The Good Guys

Below is an excerpt from Dinesh D’Souza’s recent book entitled America, Imagine a World Without Her. I have posted the selection from the thirteenth chapter of his book, pages 210 -213.

 

There are so many good points in Mr. D’Souza’s book that I feel we all would be wise to consider; but I believe, what is discussed below is one of the most important aspects of D’Souza’s work. For me, it is the book in a “nutshell”.  It is exactly what I had hoped to glean from his writings and then to also share.

 

I am weary of the attacks on America and for all that we stand. In recent years, the attacks have seemed relentless mischaracterizing who we are in an extremely insidious way.  Obviously, the assault comes from the left; the “progressives”. But the attacks have been so convincing, I’m afraid that there are those who even though they consider themselves “conservatives” have also joined in this mantra from the left.

 

It is a shame. While I don’t agree with everything Dinesh says in his book and even in the excerpt below, I am not about to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Take a moment to read his thoughts. I will write more about my thoughts after offering any who read here, a chance to contemplate Mr. D'Souza's writings first. Emphasis in bold is mine.

 

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What, then, of more recent involvements, from America’s alliance with unsavory Middle Eastern dictators to its role in Vietnam, the Gulf War; and the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions? Many progressives point out that America has long allied with dictators like the Shah of Iran and the Saudi royal family in order to maintain access to oil supplies.  By doing this, we become part of the “gang of thieves” exploiting the people.  We even allied for some years with Saddam Hussein, before turning against him.  During the Soviet War in Afghanistan, the United States supplied weapons to Osama bin Laden.  These facts seem to suggest, on America’s part, an amoral, mercenary foreign policy, a vindication of the progressive allegation that America’s actions are motivated by power-seeking and theft.

Progressives are certainly right that America makes these alliances to protect its self-interest.  In the Middle East, that self-interest is oil.  Now America is not stealing and has never stolen that oil - we purchase it at the world market price.  America, however, seeks to avoid hostile regimes or instability in the region that might cause a disruption in the oil market.  Progressives don’t seem to realize that there is nothing wrong with this.  Some years ago I debated a leftist professor who harangued me, “Mr. D’Souza, will you admit that the main reason America is in the Middle East is because of oil?”  I replied, “I certainly hope so.  I cannot think of any other reasons to be there, can you?”  The audience laughed.  My opponent looked sullen.  I could see he wasn’t convinced.  And in a sense he was right.  The question he was wrestling with was not self-interest, are we making the overall situation in other countries better or worse?  This is a legitimate question.

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.  American and Iranian interests would have been better served if Khomeini had been prevented from coming to power. During the 1980’s, 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 many 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 oil fields, 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 after math of war is sufficient ground to bury our dead.

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I love what Mr. D’Souza has written here. I couldn’t agree more with his points. I only want to add that it is my belief we absolutely should have gone into Iraq at the chance of there being WMD. That was a chance with which we should not have gambled and thankfully we didn’t. We went in for the protection of nations. That is what America does.  After all, we are the good guys! And just because we didn’t find WMD, certainly does not mean they weren’t there.

Further, it is my contention that again we were right to go into Vietnam. We were preventing the spread of Communism, the greatest evil at the time. Just because it became a “political war” does not mean it was not right to begin with. Yes, as Dinesh said, valuable resources were wasted. But it didn’t have to be that way. Politics prevented our soldiers from winning that war and strung it out far longer than needed. We should have gone in for the win, and came out just as quickly. The America of old would have done just that.

In a recent debate between Mr. D'Souza and Ward Churchill - liberal professor and radical anti-American socialist activist - Churchill brought up the fact that America stole oil from the Middle East for our own selfish benefits. Churchill couldn't wait to throw that in Dinesh's face, (and all of America's face, too, as it was televised) but he only bloviated; he provided no proof, or facts. There simply are none.

Finally, I want to say to those “conservatives” on the fence, or to those that may have bought into the lie of the left that America is an “Imperialistic nation” stealing from others for our own benefit:  Please stop to rethink that! Many of you believe it was wrong to take some of the steps America has taken citing that America did it for our own benefit to the detriment of others. That simply isn’t the case. That is the leftist mantra. History proves otherwise. What we have in the way of “occupied” land proves otherwise. There is none. Even the more liberal Colin Powell can recognize that fact, as we see quoted at the end of this passage from Dinesh's book: "the only ground America has sought abroad in the after math of war is sufficient ground to bury our dead."

When we join the progressive's refrain, we inadvertently join the left in their attack of America. We then are also participating in compromise - the very thing we claim to hate. We join forces with evil; but with this evil there will never be any good that will come from it. The left cannot be more encouraged by that as they more easily promote their socialist "take over" of the United States of America. Mr. D’Souza has done an excellent job addressing that outcome in his movie and in this book. We would be wise to listen to what he has to say and then think critically about what we are going to do about it.

 

America always has and I believe always should bring aid to the underdog, to those nations being attacked and abused. I don't ever want to see another holocaust - not on my watch. After all, we are the good guys, and that is what good guys do! We would do well to remember that when someone tries to make America into something else to benefit their own evil agenda.