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N O R T H C O A S T T IM E S E A G L E , MA Y/JUNE 2005
BARRY MAGUIRE (2001)
Century America’s Last Stand.” Starting in the 1990s, the
fundamentalists have now turned that humiliation around by
making a strong comeback. The teaching of creationism is
now being demanded in schools in more than 40 states, while
the low voting turnout of other, nonfundamentalist groups
increases the fundamentalists’ political influence.The President
himself is publicly skeptical of scientific findings in many fields,
including global warming and stem-cell research. He promises
to rid the world of Evil, and, as he told Bob Woodward, he is
“casting his vision and that of the country in the grand vision
of God's master plan." Radical religious nationalism, shrewdly
exploited by Bush administration strategists, has become a
strong force in American politics.
□even’s chapter on the Israeli-Palestinian question is
unusually forthright and is certain to give rise to much objection.
He believes that this question more than any other divides the
United States from opinion in most other countries. Critical
discussion of Israel's record and its behavior toward Palestinians
is often presented as an assault by members of the malignant,
anti-American, anti-Semitic international community, symbolized
by the hated UN. Such a presentation strengthens unconditional
support for Israel among most evangelicals, regardless of Israel's
policies and actions toward the occupied territories.
This point of view has become a matter of fundamental
ist religious belief. Lieven quotes Jerry Falwell as saying that
“to stand against Israel is to stand against God.* The Christian
Zionist movement, of which the House majority leader, Tom
DeLay, is a leader in Washington, is “a block of conservative
Republicans whose strong support for the Jewish state is based
on their interpretation of the Bible." **
Such beliefs, which disregard international law, generally
recognized beliefs, rational discourse, or serious negotiation, fit
conveniently with the kind of neoconservative thinking found in
the now famous 1996 position paper “A Clean Break," written by
Richard Perie and Douglas Feith, among others, which advised
the Likud government to insist on “permanent control of the
occupied territories," as Lieven puts it. They do nothing to
encourage moderation among Arabs and Muslims. After DeLay’s
visit to Israel in 2003, during which the Texas congressman told
Israeli legislators that he was an “Israeli at heart," Saeb Erekat,
a Palestinian legislator and negotiator, commented mildly that
DeLay was not helping the cause of peace by “being more Israeli
than the Israelis themselves."
Lieven observes that debate over the Israeli-Palestinian
question is far more open and uninhibited in Israel itself than in
the United States, where criticism of Likud policies or arguments
that the Palestinians have a case are apt to be construed as
“classic anti-Semitism." Lieven quotes, for example, the
passionate protest against Likud policies by Avraham Burg,
the former speaker of the Knesset.“We cannot,” Burg said, “keep
a Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time
think ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East."
It is one of the great tragedies of history that during the
years of moderate Israeli leadership and policy, there was no
recognition by either Israel or the U.S. of a serious Palestinian
negotiating partner. The only organized representative of the
Palestinians, the PLO, was kept from the negotiating table until
1993, by which time both the Israeli settlement and the indigen
ous Palestinian terrorist movement in the occupied territories
were well established.
As Lieven puts it, criticism of Israeli actions in no way
excuses the barbarities and brutalities of some of their Palestin
ian opponents: “Yet by its settlement policy, Israel has passed
up the chance to end the conditions exacerbating the conflict,
as have the Palestinian groups through their continued use of
terrorism."
The United States has become deeply embroiled in the
Middle East through the combination of strong, and sometimes
unconditional, support for Israel and dependence on Arab oil.
This creates major problems for its global leadership as well
as a serious impediment to the successful pursuit of the “war
on terror." There would now appear to be a slightly improved
prospect for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. In view
of the intrinsic importance of this question as well as its effect
on other matters, it is to be hoped that Washington will adopt the
courageous, objective, and active policy that might still achieve
significant progress toward the peaceful solution that both the
Israelis and the Palestinians desperately need.
America Right or Wrong is a valuable and also a
troubling book on a subject that is both crucial and in many ways
extremely sensitive. Historians may differ over Lieven’s interpre
tations of American history or his assessment of the importance
"In 1937, the Carnegie Corporation, searching for a
director for a comprehensive study of the Negro in America,
concluded an that American social scientist would find it
difficult to undertake such a sensitive project dispassionately
and objectively. The corporation therefore asked the Swedish
social economist Gunnar Myrdal to direct the study. The result
was the magisterial An American Dilemma (Harper, 1944).
Like Myrdal, Lieven has chosen as his basic theme the contrast
between American ideals and the sometimes contrasting reality
of American politics and society.
(Kenneth B Clark, an African-American psychologist
who assisted Myrdal, died May 1 at age 90. His pioneering
research on the effects of racial discrimination, particularly upon
black children, was cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1954
Brown v. Board o f Education.)
** “Palestinians Must Bear Burden of Peace, DeLay Tells
Israelis," The New York Times, July 30, 2003.
*** The Nation, Exchange column, November 29,2004.
of this or that factor, and others will certainly disagree with
particular chapters. Predictably enough, he has already been
called both anti-American and anti-Semitic. It seems to me that
Lieven's book comes more into the category of what is some
times called “tough love." Lieven is concerned, perhaps even
obsessed, with current crises — the Iraq war, the impasse in the
Middle East — and with tendencies such as the rise of radical
nationalism that seem to him compromising the American Creed
and American leadership in the world. He is also concerned with
the absence of a stringent public debate on such matters. He can
be tactless, perhaps, but that is hardly anti-American.
In his book Crowded With Genius: The Scottish Enlight
enment, Edinburgh’s Moment o f the Mind, James Buchan writes
of Edinburgh in the early 18th century, “Men and women were
coming to suspect that knowledge acquired through skepticism
might be more useful in this world below than knowledge reveal
ed’ by scripture." It is a painful thought that in the United States
in the 21st century we might be turning away from the world of
the Enlightenment which inspired the Founding Fathers. Of all
the thoughts provoked by Lieven’s book this is the most disturb
ing, both for America and for the world. Since religious freedom
and popular elections are both sancrosanct rights of the Ameri
can people, it is a particularly delicate one. Is it possible that
America could eventually vote to go back on the Enlightenment?
Evangelical Protestants are a large and growing group
whose influence is greatly enhanced by their voting discipline
in comparison to other groups. Their influence is evident both in
the rhetoric and in some actions of the current administration, as
well as in Congress.This is clear in many domestic issues.The
absolutes of Good and Evil, the references to God’s will in
relation to adventures like the Iraq war, the idea that those who
are not with us are against us, impose a rigidity that dismisses
criticism and makes it impossible to admit reverses publicly or to
correct mistaken policies. Such trends are a serious hazard for
such a powerful and important country. And at home, the demon-
ization of elites, anti-intellectualism, hostility to rational discourse
and an aversion to scientific method can only stultify and down
grade the educational system at a time when American leader
ship and technological supremacy are being challenged as never
before.
The influence of Christian evangelicals now extends to
many essential matters of foreign policy, quite apart from the
Middle East. Dogmatic, unilateralist, and radically nationalistic,
this influence ignores international law and is particularly hostile
to international organizations. In some of its literature the Secre
tary General of the UN figures as the Antichrist. At a time when
the United States is no longer immune from the ills of trie outside
world, many key problems — terrorism, energy, the environment,
epidemics including AIDS, the proliferation of nuclear and other
weapons of mass destruction, to name only a few — can only be
tackled usefully through international collective effort. Dogmatic,
faith-based denial of this fact of life would be disaster for United
States leadership, and also for the hope of finding solutions to
problems that may well determine the future of the human race
on this planet.
The absolute right of individuals to select the religion of
their choice is not in question. But when particular denominations
are in a position to bring their special beliefs and taboos to bear
on the general interest and on public policy secular matters, a
dangerous point has been reached. That is why the separation
of church and state is so important
Lieven has undertaken the unpopular task of trying to
analyze religious forces and nationalistic ideologies that have an
important bearing on the present situation of the Uniled States
and to warn about their consequences. In a reply to one of his
critics he has explained that the failure to remember the searing
lessons of how America became involved in Vietnam seems to
him "to be closely related to an inability to reexamine certain
fundamental national myths....To say this is not the standpoint
of an arrogant foreigner. It stands in a great tradition of critical
American thought, which should be revived as a matter of
profound intellectual and indeed patriotic urgency."***
Criticism by a foreigner on sensitive national issues is
always likely to raise hackles, especially when readers may have
a strong feeling that some of the criticisms are right on the mark.
People often do not appreciate being told in a foreign accent that
they may be heading over a cliff. In his intensity, Lieven some
times drifts into an admonitory tone that some readers may find
patronizing. But his conclusion, far from displaying anti-American
sentiment, has a cautionary perspective that Americans should
take seriously:
Most important o f all, the American elites should have
both more confidence in and more concern for the example their
country sets to the world, through their institutions, their values
and the visible well-being o f ordinary Americans... These institu
tions and values constitute America's civilizational empire, heir
to that o f Rome. Like the values o f Rome, they will endure long
after the American empire, and even the United States itself, has
disappeared. The image o f America as an economically success
ful pluralist democracy, open to all races and basically peaceful
and nonaggressive, has been so powerful in the past because
it has largely been true. Americans must make sure that it contin
ues to be true.
Brian Urquhart is a former Undersecretary General of
the United Nations. His books include Hammerskjold, A Life in
Peace & War and Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey. This
article is reprinted from The New York Review of Books.
America Right Or Wrong: An Anotomy of American
Nationalism by Anatol Lieven is published by Oxford University
Press (274 99 ). $30.00.
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