Ignorance is Bliss, Giuliani's a Nightmare

I love Fred Kaplan's devastating takedown of Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Affairs manifesto, but I think it's misleading to frame the problems with Rudy's worldview as a kind of ignorance or childishness. The piece reflects the views of a substantial and influential group of people. I'd be inclined to dismiss the Norman Podhoretzes and Charles Krauthammers of the world as merely ignorant, since their ideas don't make any sense, but they've been at this long enough that they know what they're doing.

A merely ignorant Giuliani would be worrying, but what we actually see here is a man deeply invested in a deeply wrongheaded worldview which, I think, is much more dangerous. To observers looking on from the outside, the Bush administration has been a case study in neoconservative folly. To neoconservatives themselves, however, the Bush administration has been a study in betrayal. They're brilliant ideas have been compromised at every turn by the president's wavering attention, by liberals in congress, by Arabists in the State Department, etc., etc., etc. Giuliani represents precisely that point of view -- the kind of people who think Bush's big mistake was not listening to Perle and Frum in An End to Evil.

Would Giuliani actually govern this way? It's impossible to say for sure, but one has to take seriously the possibility that he's not only signaling a desire to implement policies more militaristic, more hostile to professionals at State and the CIA, more dismissive of the UN, less friendly to Palestinians, etc. than has George W. Bush. There are people -- lots and lots of people -- who think Bush abandonned the True Path sometime in 2004 and that what the country needs is to get back on track. Giuliani's roster of advisers and now his essay indicate that he wants to be the candidate for those people. That should scare you.

Comments

A big mistake many people made with Bush was not believing a lot of the nonsense he said during the 2000 campaign. Don't make the same mistake with Guiliani.

Posted by richard | August 17, 2007 10:26 AM

I think it's misleading to frame the problems with Rudy's worldview as a kind of ignorance or childishness. The piece reflects the views of a substantial and influential group of people. I'd be inclined to dismiss the Norman Podhoretzes and Charles Krauthammers of the world as merely ignorant, since their ideas don't make any sense, but they've been at this long enough that they know what they're doing.

Dunno... I think that there's some value in pointing out that their ideas are ignorant and childish, given how spectacularly they've failed. Foreign policy isn't an action movie, after all, and saying so is a freebie (not to mention it links the right to Hollywood in a particularly silly way, since at least Hollywood types know the difference between scripts & reality). We should be smacking neocons down as silly & unrealistic, and-- most importantly-- dangerous when allowed power, because it's both true and increasingly obvious to the general public.

On a related note, is anyone else frustrated that John McCain went on TDS last night and said exactly what Dems should have been saying for a long time: that 24 is a television show, not a model for American policy?

Posted by latts | August 17, 2007 10:29 AM

"It's Giuliani Time!!"

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=27023

Posted by Don Williams | August 17, 2007 10:29 AM

"It's Giuliani Time!!"

See also http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E3DD123CF931A25751C0A96E958260&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fL%2fLouima%2c%20Abner

Posted by Don Williams | August 17, 2007 10:33 AM

"Fred Kaplan" and "devastating takedown", hah. Never thought I'd see those two things in the same sentence. Kaplan is about as loopy about foreign and defense affairs as his former boss, Les Aspin.

This particular "devestating takedown" is dumber than your usual Fred Kaplan article. I mean, for example, he writes: "The "terrorists and the insurgents"? Are they the same?" Uh, no. That's why Giuliani used the "and" in the sentence; if they were the same, the "and" would be redundant. Kaplan seems to have the intelligence of a toddler.

Posted by Al | August 17, 2007 10:36 AM

Kaplan seems to have the intelligence of a toddler.

As opposed to Al, who merely pretends to have the intelligence of a toddler for rhetorical purposes.

Posted by grh | August 17, 2007 10:49 AM

Just wondering about the possibility that Giuliani might be hyping up his 'macho-man' image to get the nomination, given his rather liberal social views/background? 9-11 tough-man is his whole sales pitch. I find it hard to believe that if elected he would do anything drastic. He doesn’t seem like a complete idiot. Might stick around in Iraq though.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | August 17, 2007 11:06 AM

2cynicalbyhalf,

His social views are simply liberal FOR A REPUBLICAN. Giuliani's views on abortion & homosexuality are actually rather moderate, from the POV of the vast majority of Americans, who don't belong to the right-wing Christianist base of the GOP.

It has been alleged by many of Giuliani's critics back in NYC that Giuliani is bigoted against blacks and Hispanics. While there is no record of Giuliani making racist statements or belonging to racist organizations, his relations with the black and Hispanic communities in NYC were very poor at best, and non-existent at worst. It didn't help that Giuliani's overly zealous attempts to refute any criticism of the NYPD whenever one of its members killed an innocent black man displayed indifference at best, and callousness at worst. One does wonder how a man who generated such enduring hostility in the wake of such incidents is going to have the diplomatic skills to defuse the internatinal tensions that will occur whenever an innocent civilian in the Middle East dies as a result of US military actions.

Posted by eltoro | August 17, 2007 11:52 AM

Favorite line from the Kaplan piece:

It is unclear what Giuliani means by his last sentence—that "the era of cost-free anti-Americanism must end." Are we to penalize or attack other countries simply because they don't like us?

The floggings will continue until morale improves.

Posted by DrBB | August 17, 2007 11:52 AM

Wrong-headedness should be countered with facts, as Matt says. Resorting to name-calling is itself silly and unrealistic. A lot of people out there, exposed to corporate media, actually believe this stuff and calling them idiots isn't going to accomplish anything. In the blogs, read Hugh Hewitt. He's smart and articulate, he's neocon, and he has a huge following. You won't get anywhere calling him silly and unrealistic, except to brand yourself as ignorant.

A Matt/Hugh slugfest would be a joy to read, 'cuz Hugh would go down.

Posted by Don Bacon | August 17, 2007 12:02 PM

A big mistake many people made with Bush was not believing a lot of the nonsense he said during the 2000 campaign.

Like what? He was a quasi-isolationist during the campaign and mostly stuck to it for the first eight months of his presidency. The nonsense he stuck to was domestic -- crazy tax cuts, destroying Social Security, etc.

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | August 17, 2007 12:21 PM

""The "terrorists and the insurgents"? Are they the same?" Uh, no. That's why Giuliani used the "and" in the sentence; if they were the same, the "and" would be redundant. Kaplan seems to have the intelligence of a toddler."

Except there's a huge amount of daylight in between them, such as the daylight between them when they shoot at each other. If FDR had Giuliani's mindset, we would have responded to Pearl Harbor by declaring war on the USSR, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Mongolia, Tito's forces and the CCP insurgency in China while forgetting Japan.

Posted by Reality Man | August 17, 2007 12:22 PM

The bit of Kaplan's article Al is cribbing from is below. See if you agree with his characterization:

The "terrorists and the insurgents"? Are they the same? President Bush has recently (if belatedly) discovered that they are not; that alliances of convenience can be formed with the latter to combat the former. One such alliance, with the Sunni insurgents in Anbar province, has led to the war's most encouraging development in some time. By equating insurgents with terrorists, and by lumping all Islamic radicals into a monolithic threat akin to global fascism, Giuliani not only exaggerates their strength and cohesion but also overlooks—declares impossible—any opportunities for playing the various movements off one another. A statesman looks for ways to unite allies and divide enemies. Giuliani, in this sense, is the anti-statesman.

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | August 17, 2007 2:09 PM

Follow the money.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 17, 2007 2:20 PM

But a Clinton/Giuliani race would not be about the latter's fruity authoritarianism, his lunatic vendettas, his crooked pals, or his crackpot foreign policy views.

It would be about Giuliani's "new brand of Republicanism" and can Hillary Clinton overcome her high negatives to beat him.

Posted by Linus | August 17, 2007 2:21 PM

Jew-liani!

Posted by Steve Sailer Meant to Say | August 17, 2007 2:24 PM

It will be the responsibility of the democratic nominee to express these masochistic world views in a pedestrian way...where most all voters understand what in fact we would be in for in the event of a Giuliani president. Kerry's bombastic prose was no help in this regard in '04.

Posted by david | August 19, 2007 3:29 AM

“Look, it’s Rudy Giuliani,” a woman told her small son. Someone else interrupted: “No, it’s not. It’s the guy from ‘The Hunt for Red October.’ ”
from
Thompson Woos Iowa, a Presidential Hopeful in All but Formality
By SUSAN SAULNY

Quit worrying. A lot of the public doesn't even remember what he looks like. They don't like the Iraq war anymore, and they won't like him either, once they get to really know him.

Posted by artappraiser | August 19, 2007 6:30 AM