Emboldening II: The Endumbening

So here I was, sitting in, how apropos, the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, and half-listening to John Kerry’s press conference where he’s outlining the case for bombing Assad. And there’s this one word that keeps coming up in these discussions, primarily from people who can’t get enough of bombing other countries, and that word is “embolden.” As in, “if we don’t bomb Assad, we’re going to embolden our enemies.” We’re going to look weak to them, you see.

Thesis: anyone who unironically uses the word “embolden” is either a credulous idiot or a lying piece of shit. Or both.

If you’re minimally aware of inter-generational trends in US military spending, you might know that the US spends more money on its military (excuse me, “defense”) than the next n countries combined, where n is a number that I’m too lazy to presently look up but which I’m quite positive is well into the double digits. If there’s anything that anyone knows at all about US foreign policy, it’s precisely that we’re not at all afraid of bombing anyone or anything we like. “We will wreck your shit,” has been longstanding US doctrine in one form or other for decades. I am willing to bet money that no one but an American would be stupid enough to think that the US needs to do anything to prove its willingness to use force.

The whole notion of “emboldening” is an absurd framework that falls apart at the slightest perturbation. The “emboldening thesis” holds that if a particular act (e.g. the use of chemical weapons) goes unpunished, then subsequent bad acts are likely to follow because everyone will assume the policing hegemon is too weak to respond. Italics because that’s the operative principle of the whole thing. But in reality, this has never been true; from the lowliest aspirant to Al Qaeda membership to the highest leadership of any other nation, everyone knows that the countries that end up suffering the wrath of the hegemon are those countries which are politically convenient to punish. The US will happily disregard international law in one instance (here, have some chemical weapons, Mr. Hussein!) where it suits it, while using it as a pretext elsewhere (bad, bad Bashar!), AND NOAH-WAHN DENIES THIS. The lesson any minimally competent observer will extract from this is not that the US is too “weak” to punish transgressors (because, you know, we just literally spent the last decade occupying two different countries, one of which we invaded for totally bullshit reasons), but that the US will just do whatever the fuck it wants when it wants, and it’s not going to explain anything to anyone.

There are lots of terrible reasons to launch a strike on Syria, including the fact that there’s no actual plan to do anything other than lob a few missiles, define whatever they hit as a strategic target, and declare victory. But I think the idea that “we have to do something because otherwise some bad people will be emboldened,” is probably the most idiotic reason for doing anything whatsoever; it flies in the face of all history and sense. The fact that this assertion is allowed to repeatedly go unchallenged in public discourse is just another testament to the sad state of our intellectual life.