In commenting on Robert Kagan’s article “Power and Weakness” in Policy Review Online, Lawrence Solum describes how he “…was struck by the One Minute Philosphers versions of Hobbes and Kant that are figuring as rhetorical tropes.”

He quotes from Immanuel Kant’s essay Perpetual Peace, where Kant claims that peace is only possible in a republican political system, where those making the decision to go to war are also those who will bear the costs and deprivations of the war.

Solum’s point is that Kagan has completely misunderstood Hobbes and Kant (of whom I must say I have an imperfect understanding, too.) Solum’s take on this is that this passage from Kant “is the fundamental rationale for regime change in Iraq. Because Iraq lacks a republican form of government, it will be a constant threat until a democratic regime is established.”

That conclusion of Solum’s struck me strangely, because as I read Kant’s words, I was applying them to our government. I was thinking about how the current administration is determined to pursue this rush to war despite the ever-decreasing support of the public, the protestations of the global community, the potentially ruinous costs of war and reconstruction, and the ingenuous arguments of connections between Hussein and bin Laden.

I wasn’t the only one who read the article this way. In a subsequent entry, Professor Solum quotes a letter he received from a reader, Andrew Feller, who, although he supports the use of force to remove Hussein, he is “… horrified by the continued dismissal by the administration of both the value of public opinion and of the necessity of consultation with Congress.” Solum’s response perfectly encapsulates the Bush Administration’s biggest problem. “In my mind it highlights the crucial role that trust plays in a democratic polity. Hawks and doves on Iraq differ on many issues, but one of them is the their willingness to trust the Bush administration.”

That is exactly right. This administration has so damaged any shred of credibility on so many issues that those who believe in any of this government’s positions are becoming fewer in number each day. The Turks don’t trust us and are demanding they be paid like mercenaries for their support of the war. The Kurds and the Iraqi opposition don’t trust us, even though they should be our natural allies. The world community doesn’t trust us, since this administration has unilaterally abrogated so many treaties. Domestically, the administration has shown it is not to be trusted in its unstinting dismantling of the Bill of Rights, its unprecedented insistence on secrecy from the American public, its conveniently-timed terror alerts based on information experts term “garbage“, and its non-stop reverse-Robin-Hood sham of an economic stimulus plan.

While I don’t believe that Bush & Co. will “resolve on war as on a pleasure party for the most trivial reasons,” I also don’t believe that they will share in any of the suffering brought on by this war. Their children, will, like Dick Cheney during Vietnam, have “other priorities” than military service. Their companies will profit by the inevitable rise in oil prices which will accompany a war. Their jobs and pensions will not be affected by inflation or recession.

Our leaders are acting as “the proprietor and not a member of the state” and they are just as illegitimate as the despot they seek to remove.