http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html
WAR PARTY PLAYS THE RACE CARD
Spy plane downing provokes racist rants
Today [Thursday morning] Matt Drudge used the "H"-word for the first time in
a headline: POWELL HAS HOPE FOR 'LITTLE SITUATION' WITH CHINA, Matt notes
with apparent disdain, darkly adding: HOSTAGES ENTER 6TH DAY OF CAPTIVITY.
How long before Dan Rather opens his newscasts by solemnly intoning that it's
"Day [pick a number, any number] of the Hainan hostage crisis"? Over in Oak
Harbor, Washington, where 14 of the 24 members of the spy plane's Navy flight
crew were stationed, they're already wrapping everything in sight with yellow
ribbons. The Washington Post reports that "no one is voicing anger at the
Chinese for their behavior – yet." "But if it drags on," a local resident is
quoted, "you will." Of course, a few are out in front – waaay out in front.
DOG BURGERS AGAIN?
As a virtual compendium of every warmongering trick in the book, National
Review Online has it all: the good, the bad, and the exceedingly ugly. NRO
editor-in-chief Jonah Goldberg's latest adventure in tastelessness sets the
tone for what may loosely be termed their coverage of the spy plane issue.
Responding to Chinese President Jiang Zemin's demand that the US perform an
acceptable act of contrition, Goldberg quips: "Well, I will be in favor of
apologizing the moment they apologize for all of those menus they keep
leaving outside my front door." Pretty funny stuff, if you equate the death
of a Chinese pilot with litter left on your doorstep. But don't think that
this self-described "Gen-Ex P. J. O'Rourke" is your typical knuckle-dragging
xenophobe: "In fact," he avers, "I've got considerable sympathy for the Red
Chinese – despite the fact that if my dog were a member of the American crew
[,] Jiang Zemin would have eaten him by now." A Japanese friend of mine
howled with laughter at Goldberg's joke: but, then again, this same friend
absolutely and unabashedly hates the Chinese, and is a ready audience for
this kind of deprecating race-based humor, no matter how crude, unfunny, or
just plain mean. Goldberg's brand of humor is all three.
A SPARK OF HONESTY
Whatever "sympathy" Goldberg feels for these eaters of dog-burgers, it is not
enough to make him admit that the US government just may be in the wrong. Yet
he displays a rare intellectual honesty – rare not only in Goldberg, but in
National Review (both online-and- off) – in admitting that the China "threat"
is being vastly overblown: "China has a bad government," he writes. "They do
bad things to their people. They cause mischief abroad. They put MSG in
everything. But they are not the Soviet Union, despite what some of my
friends at the Weekly Standard sometimes suggest."
MSG & AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
Goldberg may not have a clue about who's "causing mischief abroad" – I don't
recall hearing about any Chinese spy planes buzzing the California coast –
but he's dead right about the war-mad neo-cons over at the Weekly Standard.
Speaking of which: this [Thursday] afternoon, Drudge ran a top-left leader
headlined: "CHINESE PAPER BLASTS USA: 'Gangster logic of hegemonism won't
work... You shouldn't be so arrogant on the strength of your might...'" Now,
just who are these "hegemonists" the Chinese keep talking about?
FOREIGN POLICY PATHOLOGY
While this terminology may seem abstruse to the ordinary American, who might
speculate that it is some archaic Commie jargon necessarily mysterious to the
modern mind, the truth is, there are "hegemonists" afoot. Indeed, it often
seems, with their frequent references to the term, that the Chinese leaders
are conducting a debate with William Kristol, the elfish editor of the Weekly
Standard and chief ideologist of the self-described "hegemonist" school of
foreign policy mavens. In a 1996 article in Foreign Affairs, that became the
foreign policy manifesto of the Weekly Standard and its "national greatness"
school of conservatism, Kristol and policy analyst Robert Kagan complained
that conservatives were "confused" if they thought the end of the cold war
meant they could come home and solve their own country's serious domestic
problems. This was a "lukewarm consensus" that was "bad for the country," and
conservatives "should not accede to it," lest they find themselves locked out
of power, and "unable to govern." Instead, Kristol and Kagan averred, what's
needed is "a more elevated vision of America's international role." Elevated,
that is, to a level of grandiosity that is frankly pathological:
"What should that role be? Benevolent global hegemony. Having defeated the
"evil empire," the United States enjoys strategic and ideological
predominance. The first objective of U.S. foreign policy should be to
preserve and enhance that predominance . . . The aspiration to benevolent
hegemony might strike some as either hubristic or morally suspect."
Or quite possibly both, I hasten to add. "But a hegemon is nothing more or
less than a leader with preponderant influence and authority over all others
in its domain," Kristol and Kagan continue. "That is America's position in
the world today. The leaders of Russia and China understand this. At their
April summit meeting, Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin joined in denouncing
'hegemonism' in the post-Cold War world. They meant this as a complaint about
the United States. It should be taken as a compliment and a guide to action."
THE WOLFOWITZ DOCTRINE
And it is being taken as a guide to action, now that the factional battle
within the Bush administration is being resolved in favor of the
Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz "hegemonists" over Colin Powell and the State Department.
Paul Wolfowitz, deputy SecDef, is the author of a classified Pentagon memo
written in 1992 that, in less self-consciously grandiose language, perfectly
expresses the Kristol-Kagan thesis in the form of concrete policy
recommendations. According to Wolfowitz, the operative principle of US
foreign policy in the post-cold war world must be to maintain an overwhelming
global dominance so as to prevent "potential competitors from even aspiring
to a larger regional or global role." The crushing of any possible rival must
be the "dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy
and require[s] that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating
a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to
generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the
territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia." This view, what we
might call the Wolfowitz Doctrine, is fast gaining the upper hand in the
highest circles of the US government. It is a mad policy doomed to failure,
and for the same reason Icarus was plunged into the sea, yet this
militaristic doctrine is driving our Eastasian policy and is the direct cause
of the spy plane incident. Who else but a self-conscious "hegemon" would
claim that a military spy plane, having landed in the airport of the
spied-upon country, has the status of a commercial flight "in distress"? How
high and mighty can you get?
WHITE MAN'S BURDEN
This hegemonism, to the Chinese, evokes the ghost of their colonial past, as
if the US is now bidding to take up the white man's burden just as the
British in Hong Kong have finally put it down. Indeed, there are elements of
ethnic and racial rivalry, not only in the Chinese resentment but in its
object: those bellicose and insufferably arrogant Americans. Leave it to
National Review to exemplify this arrogance, not just in the juvenile
borderline-racist jibes of Jonah Goldberg, but in the cold-blooded comments
of John Derbyshire, who contemptuously criticizes the Admiral of the Pacific
fleet for saying that the downed spy plane is now beyond our reach, and
frankly calls for war:
"With all due respect, Admiral: The hell you say. The US could have prevented
the Chinese from boarding the plane very easily, by destroying it. The
administration should still do this as speedily as possible, to show the
Chinese how seriously we take the theft of our property. That plane should be
destroyed, without any regard whatsoever to Chinese sensitivities, or indeed
lives and property. The only question worth serious discussion is that of
technique."
"CANE THE WOGS" – AND KEEP THEM OUT
Who cares about the lives and property of those little yellow men? If this
repulsive "cane the wogs" mentality seems outright un-American, that's
because it is: Derbyshire was born in England, but moved to New York and now
divides his time between writing novels and poems, while advocating the worst
war crimes in absolutely deadpan prose. Derbyshire also has some pretty
exotic racial theories, which he related in an article on VDARE opposing
Chinese immigration to the US – not because they would be a burden to the
state, but because they are too smart! As he puts it, on the one hand, there
may be some superficially good reasons to admit this "model minority" to our
shores:
"But there are some contrary indicators. In the first place, Asian immigrants
are exceptionally bookish, and much more likely to attend college than any
other American group except Jews. This is generally considered to be good
news – better they should end up in boardrooms and research labs than stewing
resentfully in a ghetto. However, the correlation between educational level
and political good sense is considerably mysterious; it may very well be
negative."
DERBYSHIRE ON RACE
What fodder for the knuckle-draggers – out with them, they're too damn
intelligent! Deriving a political position based on such blatant envy would
of course be impossible in a society less inculcated with extreme
egalitarianism. That might work in his native England, but, thankfully, it
won't work here. Derbyshire has some pretty exotic racial theories, not
unconnected to his warlike stance. In an email sent to a right-wing news
group, Derbyshire responded to someone who wrote of "the feminization and
negrification of America":
"They are the same thing. It has often been observed (e.g. by Steve Sailer &
Philippe Rushton) that masculinity/femininity cut different ways in different
populations. At one extreme, East Asians tend to be physically 'feminine':
small bones, lightly-muscled and hairless bodies, great manual dexterity,
graceful. Typical Olympic event: diving. Mentally, however, they are very
'masculine' – good at problem-solving, pattern recognition, spatial
visualization, math and computer science. East Asians do have a strong
military tradition, but a rather odd one: the heroes (like ZhuGe Liang) are
clever strategists who win by out-foxing the enemy. I don't think ZhuGe ever
lifted a sword in anger."
BLACK AND YELLOW
Oh, those sneaky Asians – they may have outfoxed us by getting their hands on
our spy plane and crew, but Derbyshire has a solution: an air assault, and
perhaps an outright invasion of Hainan island. Force, after all, is all these
"feminine" yellow people understand: you have to show them who's boss. As an
interesting sidelight, here is Derbyshire on the question of whether blacks
are inherently less mentally agile:
"At the other end of the spectrum, W. African blacks are physically very
'masculine': big bones, high muscle-fat ratios, sexually vigorous. Typical
Olympic event: sprinting. Mentally, however, they are "feminine": good verbal
skills (half the neologisms in US English come up from the black underclass),
great at arguing, trash talking, emoting, preaching, lawyering, salesmanship.
Hopeless at math, as the recent AMS tables (math Ph.Ds awarded, by race,
Notices of the AMS, vol.48, no.2, Feb. 2001) show."
THE DARK SIDE
Presumably the white "race," according to this theory, embodies the masculine
in both its physical and mental aspects, thus entitling whites to their
globally dominant status. Mixed with Goldberg's glibly superficial racism,
Derbyshire's more serious – indeed, deadly earnest – racialist theories make
one big poisonous cocktail.. A more unpleasant concoction has never been
brewed. Imbibed by conservatives, it can lead only to a drunken orgy of
warmongering – and murderous hate. As the crisis drags on, and the war
hysteria builds, how long before Chinese-Americans are targeted by violent
nutballs out to avenge the nonexistent "honor" of their rulers? These same
hysterics are now calling for a boycott of all Chinese products – as if the
poor peasants of China had any say in the fate of the captured American crew.
From there it is not too far to travel before anybody with yellow skin is
seen as the Enemy: in making sick jokes about Chinese "dog-eaters," and
publishing earnest screeds advocating immediate military action, National
Review is openly and knowingly appealing to the ugly underside of the
American psyche.
