Lilla and Rorty on Iraq: Die Zeit has a good collection of 7 short essays from prominent (mostly U.S.) intellectuals on the question, "should the U.S. wage a preventive war against Iraq?" Some of the essays are unsurprising: Yale Law Professor and occasional pro-Bush pundit Ruth Wedgwood says "go," as she does here, in english. One person argues that a war on Iraq will harm the war on terrorism, in particular the war on al-Qaeda and its ilk --New York Review of Books contributor and Hebrew University Professor Avishai Margalit makes this argument. Ronald Dworkin worries that the administration's war plans will weaken the U.N.

To my mind, the most interesting essays come from Mark Lilla and Richard Rorty, however. As far as I can tell, neither has articulated their positions in print on this side of the Atlantic in a readily accessible form.

Neither has particularly kind things to say about the Europeans. Rorty argues that the Bush administration's "contempt" for the European position is partly justified, since the folks in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris have not developed their own policies with respect to the proliferation of WMD's. Lilla argues that Europeans are simply "unwilling to pay a price for the political freedom of others," as they showed in the Balkans.

Lilla's argument is ultimately more interesting than Rorty's. For one, he states at the outset that he is against the war that the Bush administration seems to be planning, although he is "more strongly against" anti-war folks who oppose the war for the wrong reasons. For Lilla, the "no blood for oil" argument doesn't make sense. Indeed, he argues, if the administration were only concerned about oil, its foreign policy would likely be more moderate and realist, less likely to risk dyspepsia on Wall Street, less likely to risk the destabilization of Saudi Arabia. And if influence in the Middle East were the reason for the administration's main concern, he continues, Bush would probably try to avoid conflicts with "radical Islam."

The more interesting parts of Lilla's argument concern the influence of what Lilla calls "eschatological and messianic" democratic thinking on the part of the post-September 11th Bush administration. According to Lilla, the administration is really concerned with "global democratization." The ascendant American right is not concerned with "interests" so much as with "ideas," and the left, European and otherwise, has had a difficult time recognizing this fact.

For an influential blogger's global democratization manifesto, go to Oxblog's announcement of the creation of the Oxford Democracy Forum.

Lilla is skeptical of the democratizing argument behind the push for war on Iraq. He argues that there is "no example whatsoever of non- or half-modern cultures, that suddenly prove to be fruitful ground for liberal democratic government." He argues that Iran and Algeria would have given the old-style Republicans pause: democratic tendencies and friendliness with the U.S. do not go hand in hand. What's needed for liberal democracy is "modernization."

Lilla finds the administration's position on global democracy unrealistic, but nonetheless more "noble" than the position of the western European opponents of war, who rely on "cynicism and indifference." The urge for democracy and Wilsonian self-determination certainly makes sense. And eastern Europeans, for example, are right to remember the failure of Western Europe during the cold war:

As Reagan called out, in Berlin, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," the western Europeans laughed and rolled their eyes; Poles and Czechs didn't, and today they support the war on Iraq because they still share Reagan's belief in democracy.

Speaking in my own name, I share Lilla's skepticism here, although, as I've said before, I come at the question from a different direction. I just don't think that the administration's fantasy of regime change in the direction of a democratic Iraq is going to work. It's very hard to establish democracy with the barrel of a gun; the administration has not done a good job at preparing the public for the task (as Tom Friedman argued recently); other priorities are likely to intervene; and the goal would be more easily achieved if there were more consensus behind the war effort.

I could be wrong on all these fronts. And the administration is actually building a coalition, even if that task is in some conflict with its desire to play tough in order to occupy the strongest bargaining position vis-a-vis Iraq. Nonetheless, if the administration doesn't end up following through on its stated goal to start the process of democratization in Iraq, for whatever reasons, the critics on the anti-imperial left will have their justification.

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