Last week two Harvard Law School professors had a fascinating debate over the Iraq war and American power.
One professor was Duncan Kennedy, a pioneer in critical legal studies–i.e., a leftwinger. The other was a prof barely half his age, Noah Feldman, a rising star at Harvard who is famous for two things: serving the U.S. coalition in Iraq back in 2003 by helping to draft a constitution for the Iraqis and writing a piece for the New York Times in which he said that his marriage to a Christian Asian woman had caused him to be airbrushed out of his Orthodox high school’s photographs. The piece was explosive, though I wasn’t that impressed: its arena of introspection seemed to me too narrow. Intermarriage violates Jewish law; we all know that already. So does driving a car on Saturday. And everyone’s doing it. What about Jewish law/custom that is much more important/controversial: colonization of "Judea and Samaria" for religious purposes.
The debate at Harvard is interesting to me chiefly for Jewish socio-cultural reasons, secondly for political reasons. But let me offer some of reporter Chris Szabla’s superb account:
[M]ilitary and economic factors [such as the rise of China], Kennedy said, would result in the
United States losing control of its traditional spheres of influence…. [H]e wondered whether this wholesale
abandonment of "empire" was not a good thing. U.S. power, he pointed
out, had resulted in the propping up of a number of unsavory regimes
and the commitment of a number of atrocities, dislodging the notion
that there was a moral necessity to continuous American power
projection.…Feldman took
the opportunity to paint Kennedy into an ideological corner.He
noted that his adversary’s musings on the United States’ possible
agrarian future were akin to the political position taken up by
anti-imperialist agrarian populists in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Comparing Kennedy to William Jennings Bryan, he said that
"small-r republicanism" might be as attractive today as it had been to
Jefferson, or, for that matter, republican Rome. Still, he noted, it
didn’t "enable [a state] to add value" economically.Feldman then moved into the arena of global power politics,
asking "who will win" if the United States were to abandon its role as
a guarantor of global order. On this, he took a Hobbesian position -
chaos was likely to ensue. He suggested that Kennedy’s hopes for
withdrawal were akin to a "fantasy of redemption" driven by the
selective application of a historical model – the end of communism, but
only as it had happened in Poland, and not, say, Yugoslavia.Iraq, Feldman observed, was an example of what happened when disorder was actively promoted. [Kennedy] hit back by noting that attempts to prop up
world order had sometimes resulted in further destabilization. The
clash of perspectives continued in a different direction with the
example of German reunification: Feldman argued that it had only been
possible with the United States maintaining a presence, guaranteeing
other states did not become fearful of, and gang up on, Germany. Kennedy
said that it had been possible not as a result of U.S. power in that
given moment, but as a consequence of many years of political and
ideological development.Ultimately, the two professors appeared to disagree most strongly about
what American power actually meant for the world. Feldman retained a
belief that the exercise of U.S. power could promote moral values,
whereas Kennedy saw less to admire. "I want to overcome my WASP ruling
class identification with the U.S. as a proxy" for personal power, he
said, as the debate came to a head. In response, Feldman deadpanned, "I
don’t have the luxury of thinking of my country that way". He said that
he "did not see the right to rule as something [conferred] to me by
birth" but was glad to be a member of a participatory state.
On the politics here, I am in Kennedy’s corner (and not far off is Jeremiah Wright!). I believe America is the greatest country on earth, but I don’t see great moral virtue in American foreign interventions. Some good, some bad. Feldman’s beliefs seem to me somewhat starry-eyed and reminiscent of neocon theory, say Charles Krauthammer’s unipolar Wilsonian idealist interventionism. Feldman attacks Kennedy as a populist isolationist. But always we must ask, Who will fight these beautiful wars for world order? Your children or someone else’s? That is the soul of populist isolationism, and it’s not always a bad guide for policymakers. Cf, Iraq, which Feldman (who speaks Arabic, says Wikipedia) seems to regard as a potentially-noble intervention. In my view, and I imagine Kennedy’s, it has been arrogance from start to finish.
But let me get to the sociological ground. Kennedy makes me love him when he talks about his ruling class background. This is typical of WASPs I know. Yes a lot of them are ruling class tools, maybe most of them, but a bunch of them are running environmental organizations and new-age spiritual retreats, i.e., they have had a rich discourse of interrogating their privilege since Vietnam showed their fathers to be war criminals. And it was in the Vietnam years that E. Digby Baltzell published the classic, The Protestant Establishment, which said that WASPs had become a calcified "caste" and they must let the Jews in.
They did. Again I must say this is the Largest Sociological Fact of my life and my Jewish generation’s lives: how we came into the Establishment in the last 30 years. And I am irritated by Feldman’s response to Kennedy, when he says, "I don’t have the luxury of thinking of my country that way." This strikes me as self-deceptive and self-flattering. A great deal about Feldman’s life must be thought a luxury: the Orthodox Jewish background that gave him, at Maimonides High School, the bookish legal training that has served him so well; his inclusion in one elite organization after another as a sterling member of the meritocracy. Lately rumor has it he has bought a fancy house near Harvard. Good for him.
I wonder if Feldman’s triumphalist feeling about American power doesn’t come out of the triumphal rise of the meritocracy. No I don’t have enough information to make such a personal judgment of Feldman; but I’ve seen that complacence all around me in the new establishment, and so I wonder. Certainly there is a lack of self-awareness in that comment about luxury. Jews make much more than WASPs, per the latest Pew Research. We serve in the military at rates lower than other religious groups, even Buddhists, as I have reported (and no, I’ve never served). We’ve stuck in our thumb and pulled out a plum and thought, what a good boy am I! Noblesse oblige; I want Jews to have a discourse of privilege: an understanding of ourselves as privileged in this society and along with that, some self-interrogation about how to make our society a fairer one.
The implicit logic of this exchange as reported repays further deconstruction:
"I want to overcome my WASP ruling class identification with the U.S. as a proxy" for personal power, he said, as the debate came to a head. In response, Feldman deadpanned, "I don't have the luxury of thinking of my country that way". He said that he "did not see the right to rule as something [conferred] to me by birth" but was glad to be a member of a participatory state.
Let's unpack Feldman's reply :
(1)I don't have the luxury of not identifying with the US as a proxy for personal power,
(2)I do not see the right to rule as conferred TO ME (as opposed to you) by birth,
(3)I am a member of a participatory state (as opposed to a state owned by a certain group qualified by birth?)
Phil:
The US is NOT the "greatest country on earth". Your belief that it is is a) generational and b) due to the fact that you have never lived for any length of time in another country.
Having lived in a bunch of European countries, I can say with some confidence that the vast majority of Europeans live a better life than people do here in the US, even at the very rich end of things. There is a better sense of community, a better sense of citizenship, and a better sense of humanity that one achieves living in any European country than in this country.
Perhaps you mean something else by your phrase "greatest country"? If you meant greatest at projecting military might, you would be correct. That ability, however, will end as soon as oil gets to 300$ a barrel, something that will probably occur in the next 10 years.
Who, aside from a few brave souls like Ilan
Pappe, will write of Israel's "genocidal
policies" in Gaza? Who in the MSM will ever
write of the ludicrous string of postponements in the AIPAC trial? Who in
this country will criticize the subservience
of all three candidates to Zionist money-men
and power-brokers? Who,in fact, will ever
really challenge our country's Judeocracy?
Phil,
"America is the greatest country on earth".
I don't think that statement is strong enough. The reality is that America is the greatest country in the history of the Universe. You look out into space and you tell me which galaxy has a star whose orbiting planet has a better country than ours. You wont find it and you know why? Because America is the greatest fucking country ever, and not just on Earth, ever, both in the past and future history of the Universe.
"Feldman retained a belief that the exercise of U.S. power could promote moral values…"
American intervention in Iraq has resulted PRIMARILY in mass murder of innocent civilians.
Just like US intervention in Vietnam, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, the Philipines, Mexico, on and on.
What moral values is Feldman talking about?
Smedley Butler, the Marine Corp General, had it right when he wrote 'War Is A Racket:'
"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
"I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns six percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
"I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes, and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
"There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism."
Butler was the most highly decorated Marine in USMC history. A man who knew war, and knew exactly what it was about.
No moral person can defend war profiteers and the Merchants of Death.
Case closed.
(And please don't say "But what about 9-11?" Our multi-trillion dollar defense (euphemism alert) apparatus did NOTHING–bupkis– to prevent that, even assuming (big assumption) that the Bush version of those events is entirely true).
.
"Noblesse oblige; I want Jews to have a discourse of privilege: an understanding of ourselves as privileged in this society and along with that, some self-interrogation about how to make our society a fairer one." — Phil W.
Me too. Consider an example from today's WaPo. The wealthy Lerner family, which made their billions in D.C.-area real estate, own the Washington Nationals baseball team. For these billionaire owners, the city of Washington D.C. constructed a new $611 million stadium AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. Story link:
http://tinyurl.com/363x2h
Curious, I dug a little deeper. The patriarch, Theodore Lerner, has an unusual background in that he migrated to the U.S. from Palestine in 1921. A Horatio Alger tale of rags to riches by dint of hard work followed. In the philanthropic phase, Lerner built "the most advanced sports facility in Jerusalem" at Hebrew University, modestly named The Annette and Theodore Lerner Family Indoor Sports Complex (what is it with Jews wanting to put their names on buildings?).
http://overseas.huji.ac.il/campus.asp?cat=493&in=0
What a populist narrative one could make of these facts. The mostly middle-class residents of Washington will spend decades paying off the debt incurred for Lerner's palatial stadium, while he endows splendid sports facilities in a foreign land that his family left 87 years ago. Where are the swimming pools, gyms and aerobics centers for the home folks in Washington D.C.? Show me the noblesse oblige! Or IS Washington home?
Despite the Anglophilic pretensions of the WASP elite, most of them aren't going anywhere. They're definitely from here. A Jewish elite with a right of aliyah is unprecedented; something which did not exist in prewar Europe. So far, the inherent contradictions have been adroitly negotiated. But there's still a fundamental conflict of interest here, which would not be so glaring if not for the Jewish elite's prominent ties to Israel, and its staunch insistence that U.S. foreign policy reflect their biases. Hello, trouble!
RE: "And I am irritated by Feldman's response to Kennedy, when he says, "I don't have the luxury of thinking of my country that way." This strikes me as self-deceptive and self-flattering."
Or possibly worse, as very naive. Sort of like Chelsea Clinton thinking she's not had it made in the shade.
Another excellent, illuminating post, Phil.
But doesn't any group that starts viewing itself as part of a society's privileged start losing an impetus to excel? Why try hard, when you've already made it?
Jim, the reason for the vulgar flashy style is simple and innocent – we are dealing with a culture which never had a landed aristocracy, so it necessarily manufactured for itself a commercial aristocracy.
Come to think of it, this lack of a feudal historical experience of one's own may be part of the explanation for the popularity of the Zohar, rather than its metaphysics – the fact that it depicts a fantasy Palestine of a rather feudal sort. This is the kind of thing I want to learn Hebrew for.
Be careful, here. America is neither the Greatest Country In The World nor the worst.
Also, Woodrow Wilson-and for that matter Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman-was a quite relunctant projector of American power, not one enamoured of it. He was very different from Krauthammer.
Finally, does Kennedy envision any constructive role for the United States in the outside world at all? And is he willing to apply the standards to other nations that he evidently applies to America? Just wondering…
"Noah Feldman, a rising star at Harvard." Why? Because he is a Jew and served other Jews and Jewish interests when Jews selected him for his efforts in Iraq.
The world would be bettr off without USA and the Shitty One.
Wow, Jim Haygood: Nice research on Lerner.
"In the philanthropic phase, Lerner built "the most advanced sports facility in Jerusalem" at Hebrew University"
is this considered a charitable contribution and therefore deductible from lerner's american tax obligations which will have to be made up by AMERICANS?