At NRO, Victor Davis Hanson diagnoses our society as being in a chronic state of hesitation, a nation of “Jittery Hamlets:”
The causes of this paralysis are clear. Action entails risks and consequences. Mere thinking doesn’t. In our litigious society, as soon as someone finally does something, someone else can become wealthy by finding some fault in it. Meanwhile, a less fussy and more confident world abroad drills and builds nuclear plants, refineries, dams, and canals to feed and fuel millions who want what we take for granted.
There is an inverse side to all this dithering: the rush to resolve gargantuan problems that do not exist: global warming, institutional racism, “Islamophobia,” American military overreach, etc. Hanson is right. Action brings risks. Perhaps the hand-wringers figure that treating a non-problem involves no risk. If you multiply something by zero, after all, you end up with zero. So: by applying aggressive policies to challenges that don’t yet exist, they once again feel safely ineffectual. This is a mad type of preemption.
In fact it’s hard to imagine a group more overzealous about the doctrine of preemption than present-day liberals. Over the course of 100 hundred year global temperatures have risen, in zig zag fashion, less than one degree. The climate has been virtually flat for a decade and it looks as if it will be flat for a decade to come. Yet, the doctrine of liberal preemption demands that we either tax, fine, create an artificial cap and trade market, or turn food into fuel in order to (ineffectively) fight what could (anything could) develop in the distant future.
In the wake of the September 11 attacks, incidents of anti-Muslim hate crime in America were so few that you could count them on one hand and have fingers to spare, yet the doctrine of liberal preemption calls for a spate of institutionalized programs to promote “understanding” between Islam and non-Muslims.
In 2007, the Senate passed a resolution declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. The resolution was not even binding, let alone a declaration of war. Yet the doctrine of liberal preemption demanded that Democrat Senators draft a follow-up resolution contradicting the War Powers Act and prohibiting the president from attacking Iran without Congressional authorization. Ironically or not, there’s a good deal more liberal preemption concerning military affairs. For example, with the U.S. military stretched but hardly snapped, the only seated politician perpetually calling for a reinstitution of the draft is Democrat Charles Rangel. Status of forces discussions are in their early stages in Iraq, but not so early that the doctrine of Liberal Preemption can’t be enacted to ensure that America doesn’t pursue a “neocolonial” policy. Therefore Barack Obama has already told Iraqi Foreign Minister that the U.S. has “no interest in permanent bases in Iraq” while negotiations are still underway.
In all these cases, how is the the doctrine working out? The term “fiasco” comes to mind. Corn is being fed to cars while hungry people riot for food. Some six years after 9/11 most Americans have satisfied themselves with a cartoonishly shallow understanding of Islam and never actually get to know any Muslims. There has been a thorough unwillingness to even entertain the idea of the U.S. bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. And liberal politicians and members of the media who scream “neoimperialism!” currently put the fragile gains of the troop surge at risk. If only people could figure out when to dither and when to act.
