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According
to Amazon.com,
everything Foster Rhea Dulles wrote is out of print. That said,
the writing of Mr. Dulles is worthy of our attention, both because
of his family ties and because, as in his America's
Rise to World Power (1955, Harper Collins), Dulles
builds a neat, authoritative case, debunking the avoidance of
foreign entanglements as mere sidewalk talk from a spectrum of
rubes.
The
similarities between what Dulles does here and what has been done
in the last fifteen years to those who saw the end of the Cold
War as a signal for America to come home are striking. A close
examination of the omissions and hopeful interpretations Dulles
uses to justify such claims as he makes about George Washington's
Farewell Address [which "clearly reveals that what the first
President had in mind was freedom of action rather than complete
isolation."]
Such
audacious, self-serving interpretations form the crux of the argument
of the book's first chapter, "The Tradition of Isolation."
Dulles refers to John Adams warning, in 1776, that "we should
separate ourselves, as far as possible and as long as possible,
from all European politics and wars. To me, that language is as
unambiguous as a bloody knife on white porcelain."
The Dulles interpretation of Adams' language, though, is too precious
by half.
"The
policy so encouraged in the 18th century did not have
a negative connotation"; rather, it merely "symbolized
a further projection of the revolutionary doctrines of the Declaration
of Independence."
Do
what? Notice the difference between Adams' use of active voice,
which relies on the forcible verb "separated", and Dulles'
language, shrouded in the prettifying grab of passive voice. Connotation,
symbolized, projection, encouraged; it is clear that the two men,
separated by centuries, are likewise cleaved by very different
views of the world. Adams' isolationist statement recognizes that
freedom and self-determination are inextricably yoked. Dulles,
on the other hand, writes from a base of privilege, and relies
on the soft tyranny of the passive voice to mask an unvoiceable
reality.
Ours
would be a better country if the mindset of Adams prevailed over
toadies like Dulles. But one need only look at the last fifty
years in the most cursory manner to understand that Mr. Dulles
was on to something. If his goal was to be a court historian,
then he succeeded. And perhaps that was his only goal.
"The
Tradition of Isolation" serves as a purposeful apologia for
Imperialism. It could do nothing else, and the meat of the chapter
consists of dexterous revisions of unambiguous quotes like that
from John Adams above. Daniel Webster's 1850 claim that the possessions
of the House of Hapsburg "are but as a patch on the earth's
surface" compared to those of the Washington government is
dismissed as "arrogant", with Dulles coolly adding that
"for all the extravagance of such orations. . . such quotations
might be multiplied indefinitely... Flamboyant, grandiloquent,
self-assertive, they reflected the naïve bumptiousness of
a young nation."
Gee
whillikers! If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was more nonsense
from the "Hate America" and "Blame America First"
camps. Luckily, there are voices of sanity, in Dulles' reckoning,
who understand that the US government alone is fit to establish
its dominion over the world. Forgotten Senator Isaac Walker of
Wisconsin finds a place in Dulles' text, with his advocacy that
the US should support European revolution in 1851 with "moral
and physical power". Edmund Burke shows up here as well,
urging Franklin Pierce in "grasping the magnificent purse
of the commerce of the Pacific." Pierce, elected President
in 1852, claimed a year after his inauguration that "whatever
interrupts the peace or checks the prosperity of any part of Christendom
tends more or less to involve our own."
Looked
at in this context, it's arguable that Franklin Pierce was the
first neocon. How far is it from Pierce's equivocating, aw-shucks
advocacy of American military action around the world to even
the most recent writing of Michael Ledeen? In a July 1 National
Review Online piece, Ledeen,
not for the first time, makes NRO readers aware of the
urgency of immediate US action in Iran. How urgent? Ledeen is
willing to call his political benefactors in the Executive branch
out as a bunch of do-nothings, claiming that "this administration
clearly has no stomach for any sort of campaign against the mullahs."
But
such a campaign against the "mullahs" is necessary,
more so because "no western government has called for an
end to the Iranian tyranny." Such inaction, in Ledeen's reckoning,
is doubly dangerous, apparently since Iran has won the war for
Iraqi hearts and minds in the reconstruction phase:
"And
in Iraq, the mullahs' offensive continues unabated, to the apparent
indifference of the leaders of the Bush administration. The
newspapers are full of stories about Iran-based religious
fanatics calling for an uprising against the Coalition. At
least ten Iranian-run radio and television stations are broadcasting
anti-American and anti-Semitic venom throughout Iraq, while
we have yet to organize a single radio or TV there, to our
great shame. And the Iranians brazenly sabotage our reconstruction
efforts, as in the case of the monster water treatment plant
in southern Iraq, which was dismantled and carted off across the
border, or the several factories that were broken up and either
smuggled into Iran or sold to them."
This
is the kind of dreck that Michael Ledeen has, in the words of
David
Frum "earned his $25 million" for? Absolutely.
And here's a prediction for you, to close this Independence Day
column. If by next Independence Day US troops are not occupied
in Iran, then Michael Ledeen will find himself forced to support
the Democratic nominee. And only then might our President realize
how divorced from the interests of actual Americans our "national
interest" has become. God save the Republic – before it is
too late!
~ Anthony Gancarski
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Court
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8/13/02
Anthony Gancarski,
the author of Unfortunate
Incidents, writes for The American Conservative, CounterPunch,
and LewRockwell.com. His web journalism was recognized by
Utne Reader Online as "Best of the Web." A writer for the
local Folio Weekly, he
lives in Jacksonville, Florida.
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