New York Times national security reporter James Risen has written a book titled State of War: the secret history of the CIA and the Bush administration. It is not an unbiased book. At the same time, it is undoubtedly factual. According to Risen, the U.S. government under George W. Bush has entered a sinister path. Official bungling and mismanagement, together with immoral and illegal methods, have led to the practice of official fibbing. Contrary to U.S. law the Bush administration has unleashed a controversial domestic spying effort. It has authorized the torturing prisoners in secret CIA prisons, or by handing prisoners over to Egyptian experts in torture. According to Risen, the Bush administration has ignored the opium problem in Afghanistan so that the country's democracy has evolved into the façade of a narcotics-driven state.
With so much criticism heaped upon the administration, one is reminded of Meg Greenfield's statement about America's attitude toward political authority. "We have figuratively stormed the palace," she wrote in a book titled Washington. "We are going through the closets and medicine chests with great guffaws. The nondeferential among us include not just a roughneck press but also a public that begrudges its leaders the perks of state, that is willing to accord them less power and privacy and honor." According to Greenfield, official Washington has long presented us with degrading and embarrassing behavior on all sides. The press frenzy to unmask "misfeasance and lies" has naturally led to the destruction of innocent public servants. "Some guilty ones got away, [and] even turned the assault to advantage," she admitted.
The enemies of the United States want the country to descend further into this repeated cycle of scandal and destructive infighting. They want to see our institutions shaken to the core. And that is where we're headed. We cannot help ourselves. The government cannot help its bad behavior just as the American people have embraced a chaotic, self-contradictory way of life. The Constitution itself is breaking down, as shown by Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano in two recent books: Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws and The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land. Risen's account of Bush administration illegalities is mild compared with Napolitano's. After studying Napolitano's books, there is no question that the United States has entered an era of legal chaos.
The Constitution becomes meaningless when the government feels free to break the law. A country with a weak hold on moral conduct, intellectually confused and unfocussed, lacking honor and integrity, has begun to turn toward Machiavellian instrumentalism. This turn is an inconsistent process. It is a process without brakes. Once the country lost its intellectual and ethical grounding, no other course was possible. Men are the prisoners of their ideas, and today they are the prisoners of disorder and dishonor because of the ideas they have embraced. We are all infected, to one degree or another. Our moral clarity is not what it should be. The democratic slogans of the president are no antidote. Democracy is not a moral thing, but a set of procedural niceties. If there is nothing nice behind the procedures then victory itself becomes a self-defeating proposition.
Practical wisdom and moral wisdom are correlates, if each is properly understood. Hundreds of years ago, Balthasar Gracian wrote The Art of Worldly Wisdom. It is a book that President Bush and his entire administration should be carrying with them, and reading, day to day. Gracian's moral vision was practical, and it was deep. He did not entirely deny the importance of the Machiavellian perspective. At the same time he called on statesmen to "use, but not abuse, cunning." He warned that we should "act only with honorable people." He wrote, "You can trust them and they you. Their honor is the best surety of their behavior even in misunderstandings, for they always act according to their character." Gracian warned statesmen against "becoming disliked." He wrote, "There is no right occasion to seek dislike - it comes without seeking soon enough."
The illegalities of the Bush administration, documented in detail by Napolitano, and the secret use of torture by CIA operatives as described by Risen, signify an absence of virtue in the country's leadership. "Wage war honorably," wrote Gracian. "One should fight so as to conquer, not alone by force but by the way it is used. A mean victory brings no glory, but rather disgrace. Honor always has the upper hand. An honorable person never uses forbidden weapons.... The noble and the ignoble should be miles apart. Be able to boast that if gallantry, generosity, and fidelity were lost in the world people would be able to rediscover them in your own heart." The integrity and humanity of the United States are not worthless objects. In truth, men are protected by goodness even as they are protected by the harm they can do to the enemy. As history shows, torture is not an effective path to the truth. The honorable treatment of enemies is both morally and pragmatically correct. To win the peace one needs credibility with friends, and also with enemies.
Gracian ends his book with the following statement: "Virtue is the sun of our world, and has for its course a good conscience." Virtue, explained Gracian, "is so beautiful that she finds favor with God and man. Nothing is lovable but virtue, nothing detestable but vice. A person's capacity and greatness are to be measured by his virtue and not by his fortune." The United States is a wealthy country, but its power isn't strictly a matter of guns and missiles. Real power also depends on virtue. What better advice could there be for Americans today? What better practice could there be? What better policy?
