Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, and Hillary Clinton.
Liberals need to project a vision for our foreign policy that is rooted in reality, yet still consistent with liberal values. I think the succinct argument is that the 21st century has no room for superpowers. It’s no longer the case that the United States can afford to use its financial and military largesse to prop up unpopular regimes. I think people get that.
Once that message soaks in, dismantling the Pentagon empire becomes much easier. It’s a waste of money to keep producing expensive weapons systems to fight wars halfway around the globe — wars we can no longer win, at that. I think that part of the liberal project is almost within reach.
Dismantling the intelligence gathering apparatus is going to be much more difficult. All it takes is one successful attack on our soil to send the public back into a state of panic. Even if we use current public opinion to roll back the activities of the NSA today, the next attack will vindicate the authoritarians’ argument, sending us straight back where we are now (if not even worse). I don’t know how to solve that.
Dismantling the intelligence gathering apparatus is going to be much more difficult. All it takes is one successful attack on our soil to send the public back into a state of panic.
Then why didn’t it stop the Boston Marathon bombing? That happened before all the Snowden revelations. The intelligence gathering apparatus is one huge grift. It should be exposed as such.
Why didn’t what stop? That attack occurred while the USA PATRIOT Act was still in effect, while the NSA was still busily spying on everybody.
Had those things been rolled back and then the attack had occurred, we’d have been inundated by a thousand Nixons blaming the liberals for being soft on terrorism, and the public would have eaten it up.
That’s why liberals need to hammer relentlessly on the (extremely strong) case for the worthlessness and wastefulness of what the NSA is doing, every single day and twice on Sunday. That’s the only way to inoculate against the effect you describe BEFORE the next attack.
As Steve says below, what we had now didn’t work. So more will? I don’t think so. Have we passed any more laws re: national security since the Marathon bombing? No.
I think at least in part the Boston Marathon bombing conclusively proves one of two things:
Either:
A) The NSA metadata collection doesn’t work for crap.
or
B) They really don’t spend a lot of time monitoring domestic communications.
Sean Wilentz has been worthless ever since he declared himself the arbiter of what George Orwell is thinking. The fact that he’s conflating the security state with the other functions of government makes this irony especially rich.
But both national security and other functions of the state are both functions of the state. Wilentz’s point is that the Three Amigos see almost ALL functions of the state as illegitimate. Except when they don’t – as in when it serves them personally (Snowden in Russia, Assange’s cozying up to same).
I think Wilentz is trying to differentiate between liberalism and what he calls (aptly I think) “paranoid libertarianism.”
Right now, the language, apparatus, culture and tradition of national security is all on the side of the hawks and others who see value only in violence, the threat of violence, and violence by proxy. If you say that our national security is dependent on a vibrant middle class or public education affordably available to all, you will be met with blank stares reminiscent of a dog watching a card trick. And if you’re so bent as to connect foreign aid with national security, get ready to be hung as a traitor (hopefully only in effigy).
The only thing is most people’s minds associated with national security is squandering hundreds of billions of dollars annually on war-making machines, their use, upkeep and storage. There are any number of liberal and progressive ideals that enhance national security, but since they don’t make big, sexy explosions, they’re discounted as unserious or touchy-feely fluff. I think this is one area where we must begin making the case for serious national security proposals that actually work, and work cheaper than what we’re doing now.
Moreover, the proposals are vetted for “realism” by the existing institutions that have a vested interest in larger budgets and more labor hours.
Very good post.
“On the other hand, liberals need to make a convincing argument that they should be entrusted with our nation’s foreign policy and defense.”
It seems to me that the liberal toolset involves a kind of global social justice emphasis with diplomacy, trade, foreign aid, and education involved. It also has to show a SMART and NUANCED use of military power that focuses not just on taking out an enemy to win the war, but know how to rebuild social and physical infrastructure to win the peace.
One problem is that most Americans are isolated from the real direct consequences of war, but they have bought into fantasies for military power that go well beyond the limits for what it can accomplish. They are not going to respond to soft power.
And if an exceptional leader should manage to use soft power to make progress in world peace and justice when war might otherwise have overtaken the US, that leader will get no recognition for that accomplishment. We wouldn’t notice that war was avoided, just as we didn’t notice the really nasty things that would have happened to the world economy in 2008 if there wasn’t a coordinated intervention.
I think some of these “liberal arguments” are being made by the current administration. There were limited military responses to Libya and Syria. The new approach to Iran involves fresh thinking. Dropping support for Mubarak was important (if a bit late).
To the extent there’s a trade off between freedom and defense, regarinding our intelligence services particularly but not exclusively, we need to be less secure in our defense and more in our liberties. This appears to be a fundamental differene between us.
Holy shit, has there ever been anything to compare to the misuse of the state under GWB? The fu*king Republican.
I read the Wilentz post and found it very interesting and compelling, in particular on the subject of my unease with Greenwald and Snowden. I think Wilentz does a good job implicitly showing some of the political naivete of the “paranoid libertarian” set that sees all of state power as essentially wrong and intrusive.
As Booman says, liberals need to demonstrate that government can work and few tasks are more elemental to a government than public safety. Bush got a ridiculous pass on allowing 9/11 to happen, but I doubt very much any future president will – especially a Democrat. (Which is weird, because in ’76, Bob “Bob Dole” Dole ran against the war mongering of the Democratic Party.)
The problem I have with Greenwald and by extension Snowden is not what was revealed, though I found a lot of it was overhyped and didn’t sustain the original claims GG made of it. Rather there simply were no reforms of the NSA that would ever satisfy GG. The very existence of the NSA is an affront to him. Hell, at one point, Snowden felt Social Security was a needless intrusion by the state. I am not so naive that I think that we don’t need the NSA, CIA or FBI. Nor am I so naive as to think that they won’t gobble up every scrap of power they can get their hands on.
The political reality is that Americans are bedwetting cowards a lot of the time, and no one lost an election by going too far on issues of defense, crime and security.
If the fundamental function of a state is to protect its citizens from harm and the fundamental function of the Bill of Rights is to protect citizens from the State, then we SHOULD have a tug of war that goes on constantly. This shouldn’t be an easy, bumpersticker solution. Ultimately, my problems were less what Snowden and Greenwald revealed than what their revelations implied about what we don’t know.
I think that if somehow a Republican wins the White House in 2016 and takes us into a Middle Eastern war, that person won’t see a second term. But I also think that if a Democrat allows a 9/11 to happen, that Democrat won’t see a second term.
And, yeah, there is the body count, too.
Obama ran on “GM is alive and bin Laden is dead.” He also pulled back from Syria, has worked with the Russians and Chinese on Iran, has put into place more multilateral actions than almost any of his predecessors and will have pulled us out of two quagmires before he leaves office. But drones and NSA so it’s all the same as Bush.
If you want a government strong enough to have universal, single payer health care, you first have to convince Americans that they won’t be killed in their sleep by the Boogeyman. That’s a reality I don’t think the FDL reaches of the Left understands.
Flame away…
If you don’t read FDL, don’t use it as a caricature. And if you think that FDL is the reaches of the Left, you need to broaden your reading.
We do not have to have an expensive military to convince Americans they won’t be killed in their sleep by boogeymen.
We do not have to have bulk surveillance and storage of the world’s communications in order to identify threats.
We do not have to continue to pursue actions that create more threats just because a large portion of the American people don’t know how to act in the world other than as arrogant bullies.
It is less important who is Secretary of Defense but that the Secretary of Defense and the chain of command do not take the attitude that the President is out of office in eight years and they can obstruct or slow-walk policy to their liking, essentially frustrating efforts to reduce the threats and the size of their military. Senator Feinstein’s obsequious defense of the NSA is troubling in this regard. The job of the Intelligence committees is oversight, not defending programs to the American people. Oversight and reporting to the people. And those committees cannot yet own up to the fact that the CIA tortured people contrary to the Geneva Conventions–essentially carrying out war crimes. Nor can any branch of the government seem to hold the military-industrial-complex accountable for anything–not rape, not embezzlement, not fraud, not torture, not violating Constitutional rights.
There is an organized campaign going on through selected journalists to try to delegitimize Assange, Greenwald, and Snowden (all of who are outside the US) but strangely not to do the same to the WaPo’s Barton Gellmann or the NYT reporters reporting on the same issues. Wilentz’s concern trolling is just a part of that hit job timed to come around the time of the President’s speech. It will not work. Short of total press censorship.
The reason that Democrats aren’t taken seriously on the ‘Daddy’ issues is because . . . . .
Democrats keep appointing Republicans to the ‘Daddy’ positions.
Fed chair for 8 years of Clinton admin – Greenspan
Fed chair for 5 years of Obama admin – Bernanke
That’s 13 – 0 years Republicans to Democrats running the Fed.
Secretary of Defense
William Cohen – 4 years
Bob Gates – 2 years
Chuck Hagel – 1 year
In the last 13 years of Democratic admins Republicans have occupied the top 2 appointment position for 20 of 26 appointment years, or roughly 80% of the available time.
That’s just plain old fashioned dumb.
So when the average voter says that Democrats are too unqualified to run the Fed and Department of Defense and you ask them – ‘Who told you that?’
The answer is . . . . Clinton and Obama.
I get the SoD pick better, because Obama and Clinton were looking for bi-partisan cover to control defense spending/get out of Iraq.
As for Bernanke, I can’t really fault what he’s done in response to a contractionary fiscal policy by the House.
But Greenspan….
As we see, that didn’t necessarily make the confirmation issues completely go away. But Gates at least had the pay the price of implementing the repeal of don’t-ask-don’t-tell.
Lemieux is grossly unfair to Wilentz, as are you.