Leaders of the antiwar movement have wasted no time in adding Katrina to the list of reasons we shouldn't be in Iraq.
The protests in Washington this past weekend featured Katrina-themed wordplays such as, "Make Levees, Not War." The Washington Post quoted one protester who claimed that the hurricane had helped solidify her opposition to President Bush's agenda: "[Hurricane Katrina] made clear that while we spend all this money trying to impose our will on other countries, here at home in our own country, we can't take care of each other."
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) elaborates on this argument in an oped published on Sept. 18 in the Baltimore Sun. The Senator asks, "Who among us has not wondered if the efforts to rescue and evacuate Gulf Coast residents suffered because too many National Guardsmen have been detailed to Iraq?" He reasons that "we cannot continue to commit billions in Iraq when our own people are so much in need, not only in New Orleans, but throughout America."
We can easily imagine why this argumentative strategy might work. By suggesting that the war has come at the expense of vital domestic priorities, Byrd casts the invasion of Iraq as an unaffordable luxury. The beauty of this approach is that it could conceivably persuade the sort of person who tends to think that our efforts in Iraq are mostly benign. If we must choose between doing good abroad and taking care of each other at home, isn't the choice obvious?
Even the most ardent antiwar activists should be wary of this logic. The crucial "choice" on which Byrd's essay is premised does not really exist. Does the Senator actually expect us to believe that we can have either levees or foreign interventions — but never both? Are our resources so very limited that we must abdicate any active role in world affairs on the grounds that "our own people are so much in need"? Surely, there is something perverse about the pretense that our nation is too needy to remain active on a global stage.
I worry, though, that Sen. Byrd's thinking may catch on among the rank and file of the Democratic Party. In the wake of Katrina, we seem to be absorbed in a moment of national self-pity. Byrd's neo-isolationism taps into this self-pity in a way that totally undercuts the future of progressive foreign policy. How can we argue for intervention in Darfur if the neediness of our own people is thought to be overwhelming? How can we argue for an increase in the foreign aid budget if we're anxious about every cent that doesn't go toward improving our domestic infrastructure?
Byrd maintains that the neglect which led to the devastation of New Orleans resulted from an overambitious international agenda. But why stop at criticism of the war in Iraq? Why not say that the levees were breached because we spent too much on AIDS relief? The logic is the same.
Of course, all of us would recognize that there is no connection whatsoever between our spending on AIDS relief and our failure to adequately prepare for Katrina. It's a total non-sequitur. Why, then, should we accept a parallel link between Katrina and Iraq?
I am perfectly happy to have Sen. Byrd argue that the war in Iraq is intrinsically unjust or unproductive. If the war is not a worthwhile enterprise, then it should be abandoned for that reason — and not because we're afraid we can't multi-task. The war may or may not be justifiable, but we face no ultimate, existential choice between levees and wars.
Byrd notes that "there are many missions to accomplish here on our own soil," as though the very existence of these missions somehow nullifies the importance of missions conducted on foreign soil. The fallacy is glaring. There might be several valid arguments for standing down in Iraq. But Hurricane Katrina isn't one of them. Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi is a religion major from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at golubcow@princeton.edu.
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