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THURSDAY, 27 FEBRUARY 2003
I will not be marching to war in Iraq. Even if I were of fighting age, I would not. Citizens now fight because they choose it as a career, not because the nation drafts them. The nation is waiting, not mobilizing. Our leaders tell us to go about our lives. President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld will lead the way. We should keep supporting the economy while the military forces do their deadly work on our behalf.
To be sure, recent advisories from the new Department of Homeland Security brought the war closer to us citizens. We should prepare to be gassed in our homes. The resulting run on duct tape--to seal the cracks in doors and windows--at first was hysterical. Then people—and comedians—saw the absurd disproportion between the threat and the remedy. The nation had a laugh while it looked over its shoulder. Tom Ridge, our new homeland savior, treated the flap with down-to-earth Pennsylvania humor. Be vigilant, he advised; pack a sensible survival kit, then go about your lives (this is becoming a mantra).
If the need to attack Iraq preemptively were clearer, I would be better able to follow Tom Ridge's advice.
Robert Woodward titled his book "Bush at War." Not "America at War" or even "Bush Leads America to War." This is Bush's war. Bush is a classic hedgehog of a thinker, to use a classic distinction drawn by Isaiah Berlin. He has one big idea and sticks with it, come hell or high water. He is not a fox of a thinker; foxes, Berlin said, have many ideas and jump from one to another and back again. No doubt in certain circumstances, hedgehogs make good leaders. They stay on message. Foxy leaders hold focus group discussions and gab through long staff sessions into the night. Afterward, they tend to say "on the one hand…on the other hand."
Decisive and focused Bush is. (He said he could not agree with the millions around the world who demonstrated recently against preemptive war on Iraq; that would be like governing by focus group, he said.) What divides Americans and the world is the question whether we are best served by these hedgehog qualities in the president in present circumstances. Bush's critics believe that his focus on Iraq, with his apparent neglect of the rest of America's agenda, is obsessive.
In his network-televised speech to the nation yesterday, Bush seemed aware of this criticism. He went beyond the maneuvering and international politicking needed to stage his war. He envisioned the benign outcomes of military action against the Iraqi regime. It will enable Iraq and other repressed nations of the Middle East to build free and democratic institutions. It will enable Israel and the Palestinians to break their deadlock and move toward an accord. The military might of America will be in the service of good against evil.
Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger on Nightline said that this speech was "more poetry than politics." Bush gave little expression to the ways and means of spreading democracy through the Muslim world. But Eagleburger welcomed the breakthrough. He may have been detecting the furtive movements of a fox lurking in Bush's rhetoric.
This diarist-citizen welcomes it too, but wonders. It was no coincidence that Dan Rather's interview with Saddam Hussein appeared on CBS the same day. Surely, Bush could not abide being upstaged on American airwaves by the evil one himself. The White House requested that the networks carry Bush's speech to the American Enterprise Institute. And patriotically they did. "Iraq" still looks like the name of America's war in Bush's mind.
And I can't get that out of my mind. So, it is impossible to go about living my life as usual. Yesterday, I went to lunch with colleagues, retired like me, "Romeos"—retired old men eating out. We are done doing our share of running the world. We eat out because we enjoy reflecting on what we once did. Iraq did not come up until the hour neared its end. I could feel the table tense up. We each had a gut sense of the state of the world; doubtless, we did not all see Bush at war in the same way. Not wanting to spoil our day, we waffled and soon went our separate ways. I took my disquiet with me, as perhaps the others did.
Hence, this diary. Perhaps if I regularly gloss America's run-up to war on the Iraq regime, I will see significance not otherwise visible. I know that this is not about a war on the Iraq regime. It has to do with defining a new vision for Walt Whitman's nation--my nation--in a new world. Bush's war is too important to Americans to allow it to be Bush's war. Our war, the whole of it in the whole world, demands a fox. It will be interesting to see whether Bush can confound biology.
Fred Rogers died this week. He told kids for forty years on TV that somebody loved them. It was okay if they acknowledged their feelings in a neighborhood of trust. Millions of grownups thanked him for what he did for them when they were kids and for what he did for their kids. His simple message, his honest puppets, and his soft-shoed delivery were out of step with almost everything happening in postmodern America. And in step with the way kids are in any era—grownups too, deep down. It feels grimly fitting that Mr. Rogers should die just as the nation girds for war. The vocabulary of war and the vocabulary of love make a mixed message.
Last night, I watched Paul Wolfowitz on C-Span testifying in front of a Congressional committee. He told the Congressmen that he met with hundreds of Iraqi-Americans in Michigan. They told him stories of family members being tortured and murdered by the Saddam Hussein regime. Many are still reluctant to talk, fearing that the long arm of the regime will reach them, even here in America. Wolfowitz said that these stories lend support to our war effort. He assured the committee members that people in Baghdad will rejoice when Saddam falls.
In his syndicated column today, Morton Kondracke commented on the disunited state of the nation. Democrats are "hammering" Bush for short-changing homeland security. Republicans are accusing Dems of failing to follow the president's lead in the national effort against terrorists. Kondracke cites Rush Limbaugh: "If [another attack] happens, they're prepared to unleash an assault on the president the likes of which we haven't seen from them in a long time." (By citing Limbaugh, whose media business is wholly the self-promotion of Limbaugh, Kondracke reveals the poverty of his own analytical resources.) Meanwhile, we the people are lining up on political sides as we think about attacking Iraq.
Wolfowitz needs popular support for his strategic vision of imperial preemption. Republicans need to follow their leader on the road to Iraq because it is the way to retain power in Washington. Democrats need to speak against the way Bush handles Iraq and the war on our Islamist enemies; their chances of fielding a viable opposition in 2004 depend on it.
The people out here, away from Washington, need to figure out how and why America is moving into a new imperial mode that seems to depart from the message emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty.
The small nations on the UN Security Council yesterday chastised the big powers for not hammering out an acceptable position on Iraq; discord is high. (If Limbaugh were a Democrat, he would be arguing that Bush is hoping for, and maybe abetting, a breakdown in UN decision-making so that he can then do what he wants to do on his own with the mystical "coalition of the willing.")
It feels as if some new form of the "fog of war" is falling on America before actual rockets fire. Kondracke wondered if we would unite if another major terrorist event by al Qaeda occurred. He knows we would. Perhaps some even wish for such a happening. It would end the disunity. To such thoughts does the logic of violence take us before we know it. I feel that at this moment we may be doing what bin Laden wanted and expected. We are adopting his logic of violence to the exclusion of the logic of love. Goodbye, Mr. Rogers.
Gomes of Harvard and Elshtain of Chicago last night told Ted Koppel what they thought of an Iraq war from the viewpoint of justice. Will it be a "just" war? Harvard said no; Chicago said yes if certain conditions prevail.
Earlier on PBS, Bill Moyers talked with Joseph Wilson, expert diplomat on Iraq, about post-war nation rebuilding. Bush in his big speech to the nation the other evening promised a democratized Iraq (his most recent argument for going to war). Wilson hoped Bush knew what he was talking about but he doubted it. He praised Iraqis for their proud character but denied them easy entry into Western-style democratic governance. Tribal dynamics are too powerful; experience with democratic processes is too lacking. Prepare for a long haul and a very big bill.
Moyers is one of the few on TV who editorializes against immediate war. (The even-handed caution of a Ted Koppel measures how far the corporate media journalists allow themselves to go.) Moyers had pinned an Old Glory lapel pin to his sweater for the broadcast. He wanted to reclaim our flag from the administration. Bush has made the lapel pin the visible sign of one's support of the war. But Bill said it's his flag too. Pro-war people can't highjack the flag of every American. He didn't draw the parallel with al Qaeda's highjacking of Islam, but he might have.
Gomes and Elshtain talked with Koppel about anti-war behavior after war begins. Should citizens just shut up and support the war despite their conviction? Both ethicists said that the war, once begun, should continue to be scrutinized for its "justness." The war would not cease to be an instrument of politics if it broke out; it therefore would not cease to be subject to the ongoing critique of democratic politics.
To be sure, the White House would continue to exercise its awesome talents for managing the message. Most electronic media already are on board and give scant air to anti-war argument or event. Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman write a weekly online column, "Focus on the Corporation." They bash Bush regularly on all counts. They wrote the other day about their misadventures with Ari Fleischer's daily press briefings. Ari sets up security roadblocks at the White House so that they miss the meetings.
If bombs burst in air, the patriotic binge will nearly overwhelm people against a war on Iraq. I expect that The New York Times and The Nation, among other print venues, would sustain criticism. Bill Moyers would still have a voice on PBS. (I wonder how long Bush would tolerate that voice of dissent before training his sights on PBS.) Democrats in Washington would lose their battle for attention in the wake of war. Cynics say how well Karl Rove, Bush's political meister, knows that. (My use of the conditional tense here represents my faint gesture to resist the mood of inevitability that has overtaken public talk about Iraq war.)
We have some 200,000 fellow citizens amassed in the Middle East, combat-ready. I personally feel a distance from them. I know no one in that whole horde ready to fight under my flag for my security. Our troops now resemble stock brokers I don't know--people doing the job they chose to do, helping to keep America going. The dogfaces of Bill Mauldin are dead or dying. In-their-face accounts of the soldier's war--Ernie Pyle's kind of story--cannot reach us now. The Pentagon processes our information and our informants the way it processes electronic bomb trajectories. Recently it agreed to "embed" reporters with troops. The connotations of rape or prostitution are too obvious to belabor.
Moreover, the generation gap between this military cohort and me makes it hard to connect with what they are feeling out there in the sand. Much of the reporting on them is about split families. Warrior moms leave their kids back at the base. Husbands and wives both march off and hope the military and extended families will care for their offspring. The good career deal is demanding its payment. I hear reports of reservists who are called up on short notice, forced to leave their domestic world in disarray.
In addition to the fog of war, there is the heart of war. If it happens, I with others would put my heart on my sleeve for these 200,000 Americans I know so poorly. Danger and death would have cathartic effects on the citizenry. Even without Mauldin and Pyle, one way or another I would get to know them as they fight and bleed (or choke or blister) and die.
Bush and even Rumsfeld are too young to have felt the weight of World War II. Yet, they emulate the "greatest generation." We learn that Bush is Truman to Blair's Churchill. (Another comparison of Bush with Lincoln I would rather forget.) Roger Angell of The New Yorker is old enough to tally the human price of that war. He wrote about the "class of 1942" in the 3 March 2003 issue. He catalogued in grimly matter-of-fact style the deaths of the classmates and others he knew. Then he said that the Pentagon announced its purchase of 15,890 body bags. "None are for use by the enemy."
Before war, blood races in anticipation. During war, blood runs freely. After war, blood congeals into elegy. I don't know what Roger thought when, still a youngish WWII vet, he had to react to our war in Vietnam and the protest against it. I keep remembering the passions surrounding the 1970 Kent State killings of students by guardsmen. I guess that citizens learn little from one war about the next. Those who fought the last one grow old and die. Those who will fight the next one grow up and feel their blood racing.
Yet, I heard an interview of a young German the other day. Our American reporter was trying to find out why he was so opposed to war in Iraq. He said the stories in his family and town about Germany's last war affect him and his contemporaries profoundly. He cannot imagine wanting to destroy towns, no matter what. "What" of course is what Bush is fighting. "What" differently defined is what all America is fighting, whatever they think of an immediate war on Iraq.
After seeing Joseph Wilson talk with Bill Moyers about Iraq, I happened across his article, Empire or Republic?, in a 13 February 2003 online comment for The Nation magazine. As our man in Baghdad in 1991, he urged Bush I to undertake the Gulf War--his bona fides as a proper hawk are clear.
His view of Gulf War II by Bush II is nuanced and starkly negative. "Hegemony in the Arab nations of the Gulf has been achieved," he says, by our military build-up and badgering of the UN. Saddam is ALREADY contained. So why is Bush so hell-bent on military adventurism in the purported cause of Western democracy? Because, says Wilson, he is being guided by the new imperialists:
The neoconservatives with a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party, a party that traditionally eschewed foreign military adventures, want to go beyond expanding US global influence to force revolutionary change on the region. American pre-eminence in the Gulf is necessary but not sufficient for the hawks. Nothing short of conquest, occupation and imposition of handpicked leaders on a vanquished population will suffice. Iraq is the linchpin for this broader assault on the region. The new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our worldview are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme.
Something old rings in Wilson's words. He is conjuring a familiar theme of the 20th century West. Europe naively believed that its Enlightenment program was right for all people in all places. Political truth was apprehensible; the West apprehended it; and the West was duty-bound to spread the light everywhere, whatever the expense.
Vietnam seemed finally like the obscene play of Cold War international politics; but we went there too because in our hearts we thought we had the right insight for the world. We still had the modernist vision of universal truth for the world. That was then. The protests and later the mea culpas (see Robert MacNamara's) came. We made a mistake of vision, revisionists finally said. Clinton's diffident use of military power confirmed the lesson learned by the Baby Boomers.
But Americans, it turned out, did not all go that way. Modernist hubris may have modulated into postmodern stuttering in the larger swing of things. Left waiting in the shadows of change were the neoconservatives. They remained modernist: they perpetuated the belief in Western hegemonic destiny and looked to Washington to carry the project forward beyond the Cold War. Their Christian fundamentalist belief continued to assure that some things never change. They had the backbone to resist the multicultural, pluralistic vision of a global heteroverse that came out of the culture wars of the last third of the 20th century.
The Supreme Court harbored enough of them to squelch that postmodern vision for the nation by seizing the lucky chance to put Bush in the White House. With the nation back on track toward its historic destiny, neoconservatives could now re-light the lamp of freedom, American style, everywhere in the world.
This morning on George Stephanapoulos's This Week show, neoconservative George Will editorialized against the protesters' poster theme, "no blood for oil." His statistics on our oil imports showed that Iraq's oil shipments to the US are only sixth in volume. He argued that Bush is willing to risk economic instability for a purpose larger than economic advantage in the Middle East. Right you are, George. A headline in a recent Christian Science Monitor (I think) asked, "Can we afford the continued moral clarity of Bush?"
Wilson answers this way: "There is a huge risk of overreach in this tack. The projection of influence and power through the use of force will breed resistance in the Arab world that will sorely test our political will and stamina."
Stephanapoulos yesterday flew to Paris to interview Dominique de Villepin, French Foreign Minister. He flew right back for this morning's show. Villepin feels he is doing his friends the Americans a favor by resisting immediate war. My biases made him sound sensible.
How captive am I to my gut aversion to a Bush style? I've gone to the conservative Weekly Standard online for an injection of neocon perspective. One story dealt with liberals who are belatedly getting aboard the Bush war train. The Standard welcomed support but took pot shots at their persistent distaste for Bush. Snobs. It guessed that liberals are getting aboard to protect their butts: they don't want to be on the side of the road when Bush turns out to be right for attacking Iraq. I vow to read more of this hawk stuff, hoping to see into the neocon mind and mine.
And the big news on the real war--against al Qaeda: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is in custody. He's third in line from bin Laden, they say. Congressman Porter Goss Republican of Florida told Stephanapoulos how powerful our covert, collaborative effort in the Middle East is. This capture finally shows it. Goss's comment led me to devise a theory favorable to Bush. Bush's drum-thumping for war on Iraq is a diversion. It will reinforce al Qaeda's view of America as dumb and doomed. This will lull al Qaeda into complacency while our cracker-jack snoops scope them out and nab them. We have to keep our friends and citizens in the dark about our real intentions so that we can pull this off.
The idea of a "quick war," so hoped-for by Wall Streeters, is ludicrous. This is just the start of something big and global. It is a war for the soul of Americans, like me. What are we becoming? What should we become? What is it to be of the West now? Whither modernity? Is the postmodern turn already past? Are we back to counter-postmodernity? What will become of the world as we re-write our national identity on its back?
On the other hand, if we begin to feel that we are bringing al Qaeda to heel, won't the angst of war dissipate? Won't there be a new burst of energy in global business? Won't modernist-postmodernist mysteries return to academic enclaves, where nobody in the real world cares?
MONDAY, 3 MARCH 2003
In Dearborn, Michigan, a high school student wore a T-shirt with a picture of President Bush labeled "International Terrorist." He had to take off the shirt or go home. Officials acknowledged his freedom to express himself but feared the T-shirt would lead to fights. The kid went home.
In so many ways, the start of this war is not like the start of war in 1941. Marty Moss-Coane on WHYY was talking with guests who know the inside workings of the administration. The division between Cheney-Rumsfeld neocon tough guys and Powell softies is real and deep, they said. Neocons favor destabilizing the Middle East so that we can re-stabilize it the way it ought to be. The other guys, mostly in the State Department, want to keep stability above all. Marty's guests thought that Bush is sometimes with one camp and sometimes with another. That's why we citizens can't get a completely clear picture from him. That's why protesters are muddying the neat scenario of a just America at war in an unjust world. FDR knew precisely who the enemies were and what we had to do about them.
Tom Friedman in The New York Times said some time ago that he believed a new regime in Iraq could move the region toward democracy. Yet, he has clear-headedly talked about the problems of mounting a war. On 2 March 2003, Tom clarified. He thinks Bush has the right bold vision for the region; but he has not seen Bush do the heavy lifting required to get the job done right.
Tom credits Bush with the courage of conviction. Tom believes that Bush now agrees with the neocon clique and has abandoned the softies. Bush is not building up to war for political reasons. He's doing it because he believes in his heart that it's the right thing to do. More moral clarity. But much tactical fog. Here's Tom: "Mr. Bush is betting his whole presidency on this war of choice." But he has "failed to create a context for his boldness to succeed."
There's the main difference between FDR in December 1941 and Bush in March 2003. The world handed FDR a context that left him no choice but war. Bush is trying to hand the world a context in which he can choose war.
Saddam Hussein is the foxiest tactician. He destroyed a few missiles after Hans Blix insisted. He is promising a new report on how he destroyed nerve gas and anthrax stocks. He did not acknowledge these items in the December report to the UN. Ari Fleischer on Saddam the fox: "How do you know this is not the mother of all distractions, diversions, so the world looks in one place while he buries them in another?"
Saddam's show of compliance will give the doves of France and Germany further cause to hold Bush back.
And Turkey is giving Bush and our generals the mother of all headaches. It has so far failed to say okay to US troops on its soil. The Times today reports on alternative military strategies that don't use Turkey as a base. The White House surely is wondering about its power to purchase friends.
Ari. He will have his place in the iconography of the war. Deadpan in your face. Today's Ari mantra of controlled information from the White House: "desirable but not mandatory," referring to a second UN resolution on Iraqi noncompliance. The president stands by this position, in these words, no matter how hard reporters try to wring other words from Ari.
American troop strength increased by 60,000. Now we have a quarter of a million men and women in the Gulf region. George Will on Sunday said, "The war has already begun." Leaflets are falling. Air strikes are happening in the no-fly areas. I thought Will was pleading a little that it be so, unless his neocon pipeline to the White House carries real inside stuff.
Bush doesn't know how much the war will cost in money, lives, or time. The talking heads on business shows now attribute the economic blues mainly to his war drums. Budgets for domestic security and social programs are drying up as military expenditures rise. On just about every front, the nation is hurting.
Yet, his ratings have not evaporated. "Daddy protect me. If you say the bogey man is named Saddam, fine—go get him and keep me safe." Somebody the other day asked Bush whether he worried about the cost of the war. He said he worried more about the cost of Saddam's ability to hurt the American people.
Bush displays what my friend Nick Berry called "The Imperial I." As we all seek cover from terrorists, he dons the mantle of the prince. The state is I. And he gives to himself the freedom to speak for us and to protect us.
9-11, we said at the time, will change us forever. But we didn't know the details. They begin now to come into the clearing. The shape of American governance strains under our fear and our zeal for safety. Our president appears to feel that his being is the being of the body politic, his psyche the psyche of the people. He—we—counter our fears with American bravado.
Enabled by the docility of a fearful Congress, Bush deployed our thousands of troops before completing the required diplomacy. (The arrogance factor?) Now that they are there, people urge him to engage them in battle or else lose America's credibility. "You have drawn your sword; now you must use it"--regardless of the unknown consequences.
I could say, "You have drawn your sword; now show how strong you are by not swinging it when the enemy expects you to swing it."
I reject the comparison with 1941, but 1914 seems worth thinking about. The Habsburgs, too, CHOSE to precipitate war in response to terrorism in Sarajevo. Neither they nor anyone else knew that their decision would cost millions of people four years of hell and end a way of life forever.
The notion of "inevitability" gives hawks an easy out. They believe in their metanarrative. It shows them the bright future, even though they cannot cost it out or predict how much time we will need to realize it. They know in their hearts there is a foregone conclusion. (Isn't that the essence of ideology?) Those who don't believe in it doubt its congruence with reality.
I see a grade B western playing out. Some people die in town, victims of foul play. The townsfolk fear for their lives. Probably that man in the black hat and big mustache did it. The sheriff rounds up the posse and they all chase after the evil one onto the open range. The boys feel really good—and safe—as they ride neck and neck after that culprit. They catch him; they do some quick justice in the open air and forthwith string him up. The townsfolk cheer when they ride back to town. Fear, bravery, and simple narrative, accurate or not—an American story. We love grainy grade B westerns now, of course, precisely because their simplicity refreshingly contradicts what we know the world to be outside the theater.
Word is that the war could start next week. Reports have it that Bush might give Saddam one last chance in a speech and then go in when Saddam does not respond at once.
As the discipline of actual conflict nears, I sense that average Americans are quieting their doubts. Woodward's title may lead us to think it is Bush's war, but it is every American's war when bombs drop in our name. (The "not in our name" anti-war celeb campaign is getting bashed by pro-war people. "Stick to acting. We don't care about your politics.") Bush people are probably right to believe that a majority of Americans will rally behind our troops. But they are wrong if they believe that this will silence the anti-war voices.
The airwaves and press bristle with talk of war. Bush has focused the attention of the nation and the world on his agenda. One man, a nod of his head, the world. What an incredible feat for a guy who couldn't speak, who lacked a mandate, and who said we should be "respectful" of other nations.
Murray Dubin in the Philadelphia Inquirer, 5 March 03, reported his conversation with Debralee Santos, a Penn drop-out waitressing in center city, age 25. She went straight for the hedgehog in Bush: "We just don't understand why it's so simple for him. This is not a simple issue. Yet President Bush insists this is cut-and-dry, and everyone else has to fall in line." How will she feel the day the bombs drop? "Very hollow." Santos cited a Harold Pinter poem, All We Have Left Are Bombs.
William Rusher in his syndicated column (Pottstown Mercury, 5 March 03) supports Bush's determination 100% to disarm Saddam. But he faults him for "staggeringly inept" management of the debate. He wants Bush, even now, finally to come forth with "more explicit and persuasive evidence" of nuclear buildup. He owes us candor and has not given it to us, says Bush enthusiast Rusher. Wow--this is significant.
Ted Koppel, meister of everything, held a "town meeting" last night in the church that Bush attends in Washington. Three pro and three con on stage. Big presences in the audience, including ambassadors from France and Germany. Pro: James Woolsey former CIA head, Senator John McCain (R), Rev. Richard Land, Southern Baptist. Con: Senator Carl Levin (D), Rev. Thistlethwaite, UCC theologian, Joseph Wilson, former ambassador to Iraq (see earlier entries). Ted's theme: "Why Now?" A predictable stand-off, given the articulateness and passion of the panelists. Worth noting:
(1) McCain's calculated insult to the French ambassador measured the depth of hawkish animosity the war has spawned toward old allies.
(2) Land argued against "anticipatory reconciliation" with evil. It's impossible, he said. Saddam will not reconcile without force.
(3) Wilson insisted that the UN goal is to disarm Iraq and that that is (sort of) happening. Continue to nip at Saddam and keep force near to continue containing him. (Bush has stated that the goal is regime change, not merely disarmament. This is the irreconcilable conflict of purpose that troubles so many.)
(4) McCain likened Bush to FDR, Truman, Churchill: he sees the future more clearly than his people and is acting urgently without waiting for popular opinion to come around. The outcome will vindicate him as it did the other great leaders.
(5) Ted wrapped up. Next week we may be at war. Whatever you think of it, be assured that you will see it like no previous war. The administration is prepared to show it--through ABC and the like. What's this? I wondered. A Bush-media secret pact? Just self-promotion, probably. Whatever, Ted diminished the sobriety of the church meeting.
I ran across a copy of US Diplomat John Brady Kiesling's resignation letter to Colin Powell, 27 Feb 03. He quit after 20 years because he couldn't take it any more. To the hard hawks, this had to be the quintessential softy State Department voice:
The September 11 tragedy left us stronger than before, rallying around us a vast international coalition to cooperate for the first time in a systematic way against the threat of terrorism. But rather than take credit for those successes and build on them, this Administration has chosen to make terrorism a domestic political tool, enlisting a scattered and largely defeated Al Qaeda as its bureaucratic ally. We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking public wealth to the military and to weaken the safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy hand of government. September 11 did not do as much damage to the fabric of American society as we seem determined to do to ourselves.
I now feel the need for a double shot of neocon 100 proof to counteract the effects of these softy sentiments. To the Weekly Standard or the National Review I must hasten.
Remember, inspectors would not be back in Iraq and Saddam would not be destroying token missiles if Bush had not beat his war drum. An iron logic supports action against Iraq. Saddam said he would disarm in 1991 and did not do so. Bush badgering of the UN simply gave it the backbone to do what it should have been doing all through the '90s (a.k.a., the Clinton years).
Finally, I visited the website of the "Project for the New American Century." http://www.newamericancentury.org/
Here are the raw ideas that now drive the Bush administration.
"Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a non-profit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership. The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project (501c3); the New Citizenship Project's chairman is William Kristol and its president is Gary Schmitt."
In its statement of principles, 3 June 1997, PNAC declared that conservatives had failed to correct the drift in foreign and defense policy under Clinton. It proposed to give them an agenda for confidently advancing a "strategic vision of America's role in the world."
PNAC called for a return to Reaganism: a strong military; bold and purposeful promotion of American principles abroad; acceptance of our unprecedented opportunity for global leadership.
The keynote of PNAC's vision was its unabashed assertion that America's interests had to be pre-eminent:
We had to "challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values."
We had to "promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad."
We had to "accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."
[Underlined emphases are mine.]
The 25 or so signatories included Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.
On 20 September 2001, PNAC wrote to our embattled president while smoke was still rising in Lower Manhattan. Yes, it urged, get Osama bin Laden and destroy his network and his host Taliban regime, first and foremost. PNAC's immediate follow-up recommendation bears on the run-up to war we are now following:
But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9-11] attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a "safe zone" in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.
When Bill Kristol and his allies wrote PNAC's 1997 statement of principles, they were a voice in the Clinton wilderness. When they wrote their post-9-11 letter to Bush, they were articulating in large measure what American foreign policy was becoming. Last night, Ted Koppel interviewed Kristol and confirmed the wedding of PNAC thought with Bush administration policy. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz now occupy seats of power around Bush.
The trouble with this hawk ideology is its very vigor and clarity.
Norman Mailer, that aging anatomizer of the American political psyche, said it colorfully ("novelistically") in the 27 Mar 03 New York Review of Books. The PNAC commitment to Empire will, in Bush's mind, clean up the moral decay of domestic society (get those pierced, hip-hugger kids shaped up) by demanding discipline in service to global dominance. Mailer sees religious fervor in Bush's delivery of the PNAC vision.
But Mailer also sees a Bush whose action-oriented moral clarity makes him willing to alienate the whole world if necessary to impose his vision. He sees a Bush who is willing to go it alone. He sees a Bush who is desperate to bomb Iraq; for to hold his fire now would mean that "he will have to live again with all the old insolubles!" He would lose his only tool for "restoring America's morale."
Well, Mailer is just a blustering old loudmouth. What does he know about power? Bush, be warned, though. Mailer's The Armies of the Night on the protests against war in Vietnam gains more strength as years wear on--it may be his longest-lasting book in the end. He was just nutty enough to make sense in 1967. Maybe he is still making sense.
Leaders with vigor and moral clarity especially need to have peripheral vision. The unintended consequences of their actions may surprise them, even destroy their clarity and vigor. Bush people may not have learned all they should from the nation's misadventure in Vietnam. The mounting opposition to immediate hostilities may bear a message they should listen to.
The Pope is weighing in against Bush--this doubtless confuses American Catholics who tend to be hawkish. France, Germany, and Russia are solidifying their power to block the US war plan in the UN Security Council. Students yesterday protested in center city Philly and in many places around the world. Human shields from Britain and elsewhere are vowing to stay in Baghdad and take American bullets to protest the war--their moral clarity and their foolhardiness seem to equate with Bush's.
I keep trying to see what Iraq is about. It is not about oil, except tangentially. It is not primarily about weapons of mass destruction or stopping al Qaeda. It's about the PNAC vision of an American century. Our military might will re-order the Middle East and the world as we think fitting.
Other people with a different vision would see the dawning of a Rousseau-esque "general will" beginning to arise globally. The opposition voices from France, Germany, and Russia, along with emotions on the streets of the world, might be the early evidences of such a general will. In this vision, America would find itself embedded in a global context of nascent civility. Fighting terrorists willingly and collectively with others--employing our might in genuine common cause--would demonstrate the beginnings of a global consciousness. It would be saying that people all over the world need a modicum of civil sanity, and that should be the top priority. This would be the antithesis of Empire. Is there a political equivalent to the Friendly Giant?
If you expect some such vision to emerge out of Bush's war on Iraq, you are whacko. A soft-headed peacenik, PNAC would say. Yet, such a vision could involve as much moral clarity and vigor as the PNAC vision. More. Much more.
Bush held a press conference in prime time last evening. He was still selling the case at the eleventh hour. He surprised some by saying the US will want to call for a vote in the UN whether to go forward. Gambler George wants all the countries to have to put their cards on the table—as if the big gamblers, France, Germany, and Russia, have not already shown their hand. Hawk George also said the US does not have to get permission from other nations to act in its own defense. Lawrence Eagleburger later on TV, like others, said war is just about certain now.
Neocon David Brooks in the Weekly Standard online this morning thought Bush's call for a show of hands was the only significant piece of the press conference:
I hope the administration has thought all this through. I do suspect that the decision to pursue this confrontational course emerges from Bush's own nature. He is a man of his word. He expects others to be that way too.
Regrettably, continued Brooks, honesty has nothing to do with diplomacy in the eyes of other nations. This is the peril of having moral clarity.
Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times today assessed how the invasion run-up is going:
The Western alliance is ferociously strained, NATO is paralyzed, America is resented by millions, the United Nations is in crisis, U.S. pals like Tony Blair are being skewered at home, North Korea has exploited our distraction to crank up plutonium production, oil prices have surged, and the world financial markets have sagged.
And the war hasn't even begun yet.
After seeing snippets of Bush at his press conference last evening, I have deep disquiet. How could the American government be so right about the threat of Iraq and so wrong in its way of meeting it? Bush wrongly assumes that direct assault, with or without the world community, is the only justifiable and effective way. If you read the PNAC or Heritage Foundation stuff, you understand why he thinks that way.
He is exponentially widening the fissures in the tenuous global community (does it even exist?). His ideological cheerleaders surely comfort him that there is no harm in doing so. James Phillips at The Heritage Foundation said, "France cynically sees inspections not as a way to disarm Iraq, but to disarm the United States." Ergo, off France.
As the leader of world leaders, the US president sets the tone of global discourse. Hawks like Wolfowitz assure us that the ugly tone being set by Bush will change when we have a quick and easy victory in Baghdad. Last evening, Bush was quiet and calm, doubtless through careful coaching. He tried to project an image of reasonableness and responsibility—a man who prays for Iraqis.
Many Americans and others around the world will not have seen him the way he wanted to be seen. He can say that's their problem, not his. But it will be America's problem to resolve sooner or later. I have to believe that the unintended consequences of Bush's direct approach will blind-side him and hinder the hawkish imperial project for the American century. If I'm wrong and he's right, he may be president for life.
Bush said he prayed for wisdom. Prayerful reinforcement of one's fixed idea of course is not wisdom. Would that in answer to his prayers he gets the message that he should develop peripheral vision and anticipate consequences more clearly.
Michael Walzer, professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study and co-editor of Dissent, offered Bush an idea for avoiding a big war in today's Times. Continue and extend the "little war" already happening. Extend "no-fly" zones over the whole country. Punish countries and companies that violate a "smart sanctions" program against Iraq. Further expand UN inspections operations. Challenge the French to commit some troops to support their claim that force is still a last resort. (Great one-liner: "Otherwise, what they [the French] are saying is that if things get very bad, they will unleash the American army.") In brief, keep nipping at Saddam's toes and nose, only much more so.
Walzer's "little war" proposal grows out of the widely felt aversion to bringing the hell of combat down upon Iraqis and who knows who else? Ideas, projects, theories, "what-ifs" are lining up against human flesh and blood. It is an aversion that grows from fear that much of the world will spin out of control. Meanwhile (a hawk moment here), we have to remind ourselves that murderous hatred of flesh-and-blood Americans got this whole cycle started on 9-11.
The US and Britain now want the UN to set 17 March as the final deadline for Saddam to disarm. Saddam today is calling on the UN to condemn the use of weapons of mass destruction by the US and Israel--tit for tat. He is continuing today to destroy the missiles he didn't report that he had. Our troops are already moving up into position on the Iraqi border. Our "scare" flights over Iraq are greatly increasing. This show is a go, I'm afraid.
The neoconservative ideologues behind Bush have to be feeling their oats. Their idea for a boldly dominant America in the world is about to become reality. Their bullish feeling about "the new American century" amounts to "jingoism"--clamorous chauvinism or arrogant nationalism esp. marked by a belligerent foreign policy. (Webster's Unabridged) The Jingo party arose in Britain when it was facing off against Russia in the 19th century.
Tony Judt reviewed the neocon book just out from William Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission. (NY Review of Books, 27 Mar 03, p.6) (The authors may have hastened this short book to market in time to fuel the fire of war.) Judt laments their support of the administration's deliberate "dissolution of an international system" built up through the post WWII period. Judt scoffs that Rumsfeld's "new" Europe lacks genuine commitment to America. He sees something tragically wrong with the Kristol-Kaplan program for bold, preemptive, militaristic American action in the world: "breathtaking ignorance of the real world"...."doomed to arouse the very antagonism and enmity that provoke American intervention in the first place"...."callow provinciality"...."morbidly self-defeating."
Judt excoriates the Kristol-Kaplan proposal to extend the proper war on terrorists "into a mission statement for open-ended and unimpeded American actions to transform the condition of half of humanity, at will and in the teeth of international dissent."
The opportunistic use of 9-11 by Bush keeps coming back to haunt this diary. 9-11 frightened Americans. This made them receptive to whatever the leader wanted to do for their security against the unprecedented threat. Bush took advantage of the public's receptivity and vulnerability to advance the whole neocon "new American century" agenda.
Judt's article is too late. Congress and the nation at large never discussed whether the neocon hawk posture for America in the world is the right one. Bush put it on our platter and served it without a by-your-leave. 9-11 choked Democrats into silence.
So I wrote a poem:
WAITING FOR MARCH 17
The aftermath of last week's big snow
is still piled on the patio,
but the March sun quietly reduces it
each day; and now birds that light
on the railing grow in number and variety.
We think the siege of winter finally
will end some morning very soon
and the dead world rise as it has ever done.
Yet, we all wait as the last days pass
before our rising weapons smash
Iraq, the world we know descends
to a season out of order, and the end
of old familiar things abruptly falls.
Who knows what is waiting for us all?
Sometimes when I listen to the hawks confidently talk about a quick victory and about Iraqis cheering Americans in the streets, I wonder why I cannot shake this sense of doom. I keep remembering Blasco Ibanez's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The sense of everything coming apart that hovered over the 1930s seems to fit circumstances today. And I keep marveling at the single-mindedness of Bush. How can he put at risk domestic tranquillity, the budget, the economy, social support programs, our relations with allies everywhere, all because of one threatening despot who's been around a while? Because Iraq is not the issue--the issue is our role in the world. And he has an idea about it that remains fixed.
From my small experience, I know how it feels to be in the center of the action. When the action is complex and looks out of control, the best way to behave is to create calm and certainty at the center. When I watched Condi Rice this morning, she had a new calm and certainty about her. Doubtless it mirrored the mood of her boss. She was smiling confidently as she told George Stephanopoulos how simple it is. "The time has come for the Security Council to stand up and be counted" on the resolution to implement 1441 by 17 March. "Saddam Hussein could end this tomorrow. We don't need more time." The Security Council was wrong on Rwanda and hundreds of thousands died, she said. The US won't make the same mistake again and hopes the UN won't either.
George Will, who at this point seems accurately to mouth the administration's position, echoed Condi's confidence. The neocons really see things swinging into place now. Will was even more aggressive than Condi: "The UN is a bad idea." "France is not an ally" of the US. "We will force others to get involved in North Korea." The US will induce "a benign domino effect." (O Lord, does George remember what happened to the last domino theory?)
Joe Klein tried to tell Will that we need to factor in the rising offense being taken to "American arrogance." But the clarity of the mission in Will's mind brooks no dissent. That surely mirrors the White House.
Chretien of Canada said that the US already has won by putting troops in the region. Given Bush's resolve to go forward, Chretien said there was not much advice he could give him. US action without a UN resolution will create "very bad" reaction around the world, he felt.
I foresee two monologues. One is that of Condi Rice. The other is that of Saddam Hussein. It is March 16, the day before Bush plans to attack.
Condi says: "My leader is bold, simple, consistent, and clear. He cares about the community of nations; otherwise, he would have gone it alone months ago without the UN. The geopolitical mechanisms of the Cold War do not work well in the post-9-11 era. My leader and we are creating new mechanisms that will deal more effectively with violence and asymmetrical combat in the world henceforth. By standing firm, my leader is disciplining the rest of the world to behave in a new way. If the nations of the world can transform the UN into a relevant body, we will be happy. If the will of the world has not yet found its voice in the teeth of terror, America must speak for it. And my leader will. As our troops roll in this final moment before we unleash our rockets, I feel renewed and free, like my leader. The violence we visit on the Iraq regime will cleanse the atmosphere of the region and wake up the world. We do not know how it all will fall out, to be sure. But we know that our successful ouster of Saddam will define America's might and will for the future. With that clear, America will be able to act for freedom and democracy in Iraq and anywhere in the world. The American people will see that we are decisively protecting them. They will join the great American cause in the world because it is right and just. This is the new American century, and the young people coming up will play their leading roles on the world stage. They will always look back to see my leader's boldness and moral clarity on March 17 as their guiding beacon."
Saddam Hussein says: "I am not suicidal. I am a believer. I believe in the sacred mission of the Arab people to rise again and lead the world. I believe that I am destined to take them to their new power. I have weaved and bobbed under UN sanctions to preserve my potential for the future. Giving up a bomb here and a barrel of chemicals there means nothing, so long as my belief holds fast and I live for another day to continue the sacred mission. Bush has not backed away like all the others. This is an annoyance but not a fatal one. Tomorrow he will unleash the whirlwind on Baghdad and that is regrettable. I will improvise further to get through this. My most loyal warriors surround me. I have stationed my half dozen doubles around the city; they are ready to die in my boots when Americans see them. My plane is warming up. I have packed my bag. Within the hour we will fly out to my hideout somewhere undisclosed in the vast Arabian lands where our ancestors ruled the world. From there I will carry on the fight. My vision will go underground and survive to fight another day. Americans have short attention spans. They already neglect the Afghanis. Their violence against Iraq will inflame Arabs everywhere. Recruits to my underground cause will be countless. If a religious fanatic like bin Laden can be safe from them, so can I, and then some. He and I should be able to find enough common ground to mount the next terrorist assault on the Great Satan's heartland. I will not go gentle into a good night of exile."
Bush at war for the moment consumes almost everyone and everything. Poor Democratic hopefuls can't get a hearing as they try to stomp in Iowa. A Sioux City lawyer said to Dick Gephardt (reported by The New York Times): "I feel like I'm on a bus and Bush is driving and I'm looking back and I'm thinking, `Who gave him the key?'" Universal health care, anyone? Iowans didn't want to talk to Dick about that.
If (when) open hostilities start, no Dems will want to criticize our C-in-C, even on his deeply problematic domestic policies. This is a mess for democracy, more threatening than Saddam himself. In this as in all things, I feel a curtain descending on Americans while the hawkish in power strut and lead the loyal folk with their big trombones.
9-11-01 dramatically changed the focus of the "globalization" program I was studying. From an economic and cultural topic it became a geopolitical topic colored by the engagement of values between the West and Islam. 3-17-03 (whenever) will further shift my study of the West-Islam engagement. Military conflict and its immediate aftermath will absorb the "normal" processes. Iraq may develop economically but it will do so under a post-war desert tent erected by our military. "Globalization" will have a different twist for a long time.
I've fallen into the trap too of thinking the war is now inevitable. Condi and the boys are burning up the phones today, looking for votes in the UN to implement its will with force. The count is not looking favorable to them. Still, non-combat ain't over until the shouting stops and the shooting starts. My feeling of nausea toward war is propping up the fading hope that a near-miracle will occur. It took a whole century to persuade the Germans and the French that war was an insane option. Americans and lords in the Middle East are still on a learning curve.
Philip Bobbitt, a law professor at the University of Texas, argued in the New York Times today against the mere containment of Iraq. Those favoring it, he said, are indirectly calling on the US to keep military troops in the region indefinitely—at great expense to us. Well, does he think our military stay will be short after a war? Does he think our "nation-building" agenda, now an integral part of the Bush vision, will be cheap? Our engagement in the Middle East is going to be long and expensive, whether we attack Saddam or not.
David Gelernter in the 17 Mar 03 Weekly Standard writes that "the U.N. is no good." He boldly (baldly) says what Bush implied when he wagged a finger at the UN and talked about its possible "irrelevancy." Gelernter: "Now is the time to start thinking post-U.N., not merely because the Security Council has made such a mess of Iraq but because we have remarkable opportunities. And if the experiment fails, the U.N. simply carries on, chastened."
The hawk squawks again. The significance of Gelerntner's view lies in his eagerness to abandon a venue for representative international dialogue. He would reconstitute internationalism as a Big 3 initiative—the US, Britain, and (hold your breath) Russia. Even more, it lies in his excited announcement that this is an opportunistic moment for the US. Neocon spirits are running high!
I think of the left-leaning operatives who populated Washington bureaus in the politically turbulent 1930s—the generation of Chambers and Hiss, of "fellow travelers" in conservative suits. The sense of a new world dawning excited them. They felt that the US government could be an instrument for historic change in the political structure of the world. (They were replicating, perhaps, Marx's excited expectations when the revolutions of 1848 erupted.) Today's right-leaning men and women mirror that old leftist excitement. The tone of their talk is unmistakable: something big is going on in Washington, bigger than Iraq.
Credit the neocons with having a program. Who will develop an equally fleshed-out program to resist them? The 2004 campaign could be an exercise in political theory.
The Egyptian Islamic Research Complex, Al-Azhar, called on all Muslims for Jihad in case the US attacks Iraq. The Al-Azhar Grand Imam endorsed the statement. Jihad is an "individual duty" for all Muslims to defend their doctrine and lands against "new crusades." Attack on Iraq is just the first step in a series "directed to the rest of the Arab world." Muslims "have to forget all internal differences so as not to surrender to prospective attacks." I get this report from Islamonline.com, which is not aligned with radical Islamism.
I wonder what the ripple effect on other Arabs will be when (if) bombs fall on Iraqis. Bush declares that he is not at war with Islam. Many Muslims do not believe him.
Today, Bush allowed that he might tolerate a few days beyond 17 March before attacking. This would be to help Blair survive politically. Kissinger tonight in a TV interview did not think a few days one way or the other matters. He thought an unlikely move into exile by Saddam is the only drop-dead endgame to avoid war. The U.N., Kissinger felt, is in a bizarre moment, when small nations like Angola and Chile are being forced into great decisions that are out of their league. They are not equipped to speak for "the world community."
The last-second scrambling around the world looks like a diplomatic disaster. But scrambling can be diplomacy still. The sanity of the world community (?) is being tested here. Maybe Kissinger is wrong--he's been wrong before big time.
Larry King had a gaggle of Christian clergy on tonight to talk about the Christian take on this war. Yea and nay, as you would expect, with Southern folk (Jones III of Bob Jones U., for one) finding scriptural justification.
Today a TV poll (unscientific, I'm sure) found 45% of Americans believing that it was too late to avoid war; 55% believed it was not too late. Hendrik Hertzberg in the 17 March 2003 New Yorker wrote that many Americans on either side "hold their views in fear and trembling, haunted by the suspicion that the other side might be right after all." I'm keeping this diary in part because I just don't feel right that it has come to this. Bush decides with his gut not his head, according to Bob Woodward. I do too, in this instance, anyway: it feels weird, George.
A military expert on "Capital Report" tonight described the strategy of "shock and awe" planned for the onset of conflict. It would be psychological warfare by means of physical overload. He acknowledged that all the precision possible would not prevent many Iraqi civilian deaths.
How did Bush get into this corner with only one escape route--war? Hertzberg blames the asymmetry of European and American strength, the "obtuseness, short-sightedness, hypocrisy, and wishful thinking" of Europeans, their "playing for advantage." Most of all, however, Hertzberg blames the "ideological blindness" of the administration. It rebuffed international agreements "contemptuously and arrogantly." It defined the war on terror as simply a struggle of good vs. evil--it rejected "any attempt to analyze terrorism politically and morally." Resentment and fear of our actions have replaced sympathy for American losses in 9-11.
The line that rang most clearly for me in Hertzberg's piece was: "Where is the Administration's wisdom, its sense of diplomatic touch, its Great Power modesty?" Too often when I see Bush strut and smirk, I see little-man behavior in big-man shoes. Rumsfeld's style speaks for itself--but, regrettably, for all of us too. Today, I understand he stuck to a prepared script. That may have been progress.
Christopher Preble, director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, talked about the high spirits of hawks at this moment. He wrote in the 5 March 2003 Washington Times: "Liberals and conservatives alike who support a war in Iraq are exhibiting a level of hubris rarely witnessed in human history." Preble acknowledged the correctness of Bush's assertion that many Muslims desire freedom and democracy. "But the practical application of that desire cannot be exported by the U.S. military, complete with a 'Made in America' stamp."
Meanwhile, the economy limps like a wounded elephant. War plans divert America's attention from what Paul Krugman calls the economic "train wreck" in process. Krugman consistently warns that Bush policies, if not changed, will turn us into a "banana republic."
His view of war's economic effect in today's Times:
From a fiscal point of view the impending war is a lose-lose proposition. If it goes badly, the resulting mess will be a disaster for the budget. If it goes well, administration officials have made it clear that they will use any bump in the polls to ram through more big tax cuts, which will also be a disaster for the budget. Either way, the tide of red ink will keep on rising.
One more time: I stand astounded at Bush's radical reversal of long-standing Republican conservatism. If "reckless" is too strong, try "remarkably high-risk." He gave up booze and discovered religion years ago, but he still looks like a gambling man.
Although Rummy may have used prepared remarks yesterday, he made a major flap anyway. In answer to a reporter's question, he allowed that the US could go in without the UK. Somebody in Britain said, "He's insulted everyone else in Europe--we knew it had to be our turn sooner or later." Blair is risking his political neck for Bush. Some thanks. The White House patched up the gaffe, presumably.
But Blair is on the ropes at home. Now he's put out a six-point ultimatum for Saddam to supplement, I guess, a UN resolution. If Blair puts British troops into action without a UN resolution, his government could fall. I'm not clear whether Bush-Blair at this point will push for the vote this week in the UN. Bush nonetheless worked all day today on the phone to persuade Security Council nations to side with the US. There must be "Bush league" jokes circulating somewhere in diplomatic circles as baseball season approaches.
At lunch today, two of my good colleagues were beating the war drum. They believe the atrocities of Saddam against his people justify our attack on him. They draw a parallel with the 1930s, when the world stood by and Hitler mobilized. On the dull economy, one of the guys thought that a decisive attack on Iraq would clear the air and end the slump. They like to get their information from Fox News, where news is broadcast "unafraid."
Anti-war forces are planning a new day of rallies on 15 March, this coming Saturday. London, Washington, LA, New York, Chicago, San Francisco will be major centers of protest. I'm getting this info through Islamonline.net from Ali Abd al-Monaem of its Cairo staff. He reports that Brits are planning major civil disobedience in case war starts. They will sit on railway tracks and the like and call for Blair to step down.
From Islamonline.net I also learn that Nigerian Nobel Laureate for literature Wole Soyinka called Bush "one of the most dangerous fanatics ever to bestride the earth." Bush is no less a religious extremist than bin Laden, Soyinka said. "Blinded by a Messianic fervor."
The Beastie Boys rap group made a stir this week when they hurried their anti-war number to the Internet free for the taking: "In a world gone mad it's hard to think right." The song addresses Bush:
George Bush you’re looking like Zoolander
Trying to play tough for the camera
What am I on crazy pills? We’ve got to stop it
Get your hand out my grandma’s pocket
We need health care more than going to war
You think it’s democracy they’re fighting for?The Boys hastened to the web before bombs fall so that people around the world know that Bush does not speak for all Americans. They also thought that by playing their song they might encourage some Americans to feel better about protesting against their government. "One thing that the US administration has been trying to do is give the feeling that it's un-American to protest." ("Watch what we say," Ari warned early on.)
John McCain today in the Times answers Jimmy Carter, who appeared earlier this week there to oppose the war as unjust. McCain's headline: "The Right War for the Right Reasons." McCain puts the argument better than Bush. We have waited and waited for Saddam to obey; this is the opposite of a rush to war. "Far fewer will perish than are killed every year by an Iraqi regime that keeps power through the constant use of lethal violence."
McCain goes on: we intend our 3,000 bombs and missiles at the start to damage and demoralize the Iraqi military and prevent Saddam from using WMD--we do NOT intend to damage and demoralize the Iraqi people. Bush gets his authority from the American people, not the UN; he is free and obliged to act to protect us.
So far so good. Then: "No one can plausibly argue that ridding the world of Saddam Hussein will not significantly improve the stability of the region and the security of American interests and values." Many good minds do not share the Senator's certainty about this. They see greater instability in the region as Muslims react to non-Muslims on their sacred turf and as trading nations and tribes wheel and deal for special advantage in an unsettled atmosphere. They see retaliatory terror in our homeland.
McCain's knockout counter-punch: "Isn't it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness?" If we go in, I fervently hope he has it right. But when I read the Islamic press, I doubt it.
Bush ought to be grateful to Tom Friedman for arguing on the op-ed page of the Times that regime change would be good for the region. Bush gets few bouquets in that venue. But Tom has been putting in too many qualifiers to satisfy the White House, I am sure. His advice to Bush today is to roll the dice one last time:
Fly to Paris, bring the leaders of France, Russia, China and Britain together, along with the chairman of the Arab League summit, and offer them any reasonable amount of time for more inspections — if they will agree on specific disarmament benchmarks Saddam has to meet and support an automatic U.N. authorization of force if he doesn't.
I'm afraid Bush won't hear or heed this at this late stage. Tom's big American heart yearns for the sense of national solidarity and world empathy that we felt immediately following 9-11. Get real, Tom. America is hawk country now.
Quotable lines from here and there on war coverage:
--"Some ideas are good even if George Bush expresses them."
--On the effectiveness of new "non-lethal" weaponry that might be used against Iraqis: "It should be noted that nonlethality is an aspiration rather than an assured outcome." (Loren Thompson of Lexington Institute)
--Mary McGrory in the Washington Post: "the know-nothings who have gone to war against french fries."
More seriously, Mary reports today that the "warlords at the White House" would welcome the resignation of Colin Powell. He led them into the UN swamp instead of signing up for war months ago.
"Identity" and "Difference"—those categories from postmodernist thinking—dance in this operatic run-up to war. Who are we? What are they? Why were they in our space on 9-11? Are they there now as we get ready to invade?
So does "metanarrative" do its dance. Wow, do our warlords have a metanarrative. Wow, do they know their identity. Just like the 9-11 suicides.
In a column today, Cokie and Steve Roberts (Pottstown Mercury) asked, "Why war?" Long overdue, warriors say, because Saddam violated terms of the 1991 settlement. Plus: a democratic Arab state in Iraq will "help spread" democracy elsewhere in the region. (This is presumably the "infection" theory, like the old "domino" theory in reverse.) Cokie and Steve remind us that regime change was not an invention of Bush but of Clinton. Bush is acting to implement whereas Clinton dallied. Before 9-11, Bush was satisfied with "smart sanctions" and did not plan invasion. After 9-11, all changed, including containment as a doctrine.
"Why now?" Cokie and Steve ask. Bush answered when he said, "We must deal with threats before they hurt the American people again." (My emphasis.) The "nightmare" of another attack during their watch "haunts" Bushies. Saddam's desire to see harm come to the US is enough reason to act now.
Cokie and Steve cut to the quick of this war issue. Fear of another 9-11 grips Americans and their government. Hence, a majority supports Bush's preemptive war. Bush said that protecting the American people from further harm is "my most important obligation."
I'm coming to think that this simple motive overrides all the diplomatic maneuvering, psychologizing of hawks, and thrashing around for peaceful alternatives.
France thinks Americans have not yet learned how intolerable are the human costs of war. It is wrong. We have just learned the human costs of fear; we are willing to pay whatever the price to minimize it. Still in the aftershock of 9-11, we accept any protection that might work. We sacrifice safeguards to privacy and liberty to protect ourselves.
So, war on Iraq would be first about politically re-arranging the Middle East to make it less lethal to America's neighborhoods.
I think most Americans would acknowledge our newly recognized capacity for collective fear. Those favoring immediate war in Iraq see it as a viable means for reducing our fear and raising our sense of personal security.
Most of those opposing immediate war probably would concede that fear drives us to action; but they would argue that the outcome would be greater fear and danger rather than less. Right ends, wrong means.
Cokie and Steve have helped me see Bush's motive more clearly. That, sad to say, will not reduce my sense of fear as I walk down Main Street or board a plane. I can say "yes" to his sense of obligation to protect me, "no" to his chosen method of doing it.
If fear of another 9-11 is Bush's root reason for war, then critics like Harry van Bommel (of the Dutch Socialist Party) are wrong. He said on Islamonline.net: "An attack on Iraq would benefit only the United States, providing them with better access to and more control over the oilfields and oil distribution in the Middle East and Central Asia."
But Bommel could be right about a war's effect in Europe: "The idea that the Western world is at war with Islam will spread wider and wider." This will cause European Union "social cohesion" to deteriorate, he said.
Bush is trying to protect American neighborhoods from a second 9-11. Europeans such as Bommel are trying to protect their neighborhoods from Islamist violence too. In the hysterical mood of post-9-11, an erstwhile friendly Dutchman finds base motives for American war. Americans in turn find base motives in Europeans such as Bommel who resist our war.
We all look a little like the ants that scurry after being sprayed by Raid. Our fear is understandable; so is that of Europeans. Ours dominates our decisions and actions, just as theirs dominates theirs.
Fear surely lies in the hearts of many Arabs too as they wait for our 30,000 bombs and missiles to fall on Iraq. They want to protect their neighborhoods too--from us. Baghdad tomorrow, my Muslim neighborhood the day after. The Crusaders are returning to occupy Islamic lands. Shout and scream at their "shock and awe."
We walked on the sturdy ramparts of Crusader castles when we visited Israel in the 1980s. Compared to the remains of ancient works at places such as Masada, those 13th-century stones did not seem old. They made the conquest of Muslims in their own lands seem like only yesterday. Crusaders came with enmity in their hearts toward infidels and death in their swords. Convert to Christianity or die. I have a hunch that to many Muslims, "democracy and freedom" sounds like a latter-day translation of "Christianity."
Profess all we want that this is not a war on Islam by the West. It will not change the perception that the Crusaders are returning to rebuild their castles.
The "shock and awe" planned by Rumsfeld for Iraq is like the shock and awe inflicted on us by bin Laden on 9-11. I think the fall of the twin towers still is sending shock waves through our psyches. We stand in awe of the power of alien forces from the Islamic world to harm us in our neighborhood. We want to assuage these feelings by hitting back in kind. Catching individual al Qaeda operatives lacks the drama of "shock and awe."
Because we fear, we respond protectively. Striking back at a presumed enemy before he strikes us manages our fear--even if he is not the enemy who flew on 9-11. The act of striking back pumps us up, overriding fear. It can even make us feel brave.
The Middle East will be safer if we help it develop freedom and democracy. Then WE will be safer. Most of us believe this. "Freedom" and "democracy" have deep Enlightenment meanings in Western development. The Enlightenment sought to destroy faith in magic. Freedom and democracy are realities hard-won by the people who participate. They are not magic trinkets we can give, sell, lend, or force upon Middle Eastern countries. In the formulaic speech of war diplomacy, however, they become magical incantations. To many Muslims on the street, "freedom and democracy" must sound like echoes of "shock and awe."
Writing in the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, Daniel Schorr said that Bush's meeting with the Pope's emissary "was apparently vehement." Bush fears that the Pope's vigorous opposition to the war will nullify his attempts to "reach out" to Catholic voters--a re-election problem.
The Vatican fears that a preemptive attack on Iraq will "deepen the chasm between the Islamic and the Western worlds." The Vatican's fears seem well founded to me. Bush must be thinking by now, "Diplomacy is so complex; war is so simple. Can't we just roll?"
This morning in the Rose Garden, Bush surprised the world. It waited for his word on Iraq. It got a preachment on what ought to happen in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He promised the new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and Israel's new government a "roadmap" developed in Washington over the past months. Another brave speech. (I never hear Bush speak but that I hear his mother's tone of censorious authority.) How will the promised but unrevealed roadmap knit with the war on Iraq? Someone said Blair needed it to combat the opposition at home. It may show belatedly that Bush's war aims somehow at the cause of the Middle East's cancer--stalemate in Israel.
27 February 2003 through 14 March 2003
4 March 2003; last modified
11 April 2003 Copyright © 2003 Richard
P. Richter