The "To hell with them" hawks
The cover story of the new National Review is Rich Lowry's "The 'To Hell with Them' Hawks -- and What's Wrong with Them" (subscribers only). It's an important piece; Lowry identifies an emerging division among conservatives based on "a nascent reaction to Bush foreign policy on the right, a growing sentiment, although one as yet without a prominent political champion. It is the rise of the 'to hell with them' hawks."
Lowry argues that "[e]vents have conspired to knock the supports out from under the Wilsonian aspects of President Bush’s foreign policy." He says that Democrats are headed in this direction too, though they haven't been notable supporters of the second of the two elements of the Bush foreign policy that Lowry identifies: (1) treatment of Islamism as an aberrational departure from Islam, a "religion of peace," and (2) wedding this treatment to Wilsonian democratic idealism seeking a democratic transformation of the Middle East.
Borrowing the intellectual framework of Walter Russell Mead, Lowry identifies a trend among conservatives who seek "to detach Bush’s Jacksonianism (the hardheaded, somewhat bloody-minded nationalism) from his Wilsonianism (the crusading democratic idealism)." According to Lowry, the "to hell with them" tendency is predicated on "doubts only as the retrospective justification for the war and the war aims themselves became increasingly Wilsonian." Lowry asserts that the "to hell with them" reaction "replicates almost exactly the reaction to Vietnam."
Lowry argues that the kind of war we are fighting in Iraq is "most like a counterinsurgency" and that "[w]e will need more engagement with the Muslim world rather than less, and more perspective rather than less." He credits Bush with having made some mid-course corrections in the direction of realistic elements in his foreign policy. He nevertheless argues that the thrust of the original policy should be preserved: the contention that Islam is a religion of peace, and the push for democratization (Bush's oversimplified rhetoric has disserved him, but "the general orientation is correct").
Lowry concedes that the characterization of Islam as a "religion of peace" is a "polite fiction." He nevertheless differentiates between Islam and Islamism. He suggests that strains of Islam can be reconciled with democracy. He argues that Islamism is the ideology of our enemy and traces it back to the Iranian revolution of 1979. At that time Islamism became a political force. It is an ideology that must be opposed and defeated. A democratic Iraq promises to provide both ideological opposition and the force of legitimacy to the opposition.
In his conclusion, Lowry harkens back to the internal Republican debate over "containment verus rollback" on which National Review entered the scene in 1955:
For believers in a clash in civilizations, the "to hell with them" hawks have an odd attitude toward their own. They want to put our civilization in a permanent posture of strategic defense. In Cold War terms, they believe in Containment rather than Rollback. Containment was a successful strategy, but especially so when Ronald Reagan invested it with aspects of Rollback, launching insurgencies against Communist states and engaging in unapologetic evangelism for the Western cause.Lowry concludes with an acknowledgment that "[a]t the moment, the wind is blowing the 'to hell with them' hawks’ way." He contends that we should stay the course.
Lowry does not identify who the "to hell with them" hawks are. Whom is this essay about? Perhaps in writing the essay, Lowry found it easier to describe the tendency he discerns without engaging personalities and particulars. Nevertheless, the single most prominent conservative who answers to Lowry's description of the "to hell with them" hawks is National Review founder Bill Buckley. Other National Review personalities who answer to the description in one way or another are Jeffrey Hart, John Derbyshire and Andrew McCarthy.
Outside the precincts of National Review, the only prominent conservative who comes to mind is George Will and, like Professor Hart, he has articulated a variant of the "to hell with them" critique for quite a while. Given the NR-affiliation of most of Lowry's antagonists on the theme of the essay, Lowry's silence on personalities may be diplomatic.
In any event, Professor Hart's new history of National Review -- The Making of the American Conservative Mind -- usefully reminds us that in 1955 National Review, Bill Buckley and James Burnham were partial to "rollback" over "containment," for reasons that recall Lowry's thesis. They thought "containment" too passive. Lowry's essay combines the spirit of the young Bill Buckley with the historical lessons of the past 50 years.
