In the latest issue of the journal World Affairs, Andrew J. Bacevich offers an appreciation of Graham Greene and his novel, The Quiet American:
In the twentieth-century English-speaking world, Greene ranks alongside Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Evelyn Waugh among the small number of writers addressing explicitly Catholic themes who might qualify for the accolade “great.” Yet Greene’s relationship with Catholicism—with God, for that matter—was profoundly ambivalent and riddled with contradictions. He cheated on his wife, cheated constantly on his several mistresses, and during his restless travels frequented prostitutes. Fealty and self-denial did not figure in his makeup. He was not a nice human being. Yet Greene’s intimate familiarity with sin combined with considerable gifts as a writer to produce works of profound insight.
The Quiet American, deriving its energy from Greene’s scabrous anti-Americanism, offers one example. The novel stands in relation to Cold War America as Uncle Tom’s Cabin stands in relation to the antebellum South: it expresses its author’s ill-disguised loathing for the subject he depicts. Yet one need not share Greene’s animus toward the United States to appreciate his achievement. Indeed, Americans above all should be grateful to Greene since they—should they choose to do so—can benefit most directly from that achievement.
. . . “Innocence,” he writes, “is a kind of insanity.” When it comes to the exercise of power, the idealist intent on doing God’s work is likely to wreak as much havoc as the cynic who rejects God’s very existence. Those who credit themselves with acting at the behest of the purest motives are hardly less likely to perpetrate evil than those who dismiss ideals as sheer poppycock.
Only those who recognize the omnipresence of sin—recognizing first of all that they themselves number among the sinful—can possibly anticipate the moral snares inherent in the exercise of power. Righteousness induces blindness. The acknowledgment of guilt enables the blind to see. To press the point further, the statesman who assumes that “we” are good while “they” are evil—think George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11—will almost necessarily misinterpret the problem at hand and underestimate the complexity and costs entailed in trying to solve it. In this sense, an awareness of one’s own failings and foibles not only contributes to moral clarity but can help guard against strategic folly.
Read the rest . . . (Via: Alan Jacobs)
August 14th, 2009 | 5:25 pm
The “Comments” on this “World Affairs Journal” article are almost unanimously supportive of Graham Greene’s animus. One brave blogger does wonder whether Americans can rightly do nothing in the face of terrible crimes against humanity, but he is reproached by another responder who suggests that “commercial or NGO resources” would be superior to military action. This comment offers no details as to how these groups would proceed to alleviate the real and present suffering in places like North Korea where people have been subjected to loss of their cultural memory and deprived of virtually any possibility of independent thought and reflection. The comment also does not explain whether these commercial and NGO groups are more free from the sin and human fraility that so disgusted Mr. Greene. At the very least neither Mr. Greene nor Mr Bacevich seem entirely free of the “righteousness” they deplore.
August 14th, 2009 | 7:09 pm
Public rhetoric is bound to incorporate some imprecision about what the politician in question thinks. I do not recall that Dr. Bacevich is at all personally acquainted with George W. Bush, so he does not bring any insights on that score. George W. Bush was in 2001 a 55 year old businessman-turned-politician, married 23 years, the father of two daughters who had manifest rough edges, and had himself a history of personal successes and failures interpreted through an evangelical lens. Is it really all that plausible that he was an ‘innocent’ in the sense summarized? Is it not perhaps more plausible that Dr. Bacevich is giving expression to his own conceits, not to any serious assessment of George W. Bush as a character?
August 14th, 2009 | 9:20 pm
Ms. Smith has made an interesting comment about righteousness in Mr. Bacevich and Graham Greene, but she leaves something out: righteousness about what? To me, they seem to take a righteous attitude in their skepticism of moral certainty, although they may disguise it as worldly wisdom about sin. There are, of course, deficiencies in the approach of a Pyle, and his naivete and lack of experience can be dangerous in his line of work. But the knowing and world-weary skepticism of a Fowler, a Greene or a Bacevich can never attain to true righteousness, because, in reality, this skepticism has admitted defeat to sin.
August 14th, 2009 | 10:39 pm
A nice closing by the invaluable Bacevich:
“Vietnam once laid waste to Washington’s claim of innocence, until Ronald Reagan helped restore that claim. Every indication suggests that American innocence will survive Iraq as well, this time with Barack Obama as chief enabler helping to sanitize or erase all that we do not wish to remember. A people famous for their self-professed religiosity won’t even bother to look for someone to whom they can express contrition.”
We need no contrition; we’re American Protestants, for God’s sake. We don’t have no bleeping SACRAMENTS. We can do no wrong, because we SAY SO. We are now reaping what Reagan began to sow in the 80s: near-depression. Nothing stands at the base of our economy except asset bubbles and cheap credit and CEO and consumer greed. We don’t know how to make a damn thing and we can’t innovate our way out of a paper bag. We have no idea how to create decent jobs for people anymore (remember the 50s and 60s, when we could?)
Mr. “Deco”: it was the Right who lionized the infinitely stupid and inept “W” and declared him innocent and a “leader” (just have a look at that passage in Michael Moore’s movie when he gets the 9/11 news and tell me with a straight face that the man was a leader). Bacevich has been pretty clear-sighted through our recent domestic and foreign catastrophes. This journal was of course one of W’s big enablers and apologists. So much for Catholic wisdom.
August 15th, 2009 | 6:52 am
A people with no objective moral referents other than fury at human fraility and sin is weakened at its very core and cannot hope to do even the good that is possible. People of good will of all political persuasions can and should argue for a point of view. We can and should offer carefully constructed arguments for or against certain courses of action. We must reason together but, in the end, those entrusted with authority must act, trusting that to do nothing in the face of evil is to surrender to evil (as “cultured tech” comments) and to be defeated before we begin.
August 15th, 2009 | 10:31 am
Poor Joe! It seems that this is your first exposure to Mr. Bacevich. As soon as I saw his name in the first line, I knew that he would succumb to BDS before the end of the excerpt. Sadly, he did not disappoint.
I know you meant well in posting this article, but it’s flights of fury like this one that taint everything Bacevich and his kindred spirits touch. I’ve no doubt could benefit greatly from a disinterested examination of the perils of innocence through the lens of Greene’s canon. Maybe someday some disinterested person will write one.
August 15th, 2009 | 3:43 pm
Shoehorning together the plot of a Graham Greene novel about Viet Nam and the events leading up to the Iraq War is pathetic. The situations, apart from the fact that one is invented, the other real, have nothing in common.
Bacevich writes, “think George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11,” and then merrily skips off as if the date is of no especial importance, as if there was in Bush’s mind no other motivation, no other precipitant to the Iraq War than that “we are good, they are evil.” So let’s roll.
Theology and an awareness of good and evil are always somewhere in men’s minds; here they were definitely towards the back. As Richard Perle put it, the question of Baathist Iraq was primarily a question of “how to manage a risk.” Before 9/11, the risk to be managed was somewhat abstract, its seriousness underestimated and inadequately imagined. Afterwards, the potential of what could happen were terrorists to get their hands on weapons more destructive by far than a Boeing 747 simply had to be faced honestly – and I’m not speaking here only about a stray nuclear weapon.
If someone plays Russian Roulette the odds are five-to-one in his favor. The macabre to one side, those are not bad odds actually, not bad at all. Yet very few people play this game, and for one very simple reason that game theorists identified long ago: You cannot cover the bet if you lose (and remain “you,” that is). In Russian Roulette, you know the hazards to a mathematical certainty. Was anyone, Mr. Bacevich included, in a position to tell George Bush what were the risks to the United States of leaving Saddam Hussein in power? Was it one chance in six? In 10? In 100? The plain fact is that after 12 years of wheedling and meddling and sanctioning no one had any idea what were Saddam’s capabalities. They knew, of course, that he was in fact an inordinately evil and vengeful man and also that he had good reason to harbor a murderous resentment against this country. So perhaps good and evil did enter into it, after all, but not in remotely the way Bacevich fantasizes.
Bush acted. Because it was his Constitutional responsibility act. It was not the responsibility of a nonentity like Bacevich to do anything whatsoever. What on earth does, did or could it matter how Bacevich assessed those risks?
None of that matters to Bacevich, though, and he WILL drag Graham Greene’s FICTION into his indictment of George Bush’s very real dilemma. What a blowhard.
August 15th, 2009 | 7:01 pm
it was the Right who lionized the infinitely stupid and inept “W” and declared him innocent and a “leader” (just have a look at that passage in Michael Moore’s movie when he gets the 9/11 news and tell me with a straight face that the man was a leader).
Just out of curiosity, how can I recognize ‘infinite stupidity’ (and no, a film clip edited by Michael Moore is not an acceptable answer)?
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