From Prague Spring to a Washington fall

I write a semi-regular op-ed column for a newspaper in the town where I grew up. On Veteran’s Day they published this column (poorly transcribed, sadly - I swear the typographical errors aren’t mine), which I am contemplating expanding into a larger project on Havel and foreign policy. I didn’t write it to make anyone angry, though I imagined it would be inevitable that some people, be they Republican or Democrat, would disagree (perhaps vehemently) with me.

What I wasn’t prepared for was complete silence.

In that regard I’m a bit disappointed. I’m fairly surprised a few neoconservative readers didn’t take me to task for implying agreement with the anti-war campaign, even if I was critical of the movement’s leaders for their cowardice. As for those in the readership who are (were?) against this war, it seems like outrage at the state of affairs has turned into complacency. I’m forced to conclude those in the paper’s readership who supported the Democrats in the mid-term elections last year must either be completely jaded by the experience or unwilling to see the flaccidity of the present Congressional leadership, particularly in the Senate. I hope for the former and suspect the latter.

As for the leadership itself, it seems unwilling to move beyond using the war as a club with which to beat the largely neoconservative opposition. Even Republicans who have attempted to distance themselves from the war look bad by nominative affiliation with the hawkish members of their party, and this, too, serves a purpose.

Because of this, the war has become a crutch to the Democrats - by simply repudiating the ideology of the war’s advocates they have no need to develop a concrete foreign policy of their own. As long as the war persists they are able to create an identity which stands in high relief of those conducting it instead of jeopardizing their own hold on the Legislative branch by creating their own independent policy (and thus, an independent but vulnerable identity).

While it’s a tactic I can understand, I can’t approve of it. Opposition to the ideology of this war is always laudable, but if those in opposition do not act when the opportunity presents itself, it seems to me that they are aiding in the triumph of the very ideology they are against.

This is a frightening illustration of Havel’s assertion that even those we perceive to hold power by their political office are themselves subservient to ideology in some way, even if it is to forge a perceived identity built on an impotent and mutable position in which the problematic means of Janus-faced equivocation and political posturing leads to problematic ends for the Marines, sailors, and soldiers on the front lines.