During a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns quoted a famous Mark Twain line: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” He was making the point about why it is important to listen to the voices of the past, even if their messages offend you today.
The conversation was in the context of his upcoming project on the American Revolution. Burns argued that it is the most important historical event in terms of shaping the world we live in now, because it created a unique political and economic engine, the impact of which we are still struggling to get to grips with 250 years later.
Less than a fortnight after the Rogan-Burns podcast came out, a less refined, more combative exchange took place between two other individuals, which underscores how the definition of what the US is has kept evolving since the 18th century.
When the journalist Tucker Carlson confronted US Senator Ted Cruz in a now-viral interview, it marked the beginning of the end for an expectation of how the US conducts itself on the global stage – with obvious implications for those of us living in this region.
Mr Cruz, for long a dependable voice for hawkish Republican policy and unwavering support for Israel, found himself cornered. Carlson, representing a surging populist strain of “America First” conservatism that is aligned with President Donald Trump’s political base, was pushing Mr Cruz to properly articulate why it was important for the US to topple the Iranian establishment. The backdrop to this interview had been pressure from senior Republicans in Congress to join Israel’s attack on Iran – championed by Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu – with the stated aim of removing any nuclear threat it poses. Mr Netanyahu, it’s important to point out, also called for ordinary Iranians to rise up against their rulers.
Digging into questions about why America should risk a war with Iran, why its support for Israel needs to always be unconditional and if American interests have been co-opted by the agendas of other nations, Carlson sought a rational explanation for such long-standing beliefs of what was good for the country and its people, despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Instead, Mr Cruz fumbled over his responses. He jumped from religious justifications to security jargon and then to accusations about his interviewer’s motives, including suggesting that anti-Semitism and support for Russian President Vladimir Putin were behind his challenging posture. Mr Cruz came across as highly cynical and manipulative, lacking moral and intellectual depth, while Carlson seemed earnest and committed. It may have been wholly performative, but it still made my jaw drop.
The exchange, quite because it was between two heavyweights from the same political and cultural strata, represents the rupture of a long-assumed ideological and religious alliance between the traditional Republican guard, still clinging to post-9/11 doctrines, and the newer class, increasingly sceptical of endless wars and foreign entanglements following the mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr Cruz’s inability to make a sensible case for decades-long foreign policies represents a breaking point for anyone who had still been working under the illusion that there aren’t a multitude of transactional interests at work beyond what might benefit the average American.
History resonates with examples of such stunning revelations.
The one that has a similar cadence comes from the Fourth Crusade, when European knights, on their way to try to reclaim Jerusalem from Muslim control, instead attacked and looted Constantinople – considered then to be the greatest Christian city in the East – in 1204. Fuelled by Venetian debt and Byzantine intrigue, the result was a catastrophic betrayal of values that had stood for more than a century.
In the wake of it, public trust eroded, unity fractured and the Great Crusades were undermined. They were exposed for what they were – political, cynical and morally hollow. It would become increasingly more difficult for people in Europe to justify spending resources, lives and years on a cause so far away from home.
Yet this failure had been years in the making. The corruption of crusader kingdoms in the Holy Land, their inability to survive without external support, evolving military technology and tactics that made battlefield victories harder to attain, as well as political and economic shifts at home had made them more costly and less successful. The early religious fervour for war and its legitimacy in the eyes of the populace had begun to fade.
The Cruz-Carlson interview is revelatory in its own way. It has unequivocally brought to the centre stage the widespread suspicion among Americans in the idea that US involvement in the Middle East is fundamentally necessary or noble. By shining a spotlight on this national mood, it may have contributed to a more limited engagement by Mr Trump over the past week.
The “America First” movement appears to have passed its first major test, on its way to being the loudest voice shaping the future of its country and defining a new paradigm for US support to Israel.
