Conservative Statism

I contend that the support of the U.S. empire on the part of many conservatives is entirely arbitrary. If our average conservative happened to be an Iraqi, he would be a cheerleader for Saddam Hussein. If he had been born in the Soviet Union at the right time, he would have been a fanatical Stalinist. If in China, he would have lied and churned out propaganda for Mao. As things actually are, conservatives have ended up as apologists for the American leviathan. But it is merely an accident of birth, and it is because of them or rather their totalitarian counterparts that both socialism and fascism of the 20th century endured for as long as they did.

Yet the conservative statists are starting to show signs of dissatisfaction. As Mises writes,

No socialist author ever gave a thought to the possibility that the abstract entity which he wants to vest with unlimited power – whether it is called humanity, society, nation, state, or government – could act in a way of which he himself disapproves. A socialist advocates socialism because he is fully convinced that the supreme dictator of the socialist commonwealth will be reasonable from his – the individual socialist's – point of view, that he will aim at those ends of which he – the individual socialist – fully approves, and that he will try to attain these ends by choosing means which he – the individual socialist – would also choose. (Human Action, 692ff)

Socialism, Mises continues, is "the religion of self-deification."

But so is warmongering. The pro-war crowd fancied that the government would conduct the war precisely the way in which they themselves wanted it to be conducted. They also believed that the forces of the resistance in Iraq, however we characterize them morally, would behave in the way in which the hawks imagined they would behave; that is, essentially, that there would be no resistance at all, or if there were, then it would easily be crushed. Perfect obedience to the will of the ruler on the part of those who are being conquered or manipulated is presupposed by all statists.

It is also clear that they imagined that "disarming Saddam" would literally mean coming into his office and arresting him. It looks as if this task has turned out to be harder than originally thought. For Iraq is filled with Saddams now.

Describing the most prominent ideology of his day, Mises explained:

The incomparable success of Marxism is due to the prospect it offers of fulfilling those dream-aspirations and dreams of vengeance which have been so deeply imbedded in the human soul from time immemorial. It promises a Paradise on earth, a Land of Hearts' Desire full of happiness and enjoyment, and – sweeter still to the losers in life's game – humiliation of all who are stronger and better than the multitude. Logic and reasoning, which might show the absurdity of such dreams of bliss and revenge, are to be thrust aside. (Socialism, 17)

The conservatives, too, have placed their hopes and dreams onto the state and believed that revenge against the terrorists was at hand, that war was a viable means to security, and that the liberation of the oppressed Arabs would show forth the goodness of the United States. "Logic and reasoning" that could have shown that war with Iraq would attain none of the foregoing ends did not matter.

What are the results? Orders of magnitude more people have died on both sides since the war began than died in the 9/11 attack; many more have been wounded. Much property has been destroyed, both public and private, certainly more than was destroyed on 9/11. What's more, a lot of wealth has not come into being that would have been created had the war never occurred. Just because this loss is unseen does not mean that it is not real. The expense of the war on the side of the U.S. is staggering and could exceed $700 billion. Further, war, an ancient saying observes, creates more evil men than it destroys. Certainly there are now more terrorists than existed on 9/11. There are plenty of terrorists in Iraq now, where before the war there were none. Trade and social cooperation between Iraq and the rest of the world have been annihilated. And as Martin van Creveld writes,

The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape.

The U.S. government has shown itself to be both evil by wrecking the Iraqi society and murdering tens of thousands both now through war and earlier in peacetime through sanctions, and stupid for allowing so many U.S. casualties. The evil party and the stupid party have finally merged.

It is, to say the least, pleasant to witness the public's disappointment with yet another government war. People, even supposedly very smart ones, refuse to understand that the government is not a tool that can be used for the improvement of society, least of all a foreign society. For example, the government cannot in principle reconstruct Iraq any more than the Soviet government could create prosperity in the USSR. Bush may claim that the U.S. has "helped Iraqis conduct nearly 3,000 renovation projects at schools, train more than 30,000 teachers, distribute more than 8 million textbooks, rebuild irrigation infrastructure to help more than 400,000 rural Iraqis, and improve drinking water for more than 3 million people," but these welfare handouts are useless. Until both warfare and welfare stop, there will be in Iraq nothing but poverty and death.

In the meantime we can detect a sort of helplessness among the populace – why is my government not succeeding? Didn't we have good intentions? There was a time when it was the left that suffered the contempt for failed projects motivated by good intentions. But having attained power, the right, too, is now blind to reality: that somehow good intentions are not enough.

December 10, 2005

Dmitry Chernikov [send him mail] is a graduate student in philosophy at Kent State University.

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