I was premature in starting this sequence with the cowardice of neoconservatism. Understanding the vanity of thinking beliefs infallible and the cynicism of having the ends justify the means in order to spread them prepares us better to understand why cowardice is involved as well.
To spread democratic ends through undemocratic means, such as invasion, betrays one’s very convictions. When the cock crowed three times and Peter betrayed his convictions by denying he knew Jesus we are struck by his cowardice. There lie three main reasons for cowardice; all three play a role in our Middle East intervention.
One reason is apprehension based on uncertainty. We cannot risk that the Middle East becomes democratic on their own because of the fear they may not. Even if they do, it may be on terms that diminishes, not enhances, our security. That is, after all, the reason why the CIA sponsered a coup to overthrow a democratic Iran in the first place. We view oil as vital to economic and military strength. A United States that is less strong economically and militarily necessarily means a world less secure, at least in the confused minds of neoconservatives.
Another cause for cowardice is the apprehension of responsibility. People who are bestowed with leadership, such as parents, are expected to act responsibly. But acting responsibly often interferes with the life you otherwise would pursue, as often happens with parents. A country that becomes the wealthiest and most powerful in the world has leadership bestowed on them, whether we would wish it or not. We would view the world a chaotic mess if all nations deemed preemptive strikes moral under certain circumstances. As the most powerful nation, with leadership bestowed upon us, it is our responsibility to resist preemptive strikes, to accept the parental “burden” of patience if you will, of having to retaliate rather than initiate confrontation. The cowardice of neoconservatism will not allow for that.
Cowardice also results from apprehension of the truth. This is the cowardice I focused on initially. One reason that people become dogmatic is they fear being wrong. They cannot even let on that they fear being wrong because that opens the possibility that they might be. Thus they cannot be empiricists, allowing their beliefs to be theories that can be tested by events as they happen. The odds are that if the whole world approached democracy in their own way they would copy a lot from us, but they would also put their own stamps on it. The odds are that when this happened there would be a few new twists that would cause us to go “Hmm. That’s better than how we are doing it. Let’s copy them!” That is simply unacceptable to the neoconservative who can only view democracy in terms of American democracy.
Apprehension of uncertainty, responsibility and truth are the ultimate causes for cowardly acts, and actions speak louder than the neoconservative manifesto of spreading democracy for the sake of security and morality.
