Demosophia

Tooth Fairy Diplomacy

The end result of the national trauma over Vietnam, in which Kerry played a vital role, was that the anti-American left not only won a huge victory, but institutionalized its own pathologies into the corpus of the nation while managing to bury the direct expression of founding values. Ultimately this produced a backlash that brought the Reagan administration to power, but the institutionalized framework of anti-Americanism wasn't ever undone.

It's unlikely that we'll go through the same trauma again, because the nation has been attacked directly, but if Kerry can convince the country that we're at war only with a minor warrior cult instead of a more general confrontation with a new generation of religious totalitarianism, the disconnect with 9-11 may doom us to repeat history. This penchant for believing that reality is convenient has its origins in an aspect of the human condition that isn't unrelated to totalitarianism itself.

I just heard Richard Holbrooke defend Kerry's N. Korea policy on the Fox News Channel, that we ought to supplement the six-way talks with the N. Koreans with bilateral talks. The interviewer rightly observed that Kerry opposes what he calls "bilateralism" in Iraq, but favors it in N. Korea, to which Holbrooke responded that Kerry favors both. Well, how magnanimous of him. Favor everything. Have your cake, and eat it too. How could anyone disagree with that?

But although it seems that Kerry inherently grasps the fact that "bilateralism" (really multilateralism of the willing) in Iraq automatically excludes multilateralism (of a coalition with Germany, France and Russia) he doesn't grasp the same common sense when it applies to N. Korea. Kerry simply isn't as smart as he looks. The President ought to start referring to this sort of artful dodge as what it is: "Tooth Fairy Diplomacy." It's the conviction that you can ignore the role of military power and national interest, and if you simply put together the right magic diplomatic formula that manages to convince everyone they can have cake, peace will miraculously appear under your pillow. Or perhaps we could call it the "Wish Upon A Star" school of foreign policy? The realities of dealing with national self interest are such a bore, why don't we just pretend they don't exist? Peter Pan for President!

I'm just scared to death that the old sickness is again raising it's hoary head. And by old, I mean the same malady that almost defeated the nation and extended slavery during the Civil War, and that did defeat it in Vietnam, leading to the killing fields of Southeast Asia. When are we going to recognize that totalitarianism has an ally on the inside? It's that age-old conviction that distasteful reality is the fault of adults.

Posted by Demosophist at October 4, 2004 10:30 AM | TrackBack