America's Ruling Class

It may be happenstance, but I have not seen very much commentary about Prof. Angelo Codevilla’s article about "The Lost Decade" of American foreign and domestic policy.  I first discovered it myself this morning.

In a long and detailed treatise, Codevilla comes very close to indicting the people who are really in charge of American policy, the community of credentialed experts who define the way crises are seen and how they are dealt with. He calls them America’s ruling class. In the past they were called “the best and the brightest.”

Experts present the terms of public debate.The define what is respectable opinion and what is disreputable. They influence public opinion. Belonging to both Democratic and Republican parties, the ruling class seems to have more control over policy-making than do elected politicians.

Codevilla argues that the War on Terror was poorly formulated and poorly executed. As he sees it, America has lost the War.

In his words: “America's ruling class lost the ‘War on Terror.’ During the decade that began on September 11, 2001, the U.S. government's combat operations have resulted in some 6,000 Americans killed and 30,000 crippled, caused hundreds of thousands of foreign casualties, and spent—depending on various estimates of direct and indirect costs—somewhere between 2 and 3 trillion dollars. But nothing our rulers did post-9/11 eliminated the threat from terrorists or made the world significantly less dangerous. Rather, ever-bigger government imposed unprecedented restrictions on the American people and became the arbiter of prosperity for its cronies, as well as the manager of permanent austerity for the rest. Although in 2001 many referred to the United States as "the world's only superpower," ten years later the near-universal perception of America is that of a nation declining, perhaps irreversibly. This decade convinced a majority of Americans that the future would be worse than the past and that there is nothing to be done about it. This is the ‘new normal.’ How did this happen?

“September 11's planners could hardly have imagined that their attacks might seriously undermine what Americans had built over two centuries, what millions of immigrants from the world over had come to join and maintain. In fact, our decline happened because the War on Terror—albeit microscopic in size and destructiveness as wars go—forced upon us, as wars do, the most important questions that any society ever faces: Who are we, and who are our enemies? What kind of peace do we want? What does it take to get it? Are we able and willing to do what it takes to secure our preferred way of life, to deserve living the way we prefer? Our bipartisan ruling class's dysfunctional responses to such questions inflicted the deepest wounds.”

Codevilla’s analysis is detailed and damning. It is well worth a read.

Today, in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick summarizes Codevilla’s argument and applies it to the current situation in the Middle East.

In her words: “The Left refused to acknowledge that the US was under attack from the forces of radical Islam enabled by Islamic supremacist regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Iran because the Left didn't want the US to fight. Moreover, because the Left believes that US policies are to blame for the Islamic world's hostility to America, leftists favor foreign policies predicated on US appeasement of its enemies.

“For its part, the Right refused to acknowledge the identity and nature of the US's enemy because it feared the Left.

“And so, rather than fight radical Islamists, under Bush the US went to war against a tactic - terrorism. And lo and behold, it was unable to defeat a tactic because a tactic isn't an enemy. It's just a tactic. 

“And as its war aim was unachievable, the declared ends of the war became spectacular. Rather than fight to defend the US, the US went to war to transform the Arab world from one imbued with unmentionable religious extremism to one increasingly ruled by democratically elected unmentionable religious extremism.

“The lion's share of responsibility for this dismal state of affairs lies with former president Bush and his administration. While the Left didn't want to fight or defeat the forces of radical Islam after September 11, the majority of Americans did. And by catering to the Left and refusing to identify the enemy, Bush adopted war-fighting tactics that discredited the war effort and demoralized and divided the American public, thus paving the way for Obama to be elected while running on a radical anti-war platform of retreat and appeasement.

“Since Obama came into office, he has followed the Left's ideological guidelines of ending the fight against and seeking to appease America's worst enemies. This is why he has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This is why he turned a blind eye to the Islamists who dominated the opposition to Gaddafi. This is why he has sought to appease Iran and Syria. This is why he supports the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition. This is why he supports Turkey's Islamist government. And this is why he is hostile to Israel.

“And this is why come December 31, the US will withdraw in defeat from Iraq, and pro- American forces in the region and the US itself will reap the whirlwind of Washington's irresponsibility.

“There is a price to be paid for calling an enemy an enemy. But there is an even greater price to be paid for failing to do so.”

A sobering assessment, to say the least.