No, Sir. Liberty is Our Business.
Mark Krikorian is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Two things about Laura Bush’s official White House briefing room statement on the “inept” response by the Burmese government to the recent cyclone:
1. It’s absolutely none of our business.
2. What the heck is the president’s wife doing making U.S. foreign policy?! The cult of the presidency, as Derb writes about today, is bad enough, but at least that’s an actual government office. Maybe the republic really is doomed.
While we give him a chance to climb back in off the ledge, let’s take each point.
First, ending tyranny using every practical means at our disposal is our business. It’s the business of every free and civilized human being to do whatever they can to obtain the liberty of every other human being. I’ll assume, though, that he’s being more practical.
I’m sure we all remember those wonderful days when we considered the pleas of the oppressed to be none of our business back through the 60s, 70, and 80s. We acted strictly in our own interests and allied ourselves with whoever we thought could best help us protect our interests, whatever they were. We might think Saddam Hussein was a real bastard, but at lease he was our bastard.
Then a few planes flew into buildings and some of us, the President included, realized what a reprehensible thing we had wrought on ourselves and the world.
Here’s the thing, the United States is, whether we like it or not, an example. People look to us when it comes to matters of freedom and opportunity because we’ve done it better than anyone ever has. We are still, as Ronald Reagan said, that “shining city on a hill” and people all over the world see us. When we don’t even attempt to live up to our ideals, people see that, too, and they resent us. That, more than anything, is why we are reviled around the world. They see us enjoying our liberty and prosperity and making deals with their thuggish leaders. They hear us talk about freedom but all they know is that we’re the ones helping keep the jackboot across their throats. We’re still in Iraq right now because of the skepticism that decades of our own selfishness has earned us. Our soldiers are dying in Basra because we lied to the Iraqis ten years ago, and years and years before that. How can we possibly waste that sacrifice and go back to the old ways that will just cost us more and more blood later?
In light of the priceless sacrificies that are being made to redeem us from those years of foolish pride, we’d better damned sight take every chance we can get to speak out against tyrannyIt costs us so little. It harms us not at all. But to someone rotting away in a Burmese jail who might hear it, it is more valuable than gold. Ask Natan Sharansky how important it was for Ronald Reagan to speak out against the “evil empire”, even though he earned Krikorian-style scorn for doing so.
I’d say it’s very much our business what the Burmese tyrants are doing to their people. We know what happens when we use “It’d not our business” as the cornerstone of national policy. We’d be fools to do it again.
As for Mr. Krikorian’s second point, I just don’t see where the First Lady is making policy at all. She’s not committing us to doing anything we weren’t committed to doing yesterday. She’s not binding us to any course of action. So where’s the policy that she’s making?
I think that Mr. Krikorian is in danger of falling into the trap that we have spent the lives of thoussands of good people and billions of dollars to start to climb out of. We have only recently started to earn back our reputation as liberators and the guardians of freedom and opportunity. Ms. Bush’s words only help that reputation grow stronger.
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Category: No More Tyrants
