Hannity and Mailer


Norman Mailer was on Sean Hannity's radio show (frankly, its this or FM radio), and Hannity again demonstrated his ignorance of ideas. Mailer was wrong, but was at least aware of ideas other than his own. Hannity only attacks straw men, probabaly because his view of everyone else is cartoonish. Mailer argued that Bush aimed to "take over the middle east". Hannity scoffed. Take a look at Max Boot's article over at the Weekly Standard's website.


There is only one solution to this problem, and it is called liberal democracy.
Spreading freedom in the Arab world is no easy task, of course, but if democracy could take root in eastern Europe, east Asia and Latin America, there is no theoretical reason why it shouldn't work in the Middle East.
This will ultimately be up to the local people, but America can give them a helping hand, as it has helped other democrats from Poland to the Philippines. [...] The West should heed the eloquent plea issued last week by the Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim to "assist the democratic transformation of the region". The fundamental problem in the Palestinian Authority is the same as in the rest of the Middle East: lack of liberalism. Developing democratic institutions isn't as sexy as pushing a "peace process", but it must be the West's primary emphasis in the region. Sometimes this will involve forcible regime change, as in Iraq. More often, subtler measures are called for.

Boot is not alone. Paul Wolfowitz has been heard to say the same things, as have a slate of Neo-con writers. Now, Mailer's characterization of the project is hostile, but in its essentials, I'd say its based on actual ideas put forward by some members of the administration and their supporters in the press. I will go on record and say that I agree that to defeat terrorism, we must impose liberalism on the middle east. I estimate it will take five decades. If Mailer wants to call that taking over the middle east, I'll shrug. Establishing democracy in Germany and Japan, struggling during the Cold War to free Eastern Europe as well as South Korea and Taiwan, and our fitful attentions in Latin America all took a long time and a huge investment, but have benefited America and the whole world tremendously. Leftists will point out the Vietnam couldn't make the list and that we sometimes supported authortarian regimes. I'd reply that to the extent that Vietnam was a war to bring democracy to Southeast Asia, it was a noble campaign. The fact that it was also a civil war and a war of anti-colonialism made the cost higher than Americans wanted to bear. As such, Johnson probabaly ranks as America's all-time worst president for failing to avoid a war there. On the second point, America allied with Stalin to defeat Hitler. Defeating the Axis couldn't have been done (in any way remotely like it was done) without that deal with the devil. I'm willing to accept that the victory against the Soviets in the Cold War couldn't have happened if America was unwilling to sometimes befriend anti-communist dictators. Obviously America prefered democracies, but getting democracy in the third world often was so comprimised by anti-colonial hostility to the West that what America reasonably feared was another Cuba. America helped topple Batista and got burned, seriously burned. How many more burns like that could America have endured in the Cold War?

In any event. Mailer has to walk away from his interview with Hannity thinking "idiot", and I have to agree. Hannity is obviously unaware (or is unwilling to acknowledge) that neo-cons do favor a long term campaign to topple paternalistic dictatorships and socialist tyrants who for various reasons are compelled to support terrorists and anti-American propaganda. The beauty of the thing today is that until we establish a democracy and it turns into a radical Islamicist state, we really don't have the fear of destablizing the region we had in the Cold War with the Soviets ready to jump on any opportunity.