Kicking Sand In Libya's Face
Earlier this week, Harper's Magazine posted a kind of 'gotcha' article about Bush and Libya. The author, Ken Silverstein, points out that Bush claims he will not tolerate 'state sponsors of terrorism,' yet Bush has been actively cooperating with Qaddafi on intelligence matters, even hinting that Qaddafi's Libya might be taken off the State Department's list of Sponsors of Terrorism if Qaddafi continues to help the US with terrorism-related intelligence. Silverstein's 'big discovery' comes in the form of a lawsuit, brought by the families of the victims of the Pan Am bombing. These families claim that Libya actively sponsored the hijacking, refuses to admit responsibility, and is therefore a state sponsor of terrorism. Silverstein summarizes the evidence and smugly concludes 'It is hard to imagine a more textbook definition of “state sponsorship".'
According to Silverstein, this case constitutes a 'fresh embarrassment for the Bush Administration' but we fail to see anything critical about this argument. First of all, Silverstein seems to have done no research on his own, instead relying on documents provided to him by the plaintiff's law firms. That the victims say so does not make it so. There is even good evidence that Libya was framed by the US and UK as part of Cold War politicking. That Silverstein doesn't even look into the facts independently, as a normal journalist might, is, well, just poor journalism.
Silverstein's willingness to be an uncritical mouthpiece for the plaintiffs reflects the simple-mindedness of his enterprise. Like many opportunistic critics, Silverstein seems to be looking for any potential contradiction, hypocrisy, or inconsistency, no matter how minor, and no matter how unrelated to broader principles, so long as they 'further embarrass' the Bush administration. For this reason, and this reason only, does Silverstein seem to care about the family's lawsuit - it further proves Bush's supposed mendacity.
But a closer examination of Silverstein's own facts suggest that he is the prisoner of that famous hobgoblin of small minds: a foolish consistency. In fact, Bush's relations with Qaddafi embodies a rare moment of diplomatic skill for this administration. That Qaddafi is cooperating with Bush on finding terrorist suspects right now suggests that, whatever relationship he did or didn't have to a terrorist hijacking more than twenty years ago, he certainly is no longer any kind of state sponsor. This is the kind of diplomatic acumen and flexible thinking Bush is normally accused of not possessing (although one would think that a normal adult should be capable of similar political reasoning). Even worse, we wonder what exactly Silverstein wants. Should we continue arbitrarily to persecute Libya with punitive sanctions? It's hard to see what's very progressive about that.
The point here is not really that Silverstein is being annoying and small-minded. It is to underscore the problem with such opportunistic critiques. They achieve their effect by leaving in place a broader structure of argument that we should reject. Silverstein's critique only works if we accept a dogmatic understanding of 'state sponsors of terrorism' whereby 20 year old actions count more than those in the present. Even more problematically, for Silverman the best way to criticize our leaders is by taking the language of the war on terror and trying to use it against them. Only if we accept these premises does something the critique make any sense as a claim to 'further embarrass the administration' - although in this case, even then it isn't clear it works.
Once again, the goal of critique should be to reject security-based reasoning itself. Ostensible progressives, like those who write for Harper's magazine, aren't going to get anywhere if they think all they need to do is hunt for embarrassing hypocrisies in the administration's behavior. Superficial self-contradictions are a dime-a-dozen, but their political significance depends on the overarching frame of interpretation we give them. Politics should not be a game of trivial embarrassments, with each side keeping score on how many hits it scores.
According to Silverstein, this case constitutes a 'fresh embarrassment for the Bush Administration' but we fail to see anything critical about this argument. First of all, Silverstein seems to have done no research on his own, instead relying on documents provided to him by the plaintiff's law firms. That the victims say so does not make it so. There is even good evidence that Libya was framed by the US and UK as part of Cold War politicking. That Silverstein doesn't even look into the facts independently, as a normal journalist might, is, well, just poor journalism.
Silverstein's willingness to be an uncritical mouthpiece for the plaintiffs reflects the simple-mindedness of his enterprise. Like many opportunistic critics, Silverstein seems to be looking for any potential contradiction, hypocrisy, or inconsistency, no matter how minor, and no matter how unrelated to broader principles, so long as they 'further embarrass' the Bush administration. For this reason, and this reason only, does Silverstein seem to care about the family's lawsuit - it further proves Bush's supposed mendacity.
But a closer examination of Silverstein's own facts suggest that he is the prisoner of that famous hobgoblin of small minds: a foolish consistency. In fact, Bush's relations with Qaddafi embodies a rare moment of diplomatic skill for this administration. That Qaddafi is cooperating with Bush on finding terrorist suspects right now suggests that, whatever relationship he did or didn't have to a terrorist hijacking more than twenty years ago, he certainly is no longer any kind of state sponsor. This is the kind of diplomatic acumen and flexible thinking Bush is normally accused of not possessing (although one would think that a normal adult should be capable of similar political reasoning). Even worse, we wonder what exactly Silverstein wants. Should we continue arbitrarily to persecute Libya with punitive sanctions? It's hard to see what's very progressive about that.
The point here is not really that Silverstein is being annoying and small-minded. It is to underscore the problem with such opportunistic critiques. They achieve their effect by leaving in place a broader structure of argument that we should reject. Silverstein's critique only works if we accept a dogmatic understanding of 'state sponsors of terrorism' whereby 20 year old actions count more than those in the present. Even more problematically, for Silverman the best way to criticize our leaders is by taking the language of the war on terror and trying to use it against them. Only if we accept these premises does something the critique make any sense as a claim to 'further embarrass the administration' - although in this case, even then it isn't clear it works.
Once again, the goal of critique should be to reject security-based reasoning itself. Ostensible progressives, like those who write for Harper's magazine, aren't going to get anywhere if they think all they need to do is hunt for embarrassing hypocrisies in the administration's behavior. Superficial self-contradictions are a dime-a-dozen, but their political significance depends on the overarching frame of interpretation we give them. Politics should not be a game of trivial embarrassments, with each side keeping score on how many hits it scores.
2 Comments:
nicely put.
. . . if we accept a dogmatic understanding of 'state sponsors of terrorism' whereby 20 year old actions count more than those in the present.
So then, who is keeping Libya on the list of states which sponsor terrorism and why?
Or to ask the question in a different form, who is the "we," above? The United States of America? George W. Bush? Even with the backing of an organization as powerful as Harper's Magazine, it's unlikely to be Ken Silverstein.
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