Until recently, Jed Babbin was a contributing editor of The
American Spectator and a mainstay of this site. Readers no
doubt fondly remember and greatly miss his weekly “Loose Canons”
column — which here makes a return guest appearance. He is a
former Air Force JAG officer and served as a deputy undersecretary
of defense in President George H. W. Bush’s administration.
Currently, he is the editor of Human Events.
His new book,
In the Words of Our Enemies, is soon to be released.
Previous works by Mr. Babbin include
Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than You
Think and a novel, Legacy of Valor.
BC: Mr. Babbin, what is the central theme
of In the Words of Our Enemies?
Jed Babbin: The reason I wrote this book is to
create a hawkish diplomacy. If that sounds like an oxymoron, it
shouldn’t. Churchill said of World War II that no war could more
easily have been prevented by prompt action. Using the words of
people such as Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and others I’m trying
to get people to pay attention to potential enemies abroad and do
what is necessary to either avoid war altogether or position
America to win.
BC: Isn’t the acknowledgment that evil
exists a prerequisite for the understanding of your positions? Why
are so many Americans skeptical about the nature of evil? Is it due
to our decadence and affluence?
Jed Babbin: Americans are skeptical because our
government has — especially since 9/11 — told us that we should
go about our business and they’d take care of the threats. Sure, we
are affluent and some are sunk in decadence. But that’s not the
only reason most of us are oblivious to the dangers arising in many
places around the world.
BC: You state that Americans “tend to see
our adversaries as people of the same mind as ourselves,” which is
both accurate and absurd. Doesn’t the statement also illustrate the
fallaciousness of multiculturalism? Its mandate seems to be that we
should respect and suborn ourselves to people who are incapable of
reciprocation.
Jed Babbin: That’s right as far as it goes, but
this problem is much deeper. It’s akin to anthropomorphism. A
cartoon animal that smiles and talks is as real as our view of many
of our foreign opponents. We see our enemies and potential enemies
in the terms we see ourselves: kind, peaceful, and existing in a
live-and-let-live world. The real world isn’t much like that at
all.
BC: What’s your opinion of those who
condemn George W. Bush for neglecting diplomacy and who believe
that diplomacy in itself will triumph over the likes of Iran and
North Korea?
Jed Babbin: They alternately amuse and disgust
me. The old “realist” crowd wants only diplomacy and is willing to
wait forever for it to work. The “neocons” want to use democracy as
a weapon, and do not understand that it’s not. Between them are
folks such as me who want to fight this war in a manner calculated
to win decisively — knowing that unless we do so we will lose it
inevitably — and see nothing of the sort happening. Bush needs to
undertake the hawkish diplomacy I’m describing, but seems incapable
of it.
BC: It is your hope that by printing the
words, speeches, and propaganda of our enemies you can enlighten
the citizenry and allow them to make informed decisions. But what
if many Americans aren’t interested in such considerations? The
left especially is of a mindset that no land is as vile as our
own.
Jed Babbin: I’m convinced there are very few
people who really think that way. The Michael Mooron wing of the
Democratic Party are like Churchill’s definition of a fanatic:
someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
Fortunately, there aren’t many like that. I know too many good,
solid Americans from all over the country. They will, I believe, be
receptive to the information this book assembles for the first time
in one place. They’re not dumb.
BC: What’s your take on neoconservatism?
Does it actually exist? Has it become synonymous with those who
believe in a muscular national defense?
Jed Babbin: Neoconservatism is a
psychopathology, parallel to liberalism, which exists in some
corners of the White House and in the minds of all the liberals who
need it as a way to label conservatives as whackos. Those who
called Barry Goldwater a John Bircher now call serious
defense-minded conservatives “neocons.” It happens to me all the
time, and I take great offense. Thanks to the media’s willful
mischaracterization of neoconservatism, anyone who wants to defend
this nation with anything more than a “mother, may I?” to the UN is
labeled a neocon. The basic problem with neocons is that they
believe democracy is a weapon, not a system of government. Scared
hell out of me to hear Rudy Giuliani talk about “nation-building”
— the flip side of neoconservatism that forms the basis for losing
wars — in a speech a coupla weeks ago.
There is a profound difference between real conservatives and
neocons and it is best explained in the piece I
wrote for Wlady in March 2006 entitled, “Endgame Conservatives.” In
short form, war conservatives — “endgame conservatives,” if you
will — want to attack the enemy at their centers of gravity and
refuse to fight proxy wars such as what Iraq is now. That means
destroying their ideology just like we destroyed Communism and
forcibly ending the state sponsorship of terrorism. We object to
spending lives on the “nation-building” nonsense. We believe we
should have ended Saddam’s regime, propped up a provisional
government and then pulled out of Iraq in about 60-90 days. The
same approach should always apply — though the military measures
we may have to take elsewhere will be much different. But the
formula applies everywhere: kill a sufficient number of the right
people, break enough of the right things, and say, “Hasta la vista,
baby, and we’ll be back if you start messing with us again.”
BC:I laughed out loud when I saw your section
on Fidel Castro. He’s made so many offensive utterances that you
had to categorize them by the year. How is it that this stone-cold
killer can continue to be esteemed by members of the political
left?
Jed Babbin: Well, Leonard Bernstein isn’t
around to be mau-maued anymore, but Chris Dodd acts in his stead.
The lefties love Castro because he — like Dodd, Kennedy, Jane
Fonda and the rest — is one of the '60s love children. They
remember their glory days, the fun they had at Woodstock smoking
pot and wearing Che Guevara T-shirts (and nothing else). Fidel was
part of all those glory days. It’s gonna be really hard on them
when he dies: the end of their youth. It must seem like just
yesterday that they were joining him in screaming for Nixon’s
downfall.
BC: You quote Sout Al-Khalifa who said,
“Broken and completely humiliated, George Bush, a fool who is being
obeyed, announced his obvious incapability to deal with the wrath
of Allah that visited the city of homosexuals.” This sentence made
me think of the arguments of Dinesh D’Souza’s in The Enemy at
Home. What do you make of the idea that our culture, and not
our foreign policy, is what inflames the Islamofascists the
most?
Jed Babbin: I dismiss both halves of that
question — the premise and the suggestion — because they are both
truly laughable. The only thing that is necessary for the
Islamofascists to declare war against us is the fact that we aren’t
yet enslaved by them. Two points: first, radical Islam is an
ideology, not a religion. It provides for conquest, terrorism,
death and — at best — poverty. It is a Middle Eastern version of
Nazism; second, the Islamofascists have been at war with
non-conforming Muslims — killing them as quickly as they can —
since at least the 1920s when the final death-throes of the Ottoman
Empire disturbed the Middle East. This ain’t our fault, no matter
how you slice it.
BC: The Chinese have been issuing hate
speech about us for many years. Is there anything we can do about
it? Should we not treat China with excessive caution?
Jed Babbin: We do. But China, unlike the
Islamofascisti, can be contained. Japan, unlike Taiwan, has
awakened and is acting responsibly to defend itself. No nation —
including us — has risen to superpower status except on a tide of
war. If we can contain China and manage its emergence without war
it will be a first.
BC: Chapter 9 concerns Vladimir Putin’s
Russia and references an interview he did for Al Jazeera. I guess
my question here kind of mirrors the one with China. The transcript
reveals him putting forth the position that Hamas is not a
terrorist organization. There’s no question that Mr. Putin meets
well the definition of the phrase “two-faced,” but what can any
U.S. politicians possibly do about his machinations?
Jed Babbin: U.S. pols are indisposed to do
anything about Putin, politically or otherwise. The best thing
would be for the Prez to admit he misjudged Putin. That won’t
happen. But wouldn’t it be refreshing for one of the Republican
presidential wannabes to mention Bad Vlad and say something like,
“There — but for the grace of God — goes Brezhnev”? Bet you a box
of Cuban cigars no such thing happens. Meanwhile, all we can do is
make sure Raoul goes when his older brother expires. Because the
CIA is such a mess, we ought to subcontract the job to the Israelis
or the Brits.
BC: Do you buy Mark Steyn’s premise in
America Alone that the democracies of the west may soon face
extinction due to demographic decline? Do you see any way in which
Europe can avoid becoming Eurabia?
Jed Babbin: Mark makes a convincing case. The
numbers don’t lie, and unless the trend is reversed France — for
example — won’t be French in another generation or two.
Surprisingly, that won’t be good news.
BC: Lastly, do you have a favorite story
with which to entertain our readers from your days at The
American Spectator? Any tale ranging from mildly distasteful to
truly irreverent will suffice.
Jed Babbin: Wow. There were so many great
moments it’s hard to choose among them. So many dinners at R.
Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s home (at which you never really knew who
would pop in), the many times my loving wife would look at a draft
column and say, “YOU CAN’T SAY THAT IN PRINT,” and — best of all
— the reader mail from all over the world. The
Spectator’s audience is wonderful. Some day I will be able
to tell the story of the bent key, the wired letter, and the
curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. But not today.
