this week on "moyers and company" -- >> let's look at what afghanistan has achieved. is the region becoming more stable? is it becoming more democratic? if the answer is yes, then let's keep trying. but if the answer to those questions is no, then maybe it's time for us to recognize that this larger military project is failing and is not going to succeed simply by rying harder. >> funding is provided by ann gumowitz, carnegnegie corporati and the advancement of international peace and

security. the ford foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. the her b albert foundation supporting organizations to promote creativity in our society. the john d. mcarthur foundation create i creating to create a peaceful world. more information online. park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. barbara g. flieshman and by our sole sponsor mutual of america designing customized individual and group retirements. that's why we're your retirement company. welcome. they said saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could turn the smoking gun into a smoking cloud and they were wrong. they said iraq had ties to al qaeda and they were wrong.

they said the war would be a cake walk and they were wrong. over and again they were wrong. yet 11 years, thousands of lives, millions of refugees and trillions of dollars later, the very same armed chair warriors in washington who from the safety call for invading baghdad are demanding once again that america plunge into the sectarian wars in the middle east. a chorus of voices fills the echo chamber. the same old faces, the same arguments never arguing the fraudulent intelligence that led to disaster and chaos in the first place. a headline that the website think progress sums it up. the people who broke iraq have a lot of ideas about fixing it now. among the most celebrated of these is robert kagan, senior fellow with the brookings institution, a darling of the knee owe cons.

he's been a foreign policy adviser for john mccain, mitt romney and hillary clinton. in 2002 he wrote that for the war on terrorism to succeed saddam hussein must be removed. when george w. bush set out to do just that, kagan cheered him on. then in 2006 called for a surge in american troop levels to prevent iraq's collapse. now robert kagan is stirring controversy again with this lengthy article in the new republic. superpowers don't get to retire. wh he calls for america to return to muscular global activism. his article brought a sharper post from another scholared historian who seized the role differently. they have seen the horrors too closely to advocate more of the same policies that failed in vietnam and iraq.

a graduate from west point with 23 years in the military including time in vietnam. he teaches history at boston university and writes best selling books and articles and essays and journals both liberal and conservative. like this critique of kagan titled "the duplicity of the idea logs." welcome back. what do you mean by that? >> kagan's essay, which does deserve to be read because of his stature in washington, gives us a falsified sanitized and in some respects account of recent american history. >> how so? >> well, his notion of american history and particularly since 1945 is one that we might term an extended liberation narrative where the united states devoted itself in the wake of world war ii to promoting liberal values,

democracy everywhere, fighting against evil doers and he concludes that this success is being squandered by barack obama and those who are unwilling to continue this crusade. now that narrative is only sustainable if you leave a lot of important facts out or if you distort those facts. so we get no mention of overthrowing the leader in iran in 1953. no mention of the cia overthrowing the president of guatemala. we get virtually no mention of the vietnam war, which he dismisses as an unfortunate incident of no particular significance. and perhaps most egregiously he utterly ignores the wars in iraq and afghanistan, which he served as a cheerleader for and which to a very large extept account for the problem that we're

dealing with today in the greater middle east. >> this week one of his allies former vice president dick cheney wrote a long essay. they say rarely has a u.s. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. too many times to count mr. obama has told us he's ending the wars in iraq and afghanistan as though wishing. his rhetoric has come crashing into reality. watching the isis jihadist take territory once secured by american blood is final proof that america's enemies are not decima decimated. they are emboldened and on the march. rarely has a major american newspaper published that was so thoroughly shameless. again what is the cause? what was the catalyst of the instability that racks iraq

today? the simple answer is the one that cheney and his daughter don't want to mention. the unnecessary misguided and frankly immoral war launched by the united states in 2003. we destabilized iraq. in many respects, we destabilized the larger region. and misfortune of barack obama is that he inherited this catastrophe created by the previous administration. >> even cheney once thought that it would be a serious mistake to occupy baghdad. this is dick cheney in 1994 reflecting on the first iraq war when he was secretary of defense. >> do you think forces should have moved into baghdad? >> no. >> why not? >> we would have been all alone. it would be been u.s. occupation of iraq. none of the arab forces willing to fight with us were willing to

invade iraq. once you got to iraq and took it over and took down saddam hussein's government, what are you going to put in its place? if you take down the central government of iraq, you can easily end up e seeing pieces of iraq fly off. the syrians would like to hand to the west part of eastern iraq. in the north you have the kurds. the kurds spin lose and join. you have threatened the territory of turkey. it's a quagmire. >> i think the contrast between what cheney said in 1994 and what he says 20 years later is actually very e lust rative of this point. and that is what passes for foreign policy debate today is what is partisan. r' the business of defending george bush. now he's in the business of defending george w. bush but basically attacks barack obama

blaming obama for any difficulties that we're having. and the point about partisanship really applies in a what larger stage when you look at the people who get invited on the sunday talk shows or whose op-eds appear in the "washington times". in this partisan in this effort to look beyond the bush ver vus obama republican versus democrat to try to understand the larger forces in play to brought us to where we are today. then simply having an argument about whether we should attack with drones or ta tack with

manned aircraft. what are those larger forces because robert kagan says world order shows signs of cracking and perhaps even collapsing and that these changes signal a transition into a different world order which the united states should attempt to lead. >> when kagan uses phrases like world order, he's describing something that never really existed except in his own imagination. but again the point is worth reflecting on. kagan believes, many people in washington believe perhaps too many people in the land also believe that the united states shapes the global order. that there is in order for which we alone are responsible. where does this kind of thinking come from? i think in many respects what we see here is the contemporary

expression of the whole notion of american exceptionalism. that we are chosen, we are called upon. called upon by god, called upon by providence to transform the world and remake it in our own image. robert kagan wouldn't state it as bluntly as i just did, but that is the kind of thinking that i think make s it very difficult for us to have a genuine and serious foreign policy debate. so the other side would argue as they are that we look at the beheadings, the murders, the brutality, the cruelty that the radical islamists are inflicting upon their adversaries and the people of iraq. isn't that an evil to which we are the only ones that can respond. >> first of all, it is an evil to which we contributed by our folly in invading iraq back in

2003. there was no al qaeda in iraq under the previous order. thafrs the first point. the second point would be let's be practical. let's be pragmatic. if we are called upon to act, let us frame our actions in ways that actually will yield some positive outcome. i'm personally not persuaded that further military action in iraq is actually going to produce an outcome more favorable than the last one. if what we have on our hands here in iraq in syria, elsewhere in the middle east is a humanitarian ka tocatastrophe. let us become serious about the appropriate response? what can the richest and most powerful country in the world do to alleviate the suffering of innocent people who are caught up in this violence. my answer to that question is not air strikes.

my answer to that question is if indeed we have a moral responsibility to come to the aid of suffering iraqis and syrians, then we better start opening up our wallets to be far more generous and forthcoming in providing the system the people need. we live in a country where if you want to go bomb somebody, there's remarkably little discussion about how much it might cost even though it costs inevitably orders of magnitude larger than anybody projected at the outcome, but when you have a discussion about we have people are what form is that assistance take given the hostilities on the ground and the murderous internationally sectarian conflicts going on. how do we help people who are at this moment suffering as a consequence as they indicate of policies these conflicts.

they flee into the country where they end up in refugee camps run by the united nations. let's double the support that we provide. let's go beyond it. let us welcome at least a number of them to america where they will have safety and freedom. if we're serious about caring about the well being about the people, that's one practical way to respond. >> so you don't believe there's something practical we can do to separate the forces or help the government forces in iraq prevent this violence. is the only option murderous genocide and optimum paralysis? >> we have been engaged in the

islamic world at least since 1980 in a military project based on the assumption that the use of american hard power can somehow pacify or fix this part of the world. we can now examine more than three decades of this effort. let's look at what u.s. military intervention in iraq has achieved in afghanistan and somalia has achieved. in libya has achieved. the region is becoming more stable? is it becoming more democratic? are we alleviating reducing the prevalence of antiamericanism. if the answer is yes, then let's keep trying. but if the answer to those questions is no, then maybe it's time for us to recognize that this larger military project is

failing and is not going to succeed simply by trying harder. so i guess what i'm trying to say is the events that are unfolding in iraq at this very moment promote a debate within washington revolving around the question what should we do about iraq? but there is a larger and more important question and the larger and more important question has to do with the region as a whole. and the actual consequences of u.s. military action over the past 30 years. >> as you know iraq has formally asked the u.s. government to launch air strikes against the militants. how do you think that's going to play out? >> i don't know. my guess would be this would substantially increase the pressure on the president to do just that. my question is if we launch air

strikes and if the air strikes don't have decisive effect on turning the tables on the ground, then what? this is always, i think, a concern when you begin a military operation that you have some reasonable sense of what you're going to do next if the first doesn't succeed. >> many people are saying that barack obama is reckless, lacks will or strength and that he's enabling the defeat of our interest in the middle east by pulling the troops back and by being indifferent to what's happening there now. >> he's not indifferent. i'm not here to defend the obama approach to foreign policy, which i think has been mediocre at best. the president has learned some things. the most important thing he learned is that invading and occupying countries in the

islamic world is a pretty dumb idea. it leads to complications and enormous costs. so we see him red sent about putting boots on the ground. the president certainly has not been reluctant to use force in a variety of ways. usually on small scale drone strikes, raids and the like. where i would fault the president is that he hasn't been able to go beyond learning the negative lessons of the bush era to coming up with a positive approach to the islamic world. shortly after he was inaugurated, he went to cairo and gave a famous speech. there was going to be a new beginning, turn the page, a new beginning of u.s. relations with the islamic world. who would not endorse that? i certainly do. it's come to á-bdnothing.

nobody in the obama administration either in the first term or in the present term as far as i can tell has been able to figure out how to operationalize this notion of a new relationship between ourselves and the islamic world. one can give secretary kerry credit for trying to restart the process between israel and palestinians. were we able to broker a peace that created a sovereign, coherent, viable state that actually could be the one thing we could do that would seriously change the tenor of u.s. relations with the people of the islamic world. but that effort has failed. >> you seem to think that the other thing we could our es strangement with iran, what do you think would come from that? >> neither iran or the united states has an interest in a massive bloody protracted civil

war in iraq. both the united states and iran have an interest in greater stability in this region. and i think that it would be at least advisable to explore the possibility whether this common interest and stability can produce some sort of an agreement comparable to nixon's opening to china. that didn't make china our ally. it didn't have the immediate effect of bringing about political change in china. but it did change the strategic balance in ways that were favorable to us and favorable to the rest of the world. >> what is it about how we go to war? we poured blood and treasure into vietnam and iraq and wound up with exactly the opposite consequences that we wanted. we keep repeating here in the

same arguments and claims that we should do it again. >> war itself is evil. but war is an evil that should command our respect. war is something that we should not take lightly. we should not discuss frivolously. and i think that that's one of the great failings of our foreign policy establishment. that our foreign policy establishment does not take war seriously. it assumes that the creation of precision guided weapons makes war manageable, removes from war the element of risk and chance that are always inherent in warfare. so these are people who quite frankly most of them don't know much about war and therefore,

who discuss war in frivolous ways. >> and yet there's still almost religious believes in savior. >> i think the use of religious terms are very appropriate because there is a theological dimension to their thinking. related again to this notion that we are called. we are chosen. we are the instrument of providence summoned to transform the world. and therefore, empowered to use force in ways not permitted to any others. and one of the great, the ultimate travesty of the immediate period after 9/11 was the bush administration's

embrace of war. that became then the rational for invading iraq in 2003. but it was a general claim, a general claim that the united states was empowered to use force preventively before the threat emerges. not simply -- not simply in self-defense. we should note as far as i can tell president obama has not repealed that notion indeed has used it himself in order to employ force in lesser ways in various situations. >> so is it illusion? >> it depends on who we are talking about here. for somebody like cheney, for

beraiding our leadership in the course of doing that simply ignoring the record of the administration in which he served, that's duplicity. that's malicious partisanship. when you talk about people like robert kagan, they believe what they believe. they subscribe to a world view that to my mind is utterly misguided, but they are j genuinely committed to the propositions that are on display in his new republic article. it's just a question of why those propositions continue to be treated seriously when they should not be. >> let us continue this conversation online. thank you for being with me. >> thank you.

>> on our website, more with andrew and historian on how pundits use the press to keep pedaling the same propaganda. pundits use the press to keep pedaling the same propaganda. i'll see you here next time. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >> don't wait a week to get more moyers. visit our website for more blogs and essay features. funding is provided by carnegie corporation of new york,

supporting innovation in education, democratic engagement and the advancement of international peace and security. the ford foundation working with visionaries on the front lines of social change. the herb albert foundation. the mcarthur foundation, park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the colbert foundation, and by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america designing customized group retirement ñ[qupowowú!úú%

this week on "moyers & company," learning from "lawrence of arabia," and the truth about lies. >> government and companies lie, frequently, actually. if we don't know the truth, then this idea of democracy is a -- it's ludicrous. it doesn't work if you don't have information. >> announcer: funding is provided by -- anne gumowitz, encouraging the renewal of democracy. carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. the herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society.