Patriotism: Love of Country or the last Refuge of Scoundrels?

In simple terms, patriotism means loving and revering one’s country. Patriotism can take many forms. During the Vietnam War, for instance, John McCain found it preferable to endure torture and captivity rather than dishonor the uniform he wore and the ideals he lived by.

The Vietnam War, of course, was controversial. Many of those who protested against America’s involvement in South East Asia were motivated by patriotism too since they believed the war was a betrayal of America’s values. Forty years later, the arrogance and folly of that ill-fated war seem apparent even to its architects (such as Robert McNamara). Criticizing one’s country, too, can be a profound act of patriotism, particularly when a mob of pundits, politicians, and the hoi palloi threaten to stampede the lonely dissenters who have only truth on their side.

One of the solitary dissenters who was trampled in the run up to the Iraq war was weapons inspector Scott Ritter. I remember vividly watching a talk Ritter gave on the eve of the invasion as he emphatically insisted there were no WMD in Iraq. Though I remained agnostic on the question of WMD I opposed the war against Iraq for three reasons: 1) I believed the Bush administration was pursuing an imperial agenda that would prove tragic for the United States. 2) Unless the international community had a stake in the outcome I believed the venture would be more likely to fail than succeed. And 3) I believed the Bush administration did not appreciate the sectarian divisions in Iraq.

The demagoguery used to sell “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was nauseating. Pundits like William Kristol impugned the patriotism of those who questioned the war. Like Cassandra, I felt I sense of foreboding as the Pollyannaish cheerleaders bashed opponents of the war as appeasers and defeatists.

An axis-of-obtuseness (Fox News, the Weekly Standard, the Bush administration) drowned out the few lonely voices of reason that attempted to warn the public. The Shakespearean scholar Harold Bloom recognized in Bush – our “boy emperor” – a figure at once tragic and farcical. Al Gore, a Renaissance (man especially compared to mediocrities that mocked him) spelled out with prescient lucidity the case against launching a preemptive war with Iraq. And Barrack Obama, an up and coming state senator from Illinois, had the wisdom to recognize a bad idea when he saw it.

There were others, of course, such as General Anthony Zinni, who believed Iraq was the “wrong war at the wrong time.” But by and large, those with the greatest zeal and least understanding pitched their case to the lowest common denominator and carried the day: Mission Accomplished.

If only morality (and patriotism) was as simple as the president determined to vanquish evil by spreading liberty to the Four Corners of the Middle East. History, Bush believes, is a Manachean contest between the forces of freedom and tyranny. Bush is a man without a tragic sense. He envisions himself as the man in the white hat in a B western, but he is blissfully unaware that he inhabits a Shakespearean universe where noble intentions can breed moral catastrophes complete with torture chambers and precipitous national declines.

To put it charitably, Bush has about as much business being president as Dan Quayle would have competing in a spelling bee. Watching the Bush administration govern is about as cringe producing as imagining the cast of Hee Haw performing Rigolletto. The discerning reader, incidentally, will note that the dramatic irony in Verdi’s great opera is that the jester kills the very thing he loves most – his daughter – just as Bush has single-handedly destroyed the country he no doubt loves. The ruinous debt, the 7.6% inflation rate, stagflation, the plummeting dollar, the ill-advised and ineptly managed war in Iraq, the botched handling of Katrina, and the numerous torture, abuse, and lawbreaking scandals that have sullied America’s reputation precipitated one of the most precipitous national declines ever witnessed.

I don’t doubt Bush’s patriotism, or Donald Rumsfeld’s, or Alberto Gonazales’ . . . But there is ample evidence to doubt their character and their competence. The philosopher Hannah Arendt observed that the first thing the Nazis did as they consolidated power was to question patriotism of their political opponents. The would-be masters of the universe at Enron pursued a similar tack; anyone who raised doubts about the company’s accounting or business practices was branded as disloyal. Not surprisingly, both Herman Goering and Ken Lay insisted they would be vindicated in the end. To be a fool and rogue at the same time, their countries and companies may crumble, but their unique wisdom allows them to discern what others cannot: thirty, nay fifty years hence History will celebrate the choices and accomplishments they alone could make. It is all about them.

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