Alexander Haig, RIP
Tim Weiner’s obituary in the New York Times for the former Secretary of State — the self-proclaimed “vicar of foreign policy” — is a metatextual masterpiece (though you couldn’t call it a Haig-iography).
He knew, Reagan’s aide Lyn Nofziger once said, that “the third paragraph of his obit” would detail his conduct in the hours after President Reagan was shot, on March 30, 1981.
That day, Secretary of State Haig wrongly declared himself the acting president. “The helm is right here,” he told members of the Reagan cabinet in the White House Situation Room, “and that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the vice president gets here.” His words were tape-recorded by Richard V. Allen, then the national security adviser. His colleagues knew better. “There were three others ahead of Haig in the constitutional succession,” Mr. Allen wrote in 2001. “But Haig’s demeanor signaled that he might be ready for a quarrel, and there was no point in provoking one.”
The NYT sees to it that he’s proven wrong one more time — the third paragraph mentions his prediction about his legacy, but it’s the fourth paragraph that goes into the details. [Update: I swear I counted the graf breaks, but by the time this story appeared in print on Sunday, they'd run grafs 2 and 3 together so that Haig's prediction was accurate. Oh well.]
(A historian friend of mine saw the news this morning and asked on Facebook: “If Alexander Haig is dead, who is in control?”)
In the Commonweal archives, Haig’s legacy has little to do with the events of March, 30, 1981, and much more to do with the policies he pursued in South America during that time. The September 25, 1981 editorial struck me as particularly relevant, and so I’ll quote it in full after the jump:
While Menachem Begin rounded out his trip to the U.S. and David Stockman sparred with Caspar Weinberger over the size of the military budget, Alexander Haig was off to West Berlin to begin what aides called a vigorous campaign to strengthen the resolve and unity of the Western alliance. Evidence of the problem the secretary had come to address was ready at hand: his visit was the occasion for the biggest anti-American demonstration in Berlin since the war in Vietnam.
Part of Secretary Haig’s Berlin message was a paean to democracy and a plea that the West be ready to defend it. With that, we can only agree. Another part was the secretary’s charges about Soviet or Vietnamese use of toxins in Southeast Asia, charges which should dismay but not surprise anyone already aware of the ruthlessness of Moscow’s and Hanoi’s interventions in Afghanistan, Laos, and Kampuchea. We simply hope, for the credibility of the U.S., that these accusations prove to be better documented than previous statements issuing from the State Department. The heart of Haig’s speech, however, was his analysis of the sources of tension within the Western alliance. Here he dwelt upon all those psychological tendencies that have become the stock-in-trade for American diagnosticians of the “post-Vietnam syndrome.” He spoke of a lack of hope, an indecisiveness, a soul-searching that has become “compulsive” and “an end in itself.” He warned of pessimism and — twice — of “excessive introspection.” And finally he complained of “a growing double standard” in judging Western and Soviet-bloc foreign policy.
No doubt these charges aptly fit a number of those marching that day in West
Berlin’s streets. But they are terribly self-deceptive when offered as an explanation of the widespread and well-considered nervousness in Europe about Washington’s notions of defending democracy. That nervousness exists far beyond those entertaining a residual anti-Americanism or relying on apparently endless streams of wishful thinking in their views of the Soviets. It is based on real doubts about Washington’s intentions and level-headedness. Specific arguments about Pershing missiles and neutron bombs cannot be detached from their context of increasing U.S. assertiveness, increasing emphasis on arms and deemphasis of negotiations, increasing impatience with hearing out European views, increasing dismissal of restless public opinion as naively pacifist or crypto-Communist. Clarion calls for the defense of democracy are apt to sound false when they are linked to identification with repressive regimes in Central and Latin America, support at the UN of South Africa and Pol Pot, and a diminished interest in the economic plight of third-world nations and their hungry populations. Secretary Haig was thinking of Afghanistan when he said, in Berlin, “Can a nation be free when its independence is subordinate to the will of a foreign power? Can a people be uplifted when innocent civilians are the targets of terror?” But others might well have thought of El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina, South Africa. This double-standard business may be more complicated than Haig realizes.The administration’s foreign policy-makers seem to believe that sheer willpower can substitute for an international outlook that is politically sensitive and morally consistent. They ignore what the historian Fritz Stern, a longtime defender of liberal democracy, recently wrote: “We must learn again that the alliance ultimately rests on a moral consensus. Power is not enough and toughness is not enough.”
RIP indeed… Ita Ford’s brother testifies how Haig made up the story that the American religous sisters were killed in an exchange of gunfire as they tried to run a roadblock in El Salvador.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/12/opinion/l-film-preserves-haig-s-words-on-murders-563593.html?pagewanted=1
A Secretary of State who makes up stories or makes up authority positions is a dangerous person, better to be forgotten.
Jeanne Kirkpatrick did the same thing: “The nuns were not just nuns, they were political activists, and we should be very clear about that.”
Sr. Dianna Ortiz (now with Pax Christi) thoroughly documented American involvement in torture of American nuns in Latin America. She does not get the prominence she should–certainly not the Vatican–but she is one of the most prominent Catholics of our time. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/spiritus/v004/4.2ortiz.html
Alexander Haig’s brother Frank is a Jesuit and much beloved professor at Loyola University Maryland. My condolences to him and the Haig family.
http://www.nndb.com/people/989/000022923/
Haig’s schools, clubs, boards, awards, etc.
Today’s run of posts reflects some of my frustration with Commonweal. For example:
1) “The nuns were not just nuns, they were political activists, and we should be very clear about that.” The nuns were both nuns *and* (regrettably) political activists, but that cannot justify the brutal, horrible deeds done to them and many others, or any deliberate enabling of the same by U.S. officials. Haig was wrong (or badly misinformed, which is as charitable as I can be) and Commonweal was right about this.
2) I am perplexed to see the argument against the Pershings and the Reagan anti-Soviet stance trotted out again, and the criticism of the crypto-communist communist charges: Really, it’s hard to deny that the USSR was not much of a fit negotiating partner – indeed, was breaking existing agreements repeatedly and egregiously – in the 1975-1985 period, and the buildup exerted pressure that (combined with the deteriorating economy) resulted in change in Moscow; and it is now well known just how much the KGB infiltrated the CND and the anti-nuclear movement in this period, even if it is certainly not fair to tar all critics of the nuclear buildup with this brush. In this respect, Haig was largely right, and Commonweal largely wrong, I’m sorry to say.
3) It is dismaying to see views on waterboarding such as Marc Thiessen’s being aired essentially uncritically by EWTN,. and doubly dismaying to see Fr. Sirico repeat them. Again: By any standard worth repeating, waterboarding is torture, and as such violates the Church’s teaching, period, full stop. In this regard, Commonweal is right, its opponents and wrong, and should be commended for making this point once again. And it should keep making it.
Hey, two for three isn’t bad.
Hello Grant,
That’s certainly one way of looking at it.
R.M. Lender:
I write to you from El Salvador. I write as someone who, as a journalist, spoke at length with three of the four churchwomen in 1979 and 1980; this included spending a good deal of time with two of them in El Salvador in 1980, just after Archbishop Romero was murdered, and eight months before they (the churchwomen) were raped and killed.
You said that “The nuns were both nuns *and* (regrettably) political activists.” When I read that, I called Fr. Paul Schindler, who I met here in 1980. He was pastor of the parish were two of the women were working, and he knew the other two. I asked him what their work consisted of. He said they did basic pastoral work (training catechists, preparing people for the sacraments, etc) and that on occasion – when they were specifically asked to do so by Archbishop Romero’s successor – they went into the Chalatenango war zone to bring out children and take them to an orphanage that had been established by Fr. Ken Meyer; he, like Fr. Schindler, was part of the mission team from the Cleveland diocese.
Fr. Schindler says that the women were not “political activists.” Can you tell us 1) how you define that term, and 2) what the basis is, who the sources are, for your claim that the women were “political activists”? Thank you.