205. The Dangerous Humanity of the Intelligentsia

 

In the New York Times (May 5) Bill Keller begins his case for intervention in Syria thoughtfully and moderately, in a way no neutral academic could fault.  But in no time, as David Bromwich has just shown (New York Review, June 20), he is using words, and leading other writers on his newspaper to use words, that would take our country where the least thoughtful and moderate would take it.

Bromwich is good at showing what New York Times tendentiousness shares with Republican hawkishness: vagueness about the details.  John McCain says, "We could train and arm well-vetted Syrian opposition forces."  Bromwich asks, "'Vetted' by whom?"  McCain says, "We could destroy artillery and drive Assad's forces from their posts."  Bromwich asks, "All without ground forces?"  NYT editors pass an innocent-sounding headline, "Whitehouse Sticks to Cautious Path on Syria."  Bromwich says that's telling us that "the common sense of the well-informed now favors intervention."

That may be over-reading, but you don't have to over-read to see the tendentiousness in the case The Economist (May 18) makes.  Doing nothing could "even result in a victory for the loathsome regime of Bashar Assad."  "Loathsome" tells us that the common morality of the humanely moved favors intervention in Syria — as George Bush's "evil" told us that common Christianity favored intervention in Iraq. 

I don't see manipulation in this tendentiousness.  I see the genuine transmission of the humanity of the Enlightenment, and find flowing in these journals the stream the journals of Paris opened up.  It's what we count on them for, and are grateful for.  But it's not the whole Enlightenment.

Part of the Enlightenment is analysis which requires complexity to be acknowledged and not over-simplified.  Both the Times and The Economist show that they are doing that with the Syria problem.  "None of the options are risk free," the one the Times recommends "must be carefully choreographed and accompanied by... diplomacy," and still "it might well be that the internal grievances are too deep and bitter to forestall a bloody period of reprisals." "All options for the West" are "fraught," we could be "dragged into a quagmire," and the best choice is "imperfect," says The Economist.  The two newspapers could hardly do more to reassure the skeptical, high-information reader.  And still they do the things that Bromwich nails them for.

But there's still another part of the Enlightenment, trust in the common man, or (these days), the low-information reader. He's the man we all rely on to carry out our policies.  But he's the joker in the Enlightenment deck, and I'm not sure these editorialists understand him or know how to play him.

Say our nation is "enforcing a no-fly zone."  In an editorial room that's going to be different from waging war.  If you listen in a debriefing room, though, you won't detect much of a difference.  "I shot that son of a bitch right out of the sky."  Among common warriors, in the air or on the ground, the difference between enforcing a zone and waging war lies only in the number of sons of bitches.

Ah, but The Economist's no-fly zone will be set up "on humanitarian grounds."  There's the humanity the intelligentsia wants to see.  The common warrior, maybe played by a Jon Stewart, will see it too.  "Well, at least I got shot out of the sky on humanitarian grounds."  Not shot down by a son of a bitch?  "No, he was a good American human being."

The fact is that the process of killing, any kind of killing, turns the people who are trying to kill you into sons of bitches.  And the things you can do to a son of a bitch are different from the things you can do to a fellow human being.  War, bless Clausewitz for telling us, is an irreversible extension, on both sides, of what can be done to sons of bitches and an inexorable escalation of their number.  Technology, as in drones, may slow this process, or dull our awareness of it, but I don't think it can stop it.

That's a danger, letting your nation get into killing, but there's a prior danger: letting your nation get into a contest.  It's a danger heightened in the United States by the common American man's hatred of losing, as can be observed in any stadium.  If you start losing in a contest he'll want you to do more.  If you don't, manager or coach or President, he'll make trouble for you.  He hates losers.  And he, in the Enlightenment's most significant gift, has the votes.  He can throw losing presidents out.

Uncommonly bright Americans, editors, need to fix this on their walls, so they don't forget it: The American common man hates losing.  So a president who wants to stay out of war will avoid putting the country into win-lose situations.  And the uncommonly bright ought to help, not hinder, him.