Working opinions 2003

misleads

MAYBE THE WORD “WAR” MISLEADS US

(6 December 2003)

Why is America’s “war on terrorism” in trouble?

When we deposed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and thus deprived bin Laden’s al Qaeda of a safe haven for training terrorists, we seemed to be on the right course. The world community supported the action. The American people took comfort—even though the failure to “smoke out” bin Laden in person still haunts us.

Our early success in overturning the Taliban government by force of arms may explain why we have veered off course since then. Immediately after the twin towers fell on 9-11, President Bush reportedly said, “This is war.” It was convenient for him that the Afghan government was tolerating the presence of al Qaeda, our 9-11 attackers, in its borders. To get at our immediate al Qaeda enemy, anyone could see that we first had to take care of the fundamentalist government that was hosting it.

The successful campaign against the Afghan government must have reinforced Bush’s notion that 9-11 precipitated a conventional war, comparable to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He was quickly able to identify a nation state as an enemy and retaliate against it with the help of the international community. This conformed to the notion that war is a state of open and declared hostile conflict between nation states.  By declaring “war,” Bush was on old familiar ground.

But our war against the government of Afghanistan was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The target was al Qaeda, the non-governmental organization that attacked America, which happened to have found safe haven in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and his organization were extremist ideologues operating outside the boundaries of acknowledged political entities in the international community.

The madness of the Taliban regime’s internal policies, as it happened, made it desirable for us to overturn it, and the dignity of many human beings gained from our action against it. But it led to a slippery overlap of American purpose. The al Qaeda target and the Taliban became somewhat indistinguishable.  That allowed the mistaken belief to persist that 9-11 had catapulted us into a vast conventional war primarily against hostile nations. It reinforced the Bush belief that we could defeat our 9-11 enemies by conducting conventional warfare against nation states. Preparations for the invasion of Iraq were already under way.

To be sure, international counterterrorist operations of an unconventional nature around the world have hurt the al Qaeda organization. But the Iraq war has had the unfortunate effect of demanding more and more of our resources and attention.  Bin Laden (not to mention Saddam Hussein) is presumably still at large and operating; violence against civilians of many nationalities, Muslim and non-Muslim, keeps mounting. If the unconventional international campaign against al Qaeda is flourishing, it is a deeply kept secret.

Bush’s mistaken notion that we are primarily in a fight with nation states is not the only reason why the “war on terrorism” is in trouble.  He has defined terrorism so loosely that it includes just about any violent act by any individual or group anywhere in the world if it is against a legitimate government. In so doing, his administration displays crippling cognitive dissonance. First, it argues that we are carrying the military fight against terrorism to evil nations; but second, it argues that terrorists are everywhere and need to be fought everywhere. Bush paradoxically combines the traditional notion of war between nation states with the radical notion of indiscriminate worldwide evil to produce a flawed campaign to protect Americans.

The resolve to fight terrorists everywhere amounts to what financier George Soros called Bush’s commitment to “perpetual war.” No one will ever know when or whether we win it. Columnist Charles Reese, reporting on Soros (Pottstown Mercury, 29 November 2003), saw this as a problem in definitions. To combat our enemies more effectively, we need to delimit the meaning of “terrorist” to those who attack civilians chosen at random. Attacks against soldiers—even American soldiers on patrol in Iraq—are acts of resistance or guerilla warfare, in Reese’s definition. If we do not make some such distinction, we create a stark black-and-white world of good vs. evil. This saps our ability to differentiate Islamist extremists from the wide range of political activists contesting national policies and power around the globe.

Bush supporters demand to know what his critics would do that he is not doing to protect America against Islamist extremist terrorists.

For starters, we should keep our eye on the primary enemy—Islamist extremists who espouse terrorist tactics to hurt Americans. We should be wary of the Bush zeal for sending our armies against nation states as such.  That diverts our attention from the primary enemy.  And it allows other agendas, such as costly nation building, to confuse us and disproportionately to consume our human and financial resources.

We should spare nothing in organizing the world community to immobilize al Qaeda and groups like it that take their energy from extremist Islamist ideology. We should find a different word than “war” to identify this campaign. That would avoid the fallacious notion that we are primarily engaging nation states in conventional military combat.

If we formulate the nature of our adversaries differently, that will change the way we deploy resources to combat them.  This will move us away from the military strategies of conventional warfare. We should be more rather than less daring in our confrontation with al Qaeda and similar groups. Bush has been lauded for his daring to invade Iraq. But in fact he has taken the lazy way by formulating the enemy as a conventional state adversary. This has blinded him to the sources of the real enemy’s motives and led him to attack in an unproductive way.

By staying focused on the primary terrorist adversaries—Islamist extremists--we will better see their motives and thus find betters ways to neutralize them.

Ironically, their motives link to the conditions in several nation states. When we change those conditions, we will reduce their power to motivate Islamist extremists. But those conditions do not call for new attacks by the US military. They call for engagement in unprecedented diplomatic and cultural negotiating, which the Bush administration has had a hard time conducting.

First, Islamist extremists are fired up over the desire throughout the Muslim Middle East to settle the decades-old conflict over Israel’s occupation of space formerly occupied by Arabs. This is so obvious that it hardly merits saying. Yet, the US, for domestic and international reasons, has yet to face up to the absolute centrality of this issue to our security at home. Arabs generally—not just extremist terrorists--believe that our support of Israel is the flip side of our disdain for them.

It is in our American interest to shift our basic position on Israel and the Palestinians. An American president who does not want to oppose a Protestant evangelical vision of the end times in the Holy Land cannot possibly make such a shift. Nor can an American president who fears the political backlash of a generous and committed Jewish constituency supportive of Israel. Nothing less than courageous, even sacrificial, American leadership can hope to remove this underlying cause of extremist hatred of America.

We find the second reason for Islamist extremist violence against Americans flourishing in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia poses a unique challenge in the campaign to protect Americans from terrorists. It is our ally for oil and security. At the same time, its peculiarly Islamic system of government and culture breeds Islamist extremist terrorists.  It was not a demographic accident that the majority of the 9-11 suicide terrorists were Saudis.  We cannot attack this cause of terrorism with arms; we must attack it with ideas. We must persuade the Saudis of the need for internal change.

The task will be monumental, but it has to begin. Turn to Mansour al-Nogaidan, a Saudi newspaper columnist, writing in the New York Times, 28 November 2003.  al-Nogaidan reports that his country “is bogged down by deep-rooted Islamic extremism in most schools and mosques, which have become breeding grounds for terrorists.” He reports that the climate in Saudi Arabia has become less rather than more receptive to educational and religious moderation since extremists bombed Riyadh in November.  Religious imams have become more strident in “their hate speech against liberals.” Al-Nogaidan believes that they “sympathize with the criminals rather than the victims” in the Riyadh bombing.

The American invasion of Iraq has created a third cause of anti-American violence by Islamist extremists. The argument whether or not to invade Iraq is over. Now, the US has to complete what Bush started there. As long as we remain in the present occupation mode, we will be making more Islamist enemies and fewer non-violent Iraqi friends.

Finishing the job will take hard diplomatic negotiating to get the rest of the world to join the effort. It will take a basic change in the Bush administration’s hard-nosed insistence on keeping control, even in the face of its major failure to plan for the aftermath of conventional warfare. It will require the US to ameliorate the neoconservative vision of an imperial US dominance of the Middle East, based on overwhelming conventional military presence. One argument for a one-term Bush presidency is that a new president would be better able to bring the Iraq adventure to a successful conclusion because he or she would not feel obliged to rationalize how and why we got there.

All three of these issues involve us in hard work with nation states. But none of them involves us in war with those states. So, ironically, Bush’s traditionalist notion that nation states are at the center of our defense against terrorists contains an element of truth. He is wrong, however, when he thinks only in terms of waging war over them.

We have vastly more to do than to deal with Israel-Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. George Soros is spending his millions trying to encourage people at the ground level to see the value of opening their societies. The American government might learn something from Soros’s motives and experience since he began his foundations in 1993. Perhaps it would see that mere image-polishing in Arab countries won’t suffice—that is essentially the job description of Margaret D. Tutwiler, under secretary of state-designate for public diplomacy. The global community is in desperate need of a purposeful and substantive engagement of ideas between people of the West and people of the vast Muslim world. Americans should be leading that engagement, not warping it into military form and justifying it through a public relations campaign.

And the American president somehow needs to recapture the moral authority to speak persuasively for civility in the world. John Kennedy, for all his faults, managed to have such a voice in the world. Globalization is a reality. It is not fanciful to think today of leaders who might speak to the global community. Would that America could produce one.

quagmire

DELIVER US FROM “QUAGMIRE”

(12 November 2003)

Webster’s says that “quag”—as in “quagmire”—has an unknown origin. That seems fitting when you think about the feeling of being in a quagmire. You’re in “soft wet miry land that shakes or yields under the foot.” You can’t easily get out.

The US government keeps insisting that Iraq has not become a quagmire. Things are going better than they seem, according to Bush and Rumsfeld. The good news is not being reported.

Maybe so.

However, as a citizen trying to sort out what my country is doing, I have a miry feeling.

--I didn’t think preemptive invasion was right, but once we were in Iraq, I agreed that we couldn’t get out without “finishing the job,” however we defined it.

--But we can’t go on like this. Explosions multiply, our helicopters go down, and our casualty count keeps rising. The writing of an Iraqi constitution is going too slowly. The Iraqi Governing Council has lapsed into ineffectiveness. The US is looking in vain for help from our (erstwhile) friends. The selection of American corporations for reconstruction contracts smells rancid. Our forces spend more time defending themselves against Iraq’s new terrorists and less on the rebuilding of the nation.

--President Bush and his people are expending much energy defending what they did. Bush agilely finds new reasons for our presence in Iraq as old ones become unpersuasive. But they have an ex post facto flavor. I wish he could direct some of that energy at mounting domestic problems.

--His Democratic opponents are just as energetically advancing glib solutions for finishing our adventures in Iraq without sounding very convincing.

--With so much riding on Iraq, domestic policy and larger international policy seem to be adrift.

--The US seems to be doing little to turn the tide of world opinion in our favor. As Peter Grier in The Christian Science Monitor (17 Oct 03) said, “Two years into the war on terrorism, the US and the Arab world are as estranged as ever, and appear to be drifting further and further apart.” Much of the Western world, at the same time, looks upon us with fear or loathing because of our strut.

--On top of all that, the Republicans and their media hawks (e.g., Ann Coulter, the wicked witch of the right) have made it thinkable to pin the label of disloyalty (nay, none would dare to call it less than treason, if Coulter could have her way) on just about anyone who criticizes the Commander-in-Chief’s judgment. If you say that Bush policies give you a feeling of being “mired” down, watch out—somebody might call you at least a coward if not a traitor. That’s enough to make your miry feeling even worse.

On 6 November 2003, President Bush gave a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. It sounded like an earnest effort to rise above the immediate mess in Iraq (I have vowed not to call it a quagmire). Our work in Iraq, he said, is really aimed at advancing democracy in the Middle East and around the world. He rejected our long Cold War practice of attempting to buy security by supporting undemocratic allies. A more secure world will emerge as democracies develop.

He argued that no credible religion or culture can stand against the power of democracy. He delineated the essential democratic principles that can take root anywhere—limits on the power of the state and the military; rule of law; healthy political parties, labor unions, independent media; privatized economies; property rights; rights of women; investment in health and education; opposition to official corruption; an attitude of hope rather than resentment.

Bush expressed a tolerant view of what forms democratization in Middle East lands will take. “They will not, and should not, look like us.” Wow! “Modernization is not the same as Westernization.” Boffo!   They will need “time to develop.” We need to be “patient and understanding as other nations are at different stages of their journey” toward democratization. Great!

Bush was mindful of other historic clarion calls by previous American presidents—Wilson’s Fourteen Points, FDR’s Four Freedoms, Reagan’s speech at Britain’s Westminster Palace on “the global campaign for democracy.” Bush declared that history is moving in the direction of liberty. It is our calling (meaning, surely, HIS calling) now to advance it throughout the world:

We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom -- the freedom we prize -- is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind.

And so, the US, he said, has adopted “a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.”

Contrary to the patience he expressed while Middle East nations discover how to be democratic, Bush’s remark on Iraq emphasized the immediacy of our sacrifices, the dangers, the difficulties, the high stakes. “The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.” Again, in a different pitch, wow!

This was a breathtaking expansion of America’s mission that came in the wake of earlier expansions of mission in Iraq. You could glimpse the Wilsonian grandeur in Bush’s call for a new world order. Democracy, promoted by the US, will bring peace and tranquility to the nations of an increasingly linked world.

I will risk sounding traitorous to right wingers by wondering whether this was another rhetorical flourish intended to please an audience or a major shift in policy. If it was an announcement of a new policy, the administration should be gearing up for new diplomatic, educational, and economic initiatives commensurate with this world-changing vision—beyond the emergency actions in post-Saddam Iraq.

Speaking from my own mental quagmire, I’m at once skeptical. Bush often seems to believe that he can wag his finger at the world and expect it to do what he says. He seems to have persuaded himself of his own moral clarity better than he has persuaded other nations to line up and do the right thing. His record for backing up brave words with money and innovative programming does not look good.

In the grip of his neoconservative team, Bush mainly has resorted so far to military initiatives and unilateral flourishes to effect his international policies for the "new American Century." Until this speech, he has shown little appreciation for the complexities of non-Western cultural traditions that resist modernizing change. Democracy has to be valued from within a nation and a culture before it can begin to operate, and that takes time, resources, and political development on the ground. Until this speech, Bush said little about this, as far as I know.

If the US is going to move toward Bush’s breathtaking goal, I doubt if rhetoric from Washington will help much. It is more likely to be counterproductive; for those being preached to will see it as one more type of imperial iron fist. And one can hope that the unforeseen “postwar” difficulties in Iraq will dissuade Bush from additional democratic “nation-building” adventures at the point of our guns.

We will begin to help the world move toward democratic ways first by providing a better example at home. We need to step back and assess what we so hastily did to civil liberties in the Patriot Act. We need to do something about the deepening underclass in America that lacks ownership of our democratic dreams.

We will help, second, by returning to the “humble” attitude toward other nations that Bush briefly espoused when he was a presidential candidate—by restraining our cocksure sense that we can do anything to anyone in the world if we want to.

We will help, third, by supporting specific democratizing improvements espoused and executed by particular peoples in particular nations. We can do that mainly through governmental and non-governmental international organizations, not through proconsuls backed by American military might.

Perhaps the private Open Society projects sponsored by George Soros provide a worthy model. Soros’s network of autonomous foundations and organizations in some 50 countries since 1993 has been promoting open societies (the prerequisite for democracy) “by shaping government policy and supporting education, media, public health, and human and women’s right, as well as social, legal, and economic reform.” (See my review of Soros's valuable insights on globalization.)

Maybe Bush’s host on 6 November, the National Endowment for Democracy, is itself a useful model. It is non-governmental in structure but operates with some public funds.

In my miry funk, I think I hear impatient neoconservatives mocking these notions. But Bush’s speech to the NED lingers. Wouldn’t it be something if it really was a watershed event? Suppose it was his declaration of independence from his neoconservative handlers. Maybe he WILL form a new agenda that will allow for gradations of colors. Maybe he'll retire the “good-vs.-bad” black-and-white worldview that has guided him so far.

The debate whether we have fallen into a quagmire in Iraq is filled with irony that could be instructive for Bush. A black-and-white worldview took him into Iraq, and that led to his present complex problems there. It may be that a more complex worldview going forward—such as that which began to take shape in the 6 November speech--would lead Bush to engage with other countries in more diplomatic ways, and that paradoxically could lead to simpler and more clear-cut outcomes. They might be less likely to look like quagmires.

ground

CAN'T WE JUST FIND COMMON GROUND? Exploring the political split over Iraq

(30 September 2003)

The hairbreadth results of the 2000 presidential election revealed a divided nation. The 2004 election probably will be nearly as close. The ideologies of neoconservatives and of “liberals” (for simplicity let me call them the left) solidify more and more. It seems increasingly unlikely that people on either the right or the left will reach toward the middle. The middle has shrunk to a thin political line that does not accommodate sides but divides them like a DMZ.

David Brooks in the 30 September 2003 New York Times lamented this degradation of political life: "Politics is no longer a clash of value systems, each of which is in some way valid. It's not a competition between basically well-intentioned people who see the world differently." Brooks saw a battlefield "in which each side believes the other is behaving despicably."

I attribute the solidification of ideological opposites in considerable measure to the unyielding sense of rightness among resurgent neoconservatives, who found their vehicle into the sun in the odd election of George W. Bush. But I also attribute it to the inability or unwillingness of the left to acknowledge that postmodernity demands new political forms both domestically and internationally. And its lingering sense that the right stole the 2000 election from Gore exacerbates the left's myopia.

The neoconservatives shocked the left when they came to power and began implementing a new political approach domestically and internationally. The left was unprepared for a revolutionary agenda from a marginally elected administration. Its resistance has been reactive and visceral rather than principled. Beyond mere resistance, its program mainly has been fished out of a vanished past and poorly applied to the unusual social, political, and economic conditions that have transformed the US and the world in the past fifteen or twenty years.

Moreover, Bush has given currency to the “either-or” way of viewing things. Those on the right and the left have seemed all too ready to bring Bush’s attitude in international affairs to domestic politics. If you are not with us, you are against us--totally. If we are not with you, we are against you—totally. We make our choice and put political conversation on ice. It leads nowhere.

Americans have zigzagged successfully through their democratic history by struggling to find enough common ground amid partisan or factional differences to prevent the center from disintegrating. We have always been in civil conflict: it was only in the Civil War that political conflict collapsed into armed conflict. But our highest political loyalty has not been to the factional right or left. It has been to the middle, where consensus based in law has allowed the work of the nation to happen. Today, we seem in danger of allowing the middle to wither altogether. This would leave us so divided politically that we could not function as a nation.

Typically, people seek out opinion that reinforces theirs. They share political insights with those who agree with them ahead of time so that they can reinforce one another. They do not typically take their argument to the other side and try to persuade. I think it is important to resist the abandonment of belief in an American middle.  This means that we have to work harder to understand the rhetoric of the side we do not occupy. We cannot simply close our ears to it.

In an attempt to check this tendency in myself, I am reading National Review Online and other “conservative” publications. This forces me to think about my habitual leaning away from the right. Perhaps it will season my opinion. Perhaps it will help me to talk reasonably with friends who think of themselves as neoconservatives.

As a case in point, I take Victor Davis Hanson’s 26 Sep 03 piece, “On the Right Side of History” from NRO. Can I countenance Hanson’s main argument?

Hanson argues that our invasion of Iraq was justified by historical circumstances. Bush’s action put the US on the “right side” of those circumstances. Despite current hysteria surrounding our presence in Iraq and its costs, the end of Saddam’s bloodthirsty regime and the rise of a democratic Iraq will vindicate US action. Democratic presidential hopefuls, Herr Schroeder and his German compatriots, Jacques Chirac and his French compatriots, and critics of Bush’s isolation of Arafat—all ultimately will face “the hard truth” that the US did the right thing. France and Germany will have to face the harder truth that, in the end, the US “might be in a sense done with both of them.”

The overriding historical circumstance in Hanson’s account of course was 9-11. The attack on America made it necessary for us to present an aggressive new approach to “terrorist and fascist regimes.” No longer could we afford “blustering inaction” such as we saw in the preceding twenty years (Hanson apparently thinks Desert Storm in 1991 was a subset of pusillanimous policies). If we hoped to bring an end to war on terrorists, we had to abandon the policy of “deterrence” and resolve to destroy “horrific regimes.” We had to wage war not against “terror” but against “those states that aid and abet those who employ the method of terror.”

At the moment, Hanson acknowledges that unsettled events in Iraq are evoking frenzy and hysteria among politicians here and abroad and in the media. But the truth of history will turn opinion around. Nations will wake up to the need for America’s active worldwide support of good and opposition to evil.

Hanson’s final point is that the American president in the years ahead will have to persuade the public that such an activist role in the world is essential. He or she will have to remain as firm as Bush.

Let me try to affirm what I can of Hanson’s case.

Yes, we had to “recover our national security” after 9-11. Our use of military power has sent a clear message to rulers who would harbor anti-American terrorists.

Yes, we have relieved the world of a tyrant in Iraq. This has aligned the US on the side of human justice in the world in a new way, even though political passions and suspicions of our motives blind many to the truth of that.

Yes, we closed Afghanistan as a terrorist training camp and safe haven. (Hanson conflates our achievement against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan with our action in Iraq; he tends to attribute to the controversial Iraq operation the same clear-cut anti-terrorist purpose that Americans and the world readily understood and applauded in the Afghanistan operation. He ignores the fact that bin Laden in Afghanistan was directly implicated in 9-11 in a way that Saddam in Iraq was not.)

Yes, Americans are sincerely pursuing “the democratic reconstruction of Iraq.” (Never mind for the moment the question of sweetheart reconstruction contracts for American corporations close to the administration.)

Yes, when (if) Iraq is a self-governing state able to control its fascists and extremists, France, Arab neighbors, and other current doubters will affirm the (Anglo) American effort—however grudgingly.

Yes, now that reconstruction of Iraq is ours to do, we cannot back out.

Yes, we have to press on from there “in our effort to shut down the nearby havens of terror” (though the massive military option chosen for Iraq should remain our last resort.)

That’s not such a shabby list of affirmatives from someone who thought Bush was too eager to shoot in Iraq and too reluctant to do more hard diplomatic work as the world’s most powerful leader.

Why, then, do I have a disquieting feeling after reading Hanson’s article? Three reasons.

First, Hanson overemphasizes the state-based nature of the terrorist enemies of the US. We know that states are implicated in the making of the 9-11 suicide bombers, just as they are implicated in the making of Islamist extremists everywhere. Saddam’s Iraq was sending reward money to the families of Palestinian suicide killers. Saudi Arabia has been nurturing Islamist fundamentalists, who have been teaching Muslims to conduct jihad against the US and the West. The Taliban-led government of Afghanistan gave Al Qaeda a place to operate.

However, the extremist movements within the Muslim world are not parts of a state structure. They may depend on states for resources, but their reason for being is not to advance states as such. To defeat international terrorist organizations, apart from states, the world community—not just the US—needs to emphasize international operations that differ in their targets and methods from the kind of warfare we conducted in Iraq. Hanson fails to acknowledge this fundamental difference in the nature of our enemies.

Terrorists are the volatile by-product of a system of Islamic ideas about the nature of human society in the world and what is best for it in the future. They carry the Islamic worldview to an extreme and see violence against the West as the only way to engage.

We have to combat the violence of this extremist minority with force, to be sure. But we have to mount a much broader engagement with the vast Islamic world that disagrees with our values but does not terrorize us. Muslims have a worldview that differs from that of the secular, modernist West. Driven together by globalization, both Muslims and Westerners must "battle" to discover common ground in our respective worldviews. Our presence in Iraq by force of arms is one form of primitive engagement with Islam. But the long-term work of fundamental engagement must come through diplomacy, intellectual and religious discourse, and enlightened American participation in advancing the welfare of the world community.

Ending the Saddam regime by force is thus a very limited action in the West-Islam engagement. It crudely begins a process that has to lead to hard work in forums rather than in more firefights. Hanson leaves one with the impression that our firepower has done the hard work and the rest will easily come.

Second, Hanson is too eager to believe that critics will “come over to the US position” because the invasion of Iraq was on “the right side of history.” To be sure, European and some Arab nations probably will come to acknowledge the positive value of our humanitarian outreach and reconstruction agenda in Iraq (assuming that Americans with Iraqi help can contain the guerilla opposition of Saddamites and foreign jihadists).  Second-guessing and Monday-morning-quarterbacking probably will diminish as Iraqis move toward self-rule.  It may be that, as Hanson reports, our action in Iraq “gave hope for 50 million in the Middle East.” We all should dearly wish that to be the case.

But Bush’s obvious zeal to go to war without greater understanding and support in the world community has left an enduring scar on the world's body politic. Although Iraqis gradually may lead better lives thanks to our unseating of Saddam, this scar will not fade. It will persist as a warning to nations as they deploy around American hegemony. That warning may help impose some order on the dynamic postmodern world; but it will also spawn resentment of American unilateralism and resistance to our will. And the disorder growing out of that resentment could cancel out the order Bush hopes to impose.

If history has sides (there’s a big debate for another day), some will say that we are on the right side because of our might, not because of our insight. Hanson sarcastically sticks it to the French and Germans more than once in his piece; he seems cavalierly willing to see America cut its historic ties with these and other nations critical of our military action. Hubris will not down in the neoconservative worldview.

In typical neoconservative style, Hanson cannot envision an interlocked world seeking to operate on principles of community and comity. He clearly envisions America as the world’s enforcer--the benign dominator. And he imagines that our critics, after sobering up from their mistaken objections to our invasion, will come to us with hat in hand, as it were, wanting our protection, and on our terms.

If it is useful at all to think about the Iraq invasion as part of some grand historical narrative, I would not place it where Hanson places it. He thinks that, on reflection, nations will see the invasion as an acceptable answer to the question of America’s role in the 21^st century. I think that our preemptive strike has sharpened the edge of the question without providing an answer.

At best, it has forced all to begin thinking afresh about the past half century in international relations and about what the post-9-11 future might require. This may well lead in the long run to a far-reaching reordering of relations among the states of the world. Such a reordering, however, if it is to come, lies quite a distance away. Before it could be achieved, the US and the nations of the world would have a massive agenda to create and to pursue. Our invasion of Iraq would be little more than a precipitating factor.

Third, Hanson fails to understand the puzzlement felt by millions around the world at the precipitate decision to invade Iraq. Bush and his colleagues have felt unembarrassed as they have shifted reasons for doing what they did. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction dismays many who believed the president. But the Bush people, and Hanson, display no such dismay. They feel comfortable in advancing a variety of reasons for our action.

I think I have figured out why.

The American invasion of Iraq was to be an elemental event whose consequences would far outweigh the reasons advanced for it, and Bush knew that going in. That is why it has been so easy for the administration to shift reasons. That is why it so readily has gone with the flow of events since the “official” end of the war last May. The war itself was its own reason for being. Its after-effects are their own reason for being, whatever they turn out to be.

I think that the Bush people see Operation Iraqi Freedom the way Truman saw the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. They would probably be comfortable likening it to Jefferson’s decision to buy Louisiana from France. It is like Congress’s refusal to endorse the League of Nations after World War I. One might compare it to a natural event--a hurricane or an earthquake. Such events have consequences so vast that the narrow arguments about why they occur simply fade from interest. What matters is that they cause things to happen in the world in ways that no one could calculate in advance. They are prime movers. They reshape reality.

When the twin towers fell, the US came to believe that the world could no longer remain as it was before 9-11. The Middle East—home of the suicide terrorists—had to change in a fundamental way. The ready-made plan to change the Iraq regime was there for the taking. Deposing Saddam would shake the Muslim Middle East to its roots. Picking up the unpredictable aftermath would become our agenda for future Middle East policy.

The invasion of Iraq, that is, did not have a cause in the usual logical sense of cause-and-effect.  It IS a cause of other events. If Bush has a genius, it is a genius for creating big causes that precipitate unpredictable, even incalculable, effects. His vaunted steadfastness lies in his willingness to take on whatever those effects turn out to be, come hell or high water. His incredible tax cuts play the same elemental, causal role at home that the invasion of Iraq plays abroad.

The millions at home and abroad who were puzzled by the precipitate invasion of Iraq were right to say that it defied normal logic. Bush was operating in a different dimension. I wish Hanson were better able to see why this led to resistance and disbelief at home and around the world.

Puzzled or not, Americans have to face the new reality that Bush chose to create in Iraq. The US cannot undo it. We have to stop agonizing over what might have happened if the US had not gone in when it did. We have to spend what is necessary to put Iraq on a stable political footing (though Congress should scrutinize the expenditures and keep Rumsfeld and Bremer on their toes). Even if Bush fraudulently sold us the war, as Ted Kennedy charged, we have to put our soldiers at continued risk to finish the job so zealously begun. (We have to do so even if we suspect that Bush suckered us into this position from the start by massively deploying troops in the desert heat prior to telling us he would invade.)

But this does not mean that we have to join Hanson in celebrating Bush's performance. We do not have to acclaim Bush as the best steward of our safety and welfare for another four years. We do not have to accept Hanson’s grandiose theory of history.

This was not a "war of necessity at all, it was a war of choice," as Thomas L. Friedman said in the 28 September 2003 New York Times. The "free-riding world" will let us deal with the aftermath "largely alone" because we started it largely alone, Friedman added.

Then he called Bush "deeply morally unserious" for telling us that we can transform Iraq while radically cutting taxes for the rich and sending the deficit soaring. Friedman thinks Americans will support our continued engagement in Iraq, "but they want a pragmatic, strategically optimistic, morally serious plan to get behind." Bush has not yet presented such a plan, Friedman said. He could lose in 2004 if he does not give us one.

I guess my sympathy with Friedman's analysis suggests that Hanson's article, in the end, did not move me much to the right. Still, I feel better for having tried to get inside the head of a neoconservative. Even without moving much, I can say that there is some common ground for Hanson and me to stand on. Maybe that's the historical narrative that Americans need most right now.

taint

MISTAKES IRREPARABLY TAINT BUSH II'S RECORD

(22 September 2003)

In his big speech on 7 September, President Bush began altering his disastrous go-it-alone approach in international affairs. He now is willing to ask for UN help in Iraq. Although this start of a turnaround in strategy is welcome, it comes too late to erase the blots on Bush's escutcheon. He already has irreparably shown that he is too eager to shoot and too reluctant to do the hard work of planning and building.

In domestic affairs also, a reckless fiscal policy that will damage America for years to come irreparably taints his record. He is not conceding that Washington should roll back his excessive tax cuts for the privileged, even an inch, to help pay the $87 billion bill he belatedly announced for our occupation of Iraq. Don't even think about the chances that he will push for adequate funding to implement his education plan or other essential social programs, now floundering.

Americans have been patient since 9-11 as they have watched Bush seek a viable way to combat terrorist enemies while also seeking prosperity at home. But 9-11 did not earn Bush a free ticket to a second term. Even Republican loyalists by election time will soberly have to face up to his damaging mistakes of judgment before they vote.

(This opinion appeared as a letter to the editor in the Pottstown Mercury on 18 September 2003.)

complex

MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX

IS "A SELF-LICKING ICE CREAM CONE"

(12 August 2003)

The hallmark of the American economy is free market competition under the rule of law. Private capitalism reigns as our dominant ideology.

Whatever else the Bush administration stands for, its pronouncements perfectly represent that core feature of the America we know. Let people and corporations be free to pursue their dreams of material gain, and the greatest good will redound to the greatest number sooner or later. Keep government out of the way as much as possible. Laissez-faire.

Franklin (Chuck) Spinney's views from the Pentagon contradict this prevailing idea behind the American economy. The Pentagon's methods for procuring military products, in Spinney's reports, create a "Political economy" at odds with free-market principles. It carves out a "command-economy" enclave within the larger market economy.

The "military-industrial-congressional complex" described by Spinney removes a sizeable piece of the whole American economic pie from the competitive table. "Economic decisions, which should prevail in a normal market system, don't prevail in the Pentagon," Spinney told Bill Moyers in an interview on PBS's NOW on 1 August 2003. Other Spinney takes on the complex:

"A self-licking ice cream cone."

"Versailles on the Potomac."

"Internally self-referencing."

Although the military-industrial-congressional complex contradicts the free-market idea, it features the familiar focus on MONEY.

Here is the complex in operation. Congress can put more money into military spending when the public feels threatened, as it felt in the 40-year Cold War and as it now feels in post 9-11. With more money to spend at the Pentagon, military leaders can buy more weaponry. The Pentagon can perpetuate pet weapons development projects, whether or not the changing circumstances of warfare warrant them. Military industries can jack up costs for their products and services, now in greater demand. Congressional legislators, who authorize the increased spending, can show constituents how their districts are flourishing from military business and gain gratitude and reelection.

To see the structure of the military-industrial-congressional complex, follow the money, Spinney said. But also follow the people. Generals, ex-generals consulting with corporations, politicians, and corporate executives maintain a human infrastructure that keeps them all licking at the same ice cream cone scooped up by Congress.

Spinney's most damaging charge against the complex is that the Pentagon cannot tell Congress where it spends its money. Pentagon accounting practices are too complex to be tracked at the end of a fiscal year. This makes it impossible for the administration to meet its Constitutional fiscal responsibility to Congress. Congress, Spinney said, now waives the Pentagon's requirement for annual audits.

The build-up of military expenditures in the 1980s under Reagan "was the mother of all experiments" in Spinney's view. He told Moyers that current public fears about terrorism enable Congress to pump in new money the way it did in the Cold War decades. This political infusion of money is bringing new vitality to the self-referencing complex. It still operates outside the normal constraints of the free economy. And expenditures remain unaccountable.

Spinney retired this year from his position in the Pentagon after a long career. His critique applies to some thirty years of first-hand observation. But he told Moyers that he is particularly concerned that the military-industrial-congressional complex is misdirecting resources and failing to target the post 9-11 terrorist enemy for what it is.

The complex keeps money flowing to big weapons designed for fighting a USSR-type enemy that no longer exists. In Spinney's view, it does not direct enough money into weapons and resources that will defeat the non-national terrorist organizations that pose our biggest danger:

If you start thinking about how you deal with these kinds of threats, you don't need B-2s. You don't need ballistic missile defense. You don't need Comanche helicopters. Basically what you need are really highly trained individuals that…understand economics, anthropology, as well as fighting, particularly in close quarters combat which is the most difficult form of fighting….these guys can insert themselves and infiltrate these nodes at lower levels of distinction. Not this nation v. nation conflict.

Donald Rumsfeld has been reluctant to estimate how much the Pentagon will spend on Iraq. When he says he does not know, he boasts that this is the honest thing to say to the American people. But we know that we will spend vast amounts that would not have been spent if the administration had not started the preemptive war. Fueled by the necessities of occupying Iraq and by the continuing post 9-11 fears of the American people, the money pipeline from Congress to the Pentagon is sure to be flooding. If Spinney accurately describes the system, that means that the military-industrial-congressional complex is going to be richer and more powerful than ever.

The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm specializing in military manufacturing (Bush I is a director), and Halliburton, Vice President Cheney's former employer, will be among the preferred profiteers as we build Iraq and gird for more big wars.

Chuck Spinney somehow managed to remain on the Pentagon payroll while telling Congress how the military-industrial-congressional complex warps the procurement system. He retired this year. But he maintains a website and will continue to criticize. (PBS created a link that describes Spinney's remarkable career.)

It is encouraging that Spinney could withstand bureaucratic pressures to silence him. It is discouraging that, despite his revelations, the complex looks stronger than ever in the climate of fear following 9-11.

quality

BUSH PUTS QUALITY OF AMERICAN LIFE AT RISK

(30 June 2003)

The June 13 edition of a local newspaper (The Phoenix of Phoenixville) reprinted an opinion from the Connellsville Daily Courier: "Bush tax cuts needed to help revive growth." Those who hold this view regrettably accept President Bush's case for tax cuts at face value. They fail to see that many factors will influence a revival of economic growth and that the tax cut is not an essential one.

More important, they fail to see that the president is not speaking plainly about his real reason for tax cuts. He wants to reduce federal funds available in the long-term for important government services and programs. A majority of Americans probably would oppose the president if they fully understood this.

The ripple effect of federal cuts on state and local budgets will be to gut essential public functions all over America—or to drive state and local taxes up while Bush boasts about federal cuts. Pennsylvanians already are getting a taste of the grim future that Bush favors as we watch Governor Rendell go through slow torture over the current budget crunch. If Bush's tax cut has his intended long-term effect, it will weaken what the typical American surely still wants--a healthy system of government at all levels dedicated to serving the public good.

Sadly, many citizens, like the Connellsville Daily Courier, have bought the radical idea that just about any government spending is bad. That idea drives this administration. It sets Bush and the Republican leadership far apart from many Americans, including, I believe, many Republicans.

The president has converted a classic Republican objective—to control government spending—into a radical vision that will damage the quality of national life for years. And he has done it by violating another classic Republican objective—to keep the nation out of deep debt. The tax cut sets up the federal government for a huge long-term deficit.

Bush will use the deficit as his excuse for skeletalizing government. This will shrink social safety nets, put the environment at further risk, and weaken the public infrastructure. It will starve regulatory agencies that keep an eye on special interests on our behalf. Voters should think hard about supporting a president with such a radical vision of America's future.

civvies

PRESIDENT SHOULD KEEP HIS CIVVIES ON

(7 May 2003)

Harry S. Truman did not dust off his World War I uniform when he became president. President Dwight D. Eisenhower kept his general's wardrobe in mothballs. We saw President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson in the natural-shouldered suits and narrow neckties of the 1960s, not in their World War II Navy uniforms. Nor did we see President Jimmy Carter flaunting his nuclear submarine togs. The first President Bush was a brave World War II pilot, but he wore his heroism modestly and kept his civvies on.

American presidents are Commanders-in-Chief of the armed forces BECAUSE they are civilians. Our strong national tradition resists the politicization of our military and the militarization of our politics. This Constitutional separation is an important assurance of stability in our democracy.

When President Bush dressed up like "Top Gun" and milked a captive crew of sailors for applause in front of cameras—aboard, of course, the Abraham Lincoln—Americans should have reflected on this flagrant flouting of national tradition.

We were not seeing the president performing his duties as civilian Commander-in-Chief. We were seeing the president performing his duties as politician, with an eye fixed on his 2004 reelection campaign. The performance showed a president taking cheap advantage of his position for a political campaign photo-op.

Luckily, the whole show was so transparently contrived that it may have won the president more laughter than reelection support.

tax

POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, NOT ECONOMICS,

DRIVES PUSH FOR MORE TAX CUTS

(18 April 2003)

Jim Gerlach won the seat for our new gerrymandered Congressional District by a whisker. He recently asked constituents for opinions on issues. As a green Republican soldier in Tom DeLay's army, Congressman Gerlach is unlikely, I suspect, to heed constituent voices that do not resonate with the majority's political orthodoxy. But he asked. Maybe he's so new that he might be unhardened enough to listen. So I picked "tax cuts" and wrote to him as follows:

Dear Congressman Gerlach:

Thank you for your recent "Dear Friend" flyer with its accompanying "Your Opinions Matter" questionnaire. I sent the completed questionnaire to your Washington office. One of your questions asked whether I favor cutting taxes or reducing the deficit. I checked "reduce the deficit" and here would like to tell you why I made that choice.

The economic pros and cons of another tax cut can cow mere citizens like me—and even, perhaps, new members of Congress like you. Some experts say yes; but others say no. How is a responsible non-expert voting citizen--or a voting member of Congress--to decide? Certainly, we have to do our best to understand the alternative future economic scenarios that conflicting experts offer us. Having done that, we can admit that a decision to cut taxes is political, not just economic. That allows us to seek the right decision on more familiar ground.

"Cut taxes" has been one of the four or five points on the Bush administration's list of political objectives since it entered office. Tax cuts will stimulate investment. Business will flourish. Americans up and down the income ladder will prosper. If greater prosperity does not generate enough taxes at the lower rates, that's okay, as I understand the administration. It feels tolerant toward deficits. And it will be working with you in Congress to cut government spending--except military spending. It will ask you to cut, among other things, social programs.

I urge you not to adhere slavishly to this political ideology. (1) Even ordinary citizens understand that the national economy will respond favorably to numerous influences, not just to another big tax cut. (2) Congress can restrain further increases in military spending. (3) Non-military "government spending" is not the dreaded disease that some politicians and ideologues say it is. Judicious "government spending" supports the social safety net, the infrastructure, and the environment that are the foundations of a secure and prosperous America.

In your few months in Congress, you have shown that you understand that. I applaud you for already securing $12 million to improve our District. I encourage you to continue to identify needs in our District and to seek federal funds to address them.

More broadly, I encourage you to focus on America's serious social shortcomings--and to support sound federal programs that can directly deal with them. Congress has been lavish in its urgent support of war in Iraq. I hope that you will be one of those in Congress who feel the same urgency to support programs that will improve the quality of life for people here in America. We need a fiscal order that will allow you to do this.

Sincerely,

14 April 2003

A day later, Paul Krugman in the New York Times gave an example of the unsavory way the majority's political ideology will play out in votes on expenditures to help people.

He cited the patriotic praise heaped on our soldiers by House members as fighting began in Iraq. They capped these praises with a rousing resolution in support of the troops. "Then," Krugman sourly noted, "they voted to slash veterans' benefits."

The majority's action demonstrated "the belief of the Republican leadership that if it wraps itself in the flag, and denounces critics as unpatriotic, it can get away with just about anything."

What it wants to get away with is continuing reduction of non-military government spending. Congress has to lower expenses because of lower tax income. So, sorry vets, we love you but we can't help you.

I'm hoping that my representative did not give a speech in praise of soldiers and then vote for a cut in veterans' benefits.

newsweek

NEWSWEEK PRESENTS A BULLY BUILD-UP FOR WAR

IN THE GUISE OF JOURNALISM

(14 February 2003)

Look at Newsweek, 17 February 2003.

On the cover, Secretary of State Colin Powell holds a fake vial of simulated anthrax in his right hand. "Judging Powell's evidence" reads the headline.

The age of the simulacrum reaches its apotheosis.

The Bush administration sent its most trusted public servant out in front to persuade the world and the American people that we ought to be prepared for war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq regime. It gave him a simulation to wave in front of the cameras.

Newsweek, eagerly eyeing its market, gives Powell's vial sensational cover treatment.

"SHOWTIME," says the magazine's caption inside. A dramatic overhead color shot of the UN Security Council meeting, bleeding over two pages, rests on a screaming headline: "JUDGING THE CASE."

The subhead for the same spread says, "New threats from Al Qaeda lead to a high-threat alert as Powell lays out the evidence for a war against Iraq. The proof--and what's ahead."

Did Powell persuade? Newsweek reports that early reviews were "mixed." No matter. It reports that the administration will persist with its "maximum pressure" on the Security Council. Bush does not need another Council resolution to go to war, Newsweek reports, but the US wants allies to help rebuild a post-Saddam Iraq.

As you page through the special report, however, you soon see that "reporting" is not what Newsweek is doing. The whole production of captions, photos, drawings, and text, splashily laid out, is your indoctrination manual for accepting and supporting war on Iraq.

The special report dominates the contents of the issue as a whole. It upstages the spectacular news story of the week, the loss of space shuttle Columbia. By giving the war the cover position and generous space at the front of the magazine, Newsweek speaks unmistakably to you: This is the most important topic for you to think about. See your future here.

The underlying message is almost as loud and clear: Don't argue against the war; this is where your government is going, so learn to live with it.

The special report is surrounded by sidebars and inset boxes whose heads define what you should be thinking about: "chemical weapons"; "biological weapons"; "nuclear weapons"; "delivery units"; "the bin Laden connection".

Turn the page, and your eyes feast on a two-page spread on "the weapons" for "fighting a 'smart' war." The graphics are dramatically appealing to the eye. The inventory of "bombs and missiles" should arouse your awe and admiration.

Turn the page again, and you find the Pentagon strategy for "ATTACK ON IRAQ" laid out in graphic clarity. A sidebar on "Iraqi power" assures that it is less than in 1991. Another on "a dangerous force" tells you that US military is "more lethal" than in 1991. The caption for a drawing of a B-2 Bomber informs you that in the first two days we will launch "some 3,000 precision-guided missiles at targets throughout the country."

Turn to another page for "the battle plan." The Rumsfeld team calls it "shock and awe," according to the subhead. Newsweek's main head translates this way: "BOOTS, BYTES AND BOMBS." The alliteration catches the beat of drums that has accompanied the Bush strategy since Labor Day.

Newsweek copy describing the battle plan glitters with the gung-ho language that Bush and his team have projected to the world: "try to kill Saddam"; "strike as hard and as quickly as possible"; "a new kind of war"; "the first war of the Information Age"; "simultaneity, agility and effects-based targeting". A new warhead--the E-bomb--will melt down Saddam's computers, turn out his lights, and silence his phones.

In a show of journalistic professionalism, the article attempts to balance the tone of irrational exuberance for war. The E-bomb has not met the test of real war and may not work. Americans may have to dig Iraqis out of "Fortress Baghdad" in the "meat grinder" of urban combat. Glitches may plague high-tech devices. Saddam may preemptively unleash chemical or biological weapons. Our advancing troops "could be caught up in a grotesque humanitarian disaster, having to push past dying Iraqis" poisoned collaterally by their leader.

Lest these possible problems dilute your exuberance unduly, a big sidebar jacks up your resolve. It reports on "Saddam's Crimes" and asks, "Will the dictator and his henchmen ever face trial" for "beatings, whippings, electric shock, acid baths"? An undated color photo accompanies the question and gets your blood boiling. It shows three executed Iraqi prisoners hanging limply on crosses.

The special report continues to the next spread on "the aftermath." A big color photo shows an oilfield ablaze on the horizon and a dead soldier in a smashed vehicle in the foreground. Newsweek here simulates no less blatantly than did Powell when he held up his vial. The photo is from the 1991 morgue of Gulf War coverage. Its function obviously is not to bring current news but to grab your imagination as you get into the mood for war.

"IMAGINING THE DAY AFTER" goes the headline. The subhead suggests that the battle may be "a cakewalk" compared with the aftermath.

It also promises you a look at "Washington's postwar blueprint for the future of Iraq." But there is no "blueprint," as it turns out, and Newsweek allows that that uncertainty blurs the report.

Undaunted and true to its purpose, however, the special report gives a jaunty final nod to American optimism and can-do-it-ism. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, it reports, will probably be the administrator of postwar Iraq. In view of the uncertainties, opines Newsweek, Garner might want to model his role on that of General MacArthur in post-World War II Japan--despite the administration's dismissal of an "imperial MacArthur" scenario.

If you even half-trust Newsweek to report the week's events accurately, you should end this remarkable piece of American "journalism" with a new resolve to support the Bush run-up to war.

But if you still have some doubts, the magazine is reserving a one-two op-ed punch to bring you around. The articles appear after the special report like a mopping up operation. They should wipe out any wimpish inclinations you may still be harboring.

Fareed Zakaria, whose articulate commentary brightens Sunday morning TV, assures you that the best course now for Bush is to go in. Bush should not "open a credibility gap" by backing away from the threats he has made. Zakaria endorses the wisdom of a senior Asian diplomat: "You've drawn your sword. Now you must use it."

If you remain unpersuaded, George Will is waiting for you on the last page with his knockout "last word." Will bashes the "feckless" French for dissing Powell's presentation. He sneers at Germany's Schroeder for foolishly playing the "anti-American card" at home. He shoots down Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic leader, for daring to remain unpersuaded by Powell's presentation.

Dear Reader, George Will implies, wagging his finger at you in an accompanying photo, get with the program. Support the war!

Sure, Newsweek simulates reportorial even-handedness in its copy. In the total visual and verbal presentation, however, it gives the uncritical reader a simplistic and glamorous impression of a bully build-up for war.

This screed for war in the guise of journalism tells us something about the debased nature of public thought in the age of Bush. Newsweek's reporting reflects the thickheaded style of this administration, which keynotes today's public discourse.

Bush concentrates on one thing at a time. But the US is at a moment in history when we should give all our effort to leading the entire world toward an integrated agenda for peaceful and prosperous global relationships. This requires comprehensive thinking. It means that our leaders should deal with the whole while working on a part.

As Newsweek makes clear, the Bush people are not even able to think clearly about the day after a military victory in Iraq. They appear to be even less able to think clearly about the place Iraq occupies in a comprehensive campaign to engage creatively and positively in the Middle East and around the world. That this is the only long-term way of winning the war on international terrorists seems beyond their understanding.

Abetted by market-driven media such as Newsweek, Bush has dumbed down the public discourse on global relationships. That discourse now is mostly in terms of weaponry and war. The public run on duct tape in anticipation of more terrorist events in our homeland symbolizes the pathetic depth to which America has come under Bush.

Preoccupied with war, Bush crudely belittles the UN and other nations. He is failing to lead an international quest for a more civilized life around the world. He is failing to seek the common cultural ground that will reduce distrust between people in Islamic lands and those in the West.

His body language and rhetoric needlessly are pointing in the opposite direction, toward American imperial isolation, toward an international rhetoric of violence. If preemptive war is good for the goose, it's also good for the gander.

Even his most effective staff member on the international stage, Colin Powell, now has abandoned his tolerance of ambiguity and simply beats the drum for war. Bush has used up much of Powell's credibility in the world by putting him out front to "make the case" with simulations.

Take oversimplified media hype like that in Newsweek, add fear of new terrorist threats against our homeland, and you understand why Americans want to put their trust in Bush's unrelenting push toward war in Iraq. It seems like a simple solution.

Nevertheless, you want to hope that "old" Europe succeeds in keeping the agenda "complicated."

You want to believe that resisting the rush to war in Iraq is the most loyal thing to do.

You want to hope that Powell has not totally caved in to the simplistic, one-issue-at-a-time mentality of his Commander-in-Chief.

You want to hope that Americans do not make their judgements by reading Newsweek.

whoop

COULD BUSH'S DOGGED WAR WHOOP YIELD SOMETHING GOOD?

(26 January 2003)

Yes, George W. Bush is monomaniacal. He is a man of one idea at a time. Once he gets an idea, nothing keeps him from repeating it. He rarely surprises you because he stays on track. He's been "sick and tired" of Saddam Hussein's deceptions since Labor Day. That won't change.

To many, this dogged consistency illustrates Bush's severe limits. They say he is blind to nuance. His seemingly limited intelligence insults theirs. They think this wall-eyed trait in the leader of a great nation such as ours will in the end lead it into disastrous actions at home and abroad.

To many others, Bush's hammer-like consistency illustrates his strength. He looks determined to go the way he thinks is right, even when the odds seem against him. Look at his early tax-cut victory. Look at his disciplining of the UN to pass a resolution against Iraq. Neither initially seemed likely. He hammered away until the opposition caved in.

I was among those who thought that the unrelenting war whoop about Iraq that he started as summer ended was a political tactic aimed at winning the November elections for the Republicans. I still believe that. But I also predicted that he would change the subject after the elections. He did not.

Nutty as it seems, he has continued to nip at Saddam's toes while appearing to neglect other pressing problems. He has invested hundreds of millions of our dollars to amass our military force in the Middle East. He willingly has kept the world economy on edge by ranting about overthrowing Saddam by force.

If private citizen George W. Bush were ranting to Laura and daughters on the Crawford ranch, we would not have to notice. Because he is the head of our government, we have to think twice about his idea of changing the regime in Iraq—whether or not we like his style.

Clearly, Bush's monomaniacal behavior toward Iraq turned out to be more than a November 2002 election tactic. True to form, he's still fixed on his original idea.

And at a certain point in recent months, I noticed that worthy political opponents and thoughtful journalists began to talk seriously about the possibility of a preemptive American invasion of Iraq.

Democrat Dick Gephardt early on agreed with Bush's aim. Diplomat Richard Holbrooke, no ally of George W. Bush, said recently that the chances of a US invasion of Iraq were high.

Tom Friedman in The New York Times (22 January 2003) argued the case for a US-induced regime change in Iraq. (He argued the opposite in a follow-up piece on 26 January 2003.) By removing Saddam's government, we would bring "a more accountable, progressive and democratizing regime." This, Friedman said, "would have a positive, transforming effect on the entire Arab world — a region desperately in need of a progressive model that works." A progressive regime in Iraq would begin the long process, as Friedman saw it, of showing the whole Arab world that it has to stop blaming others. It has to get rid of its rotten regimes and renew itself through "freedom, modern education and women's empowerment."

Friedman, further, suggested that the unwavering build-up of US military presence already has changed Arab behavior without our firing a shot. He pointed to improved behavior by Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Saudi initiative for an "Arab Charter" of reform.

Large actions on the world stage have large consequences for better or worse. Those who take large actions rarely seem to know all the possible consequences. Did Napoleon know how greatly his military adventures would change nineteenth century European culture? The Bush military build-up already is a large action, whether or not our forces enter combat. It already has had a transforming effect on our UN allies and on those who fear our might. Already the US is giving "empire" a unique meaning for the 21^st century: when imperial power exceeds the sum of all other power, the mere threat of imperial action can be an effective surrogate for the use of actual force.

Lest we forget, large actions on the world stage also have large consequences at home. The threat of our overwhelming force indeed may drive Saddam from power without an actual war. If so, the American public no less than our reluctant allies (and perhaps some Arabs) would be profoundly grateful to Bush for (a) avoiding war after all and (b) precipitating regime change by threat alone. Other things being equal, he would ensure his re-election in 2004. Many, even many who cannot stand his monomaniacal style, would come to acknowledge the political power of single-minded imperial persistence.

I have been saying from the start that 9-11 began a long "engagement" that would lead toward a new cultural relationship between the West and Islam based on a more realistic understanding of one another. We might have to engage militarily at first to combat terrorists; but we would ultimately engage culturally and politically in search of positive outcomes.

Like many, I cringe at the crude way the president represents us in the world, especially at his rhetoric on Iraq. He's unnecessarily throwing away good will at home and abroad. He's distorting priorities for fighting terrorists. He's neglecting to help Americans clobbered at home by the ailing economy.

Nevertheless, I'm preparing myself to believe that Bush's single-minded focus on Iraq might be a limited step in the long and more comprehensive process leading toward global accommodation. If he pulls the trigger, it will create new momentum for the West and Islam to engage culturally and politically. If he does not, the military threat itself will have created the momentum. Whatever his decision, Bush appears to be laying groundwork for a long-term development in global relations without quite knowing what he is doing.

class

BUSH DISTRACTS AMERICA WITH CRY OF "CLASS WARFARE"

(13 January 2003)

The Bush team "rolled out" its economic stimulus plan last week. This maneuver resembled the "rollout" of an advertising campaign, complete with rhetorical spin and polish from the president and his spokespersons.

(We saw the dramatic effect that Bush "rollouts" can have when the administration launched its media campaign against Saddam Hussein after Labor Day. It significantly helped the Republicans win the elections in November.)

In its promotional rollout of the economic plan, the Bush team came up with a key rhetorical weapon to preempt the criticism of Democrats. It anticipated that opponents would accuse it of favoring privileged Americans without directly addressing the immediate distress of the less-privileged, who are feeling the current crunch the most. There was good reason for it to anticipate this criticism and seek to repel it.

The Bush administration strives always to advance its ideological agenda. The core of its ideology is that policy should favor privileged Americans because Americans as a whole will indirectly benefit when privileged Americans prosper. The corollary is that government should avoid policies that directly favor less-privileged Americans (although it may have to make exceptions for political expediency). Policies directly favoring less-privileged Americans would violate the neoconservative principle of individual freedom and would wrongly acknowledge that social phenomena, such as class structures, actually exist.

So, as the rollout began, his promotional minions handed the president a loaded phrase from the past. Anyone who attacked his proposals would be engaging in "class warfare." Bush was to deliver this old Marxist-Communist phrase with a pejorative wag of the head and a disdainful wrinkle of the brow. This would telegraph something vaguely sinister about his opponents' intentions.

By accusing his opponents of "class warfare," he would remind people of the evils of "Marxism" and "Communism" from the Cold War years. And that would subtly bring to their minds the old odor of "un-Americanism."

I was astounded at the eagerness of media commentators to pick up the "class warfare" canard without exposing its White House origin or its dubious relevance to the serious economic and social problems facing the nation.

David Brooks of the conservative Weekly Standard, for example, explained in a New York Times op-ed piece on 12 January 2003 why less-privileged Americans do not see themselves in a war of the classes.

They perceive themselves as the "pre-rich," said Brooks. They hope for a brighter tomorrow because they still see America as the land of opportunity. They don't resent the rich. "Many Americans admire the rich," he said. And above all, in Brooks's view, "Most Americans do not have Marxian categories in their heads." He explained:

This is the most important reason Americans resist wealth redistribution, the reason that subsumes all others. Americans do not see society as a layer cake, with the rich on top, the middle class beneath them and the working class and underclass at the bottom. They see society as a high school cafeteria, with their community at one table and other communities at other tables.

Because of this pervasively hopeful democratic attitude, said Brooks, politicians "cannot imply that we are a nation tragically and permanently divided by income."

Americans of all economic levels, he meant to say, will resist being drawn by politicians into "class warfare."

Such Whitmanesque romanticism resonates, surely, in American breasts rich and poor, even in this highly volatile and uncertain postmodern economic era--even when 33 million Americans are living on less than $4,500 a year, according to Census Bureau estimates.

Conveniently for the Bush administration, it also harmonizes neatly with its ideological agenda. The anti-class sentiments of Americans, described so glowingly by Brooks, embolden Bush people to portray any direct effort to meet the needs of the less-privileged as a descent into un-American class warfare. And, if Brooks's analysis is accurate, they can feel confident that most Americans will miss the real point and agree with them.

Inconveniently for the general welfare of America, this rhetorical tactic ignores the substantive problems. Many less-privileged Americans, whether or not they harbor Marxian class attitudes, need help from America right now. The Bush administration has managed to get the public blabbing about the evils of putative "class warfare" at just the moment when it should be focusing on the substantive problems themselves.

After Bush launched his preemptive strike, The Christian Science Monitor on 9 January 2003 reported on two opposition responses.

Congressman John Dingell of Michigan said, "He's right [that we are in a war of classes], but it's Mr. Bush who is waging war on the poor."

Congressman Charles Rangel of New York said, "Never in a time of war have we reduced the tax burden on the most privileged. At the same time ..., we send a disproportionate number of lower- and middle-class kids to fight a war. If this is class warfare, I ask who started it?"

The White House has a knack for setting up straw men to take attention away from what it ought to be doing but isn't. Its preemptive charge of "class warfare" is an ingeniously created political straw man. Maybe as Congress debates the Bush economic plan, more Americans--privileged and less-privileged alike--will see the difference between a clever rhetorical distraction and the reality of the national problems they share in common.