Why Are We at War?

  Even before September 11, many matters grew worse. America’s spiritual architecture had been buttressed since World War II by our near-mythical institutions of security, of which the FBI and the Catholic Church were most prominent, equal in special if intangible stature to the Constitution and the Supreme Court.

  Now, all that was taking its terrible whack. Old and new scandals of the FBI were brought into high focus by the Hanssen case, which broke in February 2001. An ultra-devout Catholic, Robert Hanssen had been a Soviet mole for fifteen years. No one in the FBI could believe it. He had seemed the purest of the pure anti-Communists. Then after September 11 came the pedophile lawsuits against the Catholic Church, and that opened a grieving abyss of a wound in many a good Catholic home. It certainly wounded the priesthood grievously. How could a young or middle-aged man wearing the collar walk down the street now without suffering from the averted eyes and false greetings of the parishioners he met along the way?

  Then there was the stock market. It kept sinking. Slowly, steadily, unemployment rose. The CEO scandals of the corporations became more prominent.

  America had been putting up with the ongoing expansion of the corporation into American life since the end of World War II. It had been the money cow to the United States. But it had also been a filthy cow that gave off foul gases of mendacity and manipulation by an extreme emphasis on advertising. Put less into the product but kowtow to its marketing. Marketing was a beast and a force that succeeded in taking America away from most of us. It succeeded in making the world an uglier place to live in since the Second World War. One has only to cite fifty-story high-rise architecture as inspired in form as a Kleenex box with balconies, shopping malls encircled by low-level condominiums, superhighways with their vistas into the void, and, beneath it all, the pall of plastic, ubiquitous plastic, there to numb an infant’s tactile senses, plastic, front-runner in the competition to see which new substance could make the world more disagreeable. To the degree that we have distributed this crud all over the globe, we were already wielding a species of world hegemony. We were exporting the all-pervasive aesthetic emptiness of the most powerful American corporations. There were no new cathedrals being built for the poor—only sixteen-story urban-renewal housing projects that sat on the soul like jail.

  Then came a more complete exposure of the economic chicanery and pollution of the corporations. Economic gluttony was thriving at the top. Criminal behavior was being revealed on the front page of every business section. Without September 11, George W. Bush would have been living in the nonstop malaise of uglier and uglier media. It could even be said that America was taking a series of hits that were not wholly out of proportion to what happened to the Germans after World War I, when inflation wiped out the fundamental German notion of self, which was that if you worked hard and saved your money, you ended up having a decent old age. It is likely that Hitler would never have come to power ten years later without that runaway inflation. By the same measure, September 11 had done something comparable to the American sense of security.

  For that matter, conservatism was heading toward a divide. Old-line conservatives like Pat Buchanan believed that America should keep to itself and look to solve those of its problems that we were equipped to solve. Buchanan was the leader of what might be called old-value conservatives, who believe in family, country, faith, tradition, home, hard and honest labor, duty, allegiance, and a balanced budget. The ideas, notions, and predilections of George W. Bush had to be, for the most part, not compatible with Buchanan’s conservatism.

  Bush was different. The gap between his school of thought and that of old-value conservatives could yet produce a dichotomy on the right as clear-cut as the differences between communists and socialists after World War I. “Flag conservatives” like Bush paid lip service to some conservative values, but at bottom they didn’t give a damn. If they still used some of the terms, it was in order to avoid narrowing their political base. They used the flag. They loved words like evil. One of Bush’s worst faults in rhetoric (to dip into that cornucopia) was to use the word as if it were a button he could push to increase his power. When people have an IV tube put in them to feed a narcotic painkiller on demand, a few keep pressing that button. Bush uses evil as a narcotic for that part of the American public which feels most distressed. Of course, as he sees it, he is doing it because he believes America is good. He certainly does. He believes this country is the only hope of the world. He also fears that the country is rapidly growing more dissolute, and the only solution may be—fell, mighty, and near-holy words—the only solution may be to strive for world empire. Behind the whole push to go to war with Iraq is the desire to have a huge military presence in the Middle East as a stepping-stone to taking over the rest of the world.

  That is not a small statement, but this much can be offered directly: At the root of flag conservatism is not madness but an undisclosed logic. If you accept its premises, it is logical. From a militant Christian point of view, America is close to rotten. The entertainment media are loose. Bare belly-buttons pop onto every TV screen, as open in their statement as wild animals’ eyes. The kids are getting to the point where they can’t read, but they sure can screw. One perk for the White House, therefore, should America become an international military machine huge enough to conquer all adversaries, is that American sexual freedom, all that gay, feminist, lesbian, transvestite hullabaloo, will be seen as too much of a luxury and will be put back into the closet again. Commitment, patriotism, and dedication will become all-pervasive national values again (with all the hypocrisy attendant). Once we become a twenty-first-century embodiment of the old Roman Empire, moral reform can stride right back into the picture. The military is, obviously, more puritanical than the entertainment media. Soldiers are, of course, crazier than any average man when in and out of combat, but the overhead command is a major everyday pressure on soldiers and could become a species of most powerful censor over civilian life.

  To flag conservatives, war now looks to be the best possible solution. Jesus and Evel Knievel might be able to bond together, after all. Fight evil, fight it to the death! Use the word fifteen times in every speech.

  There is just this kind of mad-eyed mystique to Americans: the idea that we Americans can do anything. Yes, say flag conservatives, we will be able to handle what comes. We have our know-how, our can-do. We will dominate the obstacles. Flag conservatives truly believe America is not only fit to run the world but that it must. Without a commitment to Empire, the country will go down the drain. This, I would opine, is the unstated, ever-denied subtext beneath the Iraqi project, and the flag conservatives may not even be wholly aware of the scope of it, not all of them. Not yet.

  Besides, Bush could count on a few other reliable sentiments that will buttress the notion. To begin with, a good part of American pride sits today on the tripod of big money, sports, and the Stars and Stripes. Something like a third of our major athletic stadiums and arenas are named after corporations—Gillette and FedEx are two of twenty examples. The Super Bowl could only commence this year after an American flag the size of a football field was removed from the turf. The U.S. Air Force gave the groin-throb of a big vee overhead. Probably half of America has an unspoken desire to go to war. It satisfies our mythology. America, goes our logic, is the only force for good that can rectify the bad. George W. Bush is shrewd enough to work that equation out all by himself. He may even sense better than anyone how a war with Iraq will satisfy our addiction to living with adventure on TV. If this is facetious, so be it—the country is becoming more loutish every year. So, yes, war is also mighty TV entertainment.

  More directly (even if it is not at all direct), a war with Iraq will gratify our need to avenge September 11. It does not matter that Iraq is not the culprit. Bush needs only to ignore the evidence. Which he does with all the power of a man who has never been embarrassed by himself. Saddam, for all his crimes, did not have a hand in September 11, but President Bush is a philosophe
r. September 11 was evil, Saddam is evil, all evil is connected. Ergo, Iraq.

  The President can also satisfy the more serious polemical needs of a great many neocons in his administration, who believe Islam will yet be Hitler Redux to Israel. Protection of Israel is okay to Bush, electorally speaking, but it is also obligatory, especially when he cannot count on giving orders to Sharon that will always be obeyed. Sharon, after all, has one firm hold on Bush. With the Mossad, Sharon has the finest intelligence service in the Middle East if not in the world. The CIA, renowned by now for its paucity of Arab spies in the Muslim world, cannot afford to do without Sharon’s services.

  These are all good reasons Bush can find to go to war. As for oil, allow Ralph Nader a few statistics:

  The United States currently consumes 19.5 million barrels a day, or 26% of daily global oil consumption.… The U.S. [has to import] 9.8 million barrels a day, or more than half the oil we consume.…

  The surest way for the U.S. to sustain its overwhelming dependence upon oil is to control the sixty-seven percent of the world’s proven oil reserves that lie below the sands of the Persian Gulf. Iraq alone has proven reserves of 112.5 billion barrels, or 11% of the world’s remaining supply.… Only Saudi Arabia has more.

  I would add that once America occupies Iraq, it will also gain a choke hold on Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East. One can also propose that we wish to go into Iraq for the water. To quote a piece by Stephen C. Pelletiere in The New York Times of January 31:

  There was much discussion over the construction of a so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension, Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could change.

  So, yes, oil is a part of the motive, even if that can never be admitted. And water could prove a powerful tool to pacify a great many heated furies of the desert. The underlying motive, however, still remains George W. Bush’s underlying dream: Empire!

  “What word but ‘empire’ describes the awesome thing that America is becoming?” wrote Michael Ignatieff on January 5 in The New York Times Magazine:

  It is the only nation that polices the world through five global military commands; maintains more than a million men and women at arms on four continents; deploys carrier battle groups on watch in every ocean; guarantees the survival of countries from Israel to South Korea; drives the wheels of global trade and commerce, and fills the hearts and minds of an entire planet with its dreams and desires.

  From Timothy Garton Ash in The New York Review of Books, February 13:

  The United States is not just the world’s only superpower; it is a hyperpower, whose military expenditures will soon equal that of the next fifteen most powerful states combined. The EU has not translated its comparable economic strength—fast approaching the US $10 trillion economy—into comparable military power or diplomatic influence.

  Perhaps the most thorough explanation of this as yet unadmitted campaign toward Empire comes from the columnist Jay Bookman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Back on September 29, 2002, he wrote:

  This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the “American imperialists” that our enemies always claimed we were.

  Back in 1992, a year after the final fall of the Soviet Union, there were many on the right in America, early flag conservatives, who felt that an extraordinary opportunity was now present. America could now take over the world. The Defense Department drafted a document which, to quote Jay Bookman once more,

  envisioned the United States as a colossus astride the world, imposing its will and keeping world peace through military and economic power. When leaked in its final draft form, however, the proposal drew so much criticism that it was hastily withdrawn and repudiated by the first President Bush.…

  The defense secretary in 1992 was Richard Cheney; the document was drafted by [Paul] Wolfowitz, who at the time was defense undersecretary for policy.

  Now, as we know, Wolfowitz is deputy defense secretary under Rumsfeld.

  Afterward, from 1992 to 2000, this dream of world domination was not picked up by the Clinton administration, and that may help to account for the intense, even virulent hatred that so many on the right felt during those eight years. If it weren’t for Clinton, America could be ruling the world.

  Obviously, that document, “Project for the New American Century,” projected prematurely in 1992, had now, after September 11, become the policy of the Bush administration. The flag conservatives were triumphant. They could seek to take over the world. Iraq could be the first step. Beyond, but very much on the historical horizon, were not only Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and North Korea but China.

  Of course, not every last country had to be subjugated. Some needed only to be brought into one or another species of partnership. To speak of China as existing in a symbiotic relationship with us is too exceptional a remark, however, to make without some projection into the likely underpinning. It is not inconceivable that some of the brighter neocons do foresee some fearful possibilities in our technological development down the road. Iraq and the Middle East can hardly be the end. Greater nonmilitary specters and perils loom for the future. A late-January piece in The Boston Globe by Scott A. Bass sets it forth:

  Research and development at American universities relies heavily on foreign students in the crucial fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the STEM fields).…

  If … trends continue, we will have too few domestic students earning advanced graduate degrees in the STEM fields to support our economic, strategic, and technological needs. The flow of young American scientists and engineers has been reduced to a trickle, with many other industrialized countries having a far greater proportion of students going into these fields.

  While foreign students are attracted to STEM fields at U.S. research universities, our own domestic students are not. Many have not been sufficiently encouraged, and others may have found the academic rigors of the STEM fields too challenging.

  Between 1986 and 1996, foreign students earning STEM field Ph.D.s increased at a rate nearly four times faster than domestic students. In 2000, 43 percent of physical science Ph.D.s went to non-U.S. citizens.

  Flag conservatives may yet be hoping to send some such message as this to China: “Hear ye! You Chinese are obviously bright. We can tell. We know! Your Asian students were born for technology. People who have led submerged lives love technology. They don’t get much pleasure anyway, so they like the notion of cybernetic power right at their fingertips. Technology is ideal for them. We can go along with that. You fellows can have your technology; may it be great! But, China, you had better understand: We still have the military power. Your best bet, therefore, is to become Greek slaves to us Romans. We will treat you well. You will be most important to us, eminently important. But don’t look to rise above your future station in life. The best you can ever hope for, China, is to be our Greeks.”

  In the 1930s, you could be respected if you earned a living. In the Nineties, you had to demonstrate that you were a promising figure in the ranks of greed. It may be that Empire depends on an obscenely wealthy upper upper class who, given the in-built, never-ending threat to their wealth, is bound to feel no great allegiance in the pit of its heart for democracy. If this insight is true, then it can also be said that the disproportionate wealth which collected through the Nineties may have created an all but irresistible pressure at the top to move from democracy to Empire. That would safeguard those great and quickly acquired gains. Can it be that George W. Bush knows what he’s doing for the future of Empire by awardi
ng these huge tax credits to the rich?

  Of course, terrorism and instability are the reverse face of Empire. If the Saudi rulers have been afraid of their mullahs for fear of their power to incite terrorists, what will the Muslim world be like once we, the Great Satan, are there to dominate the Middle East in person?

  Since the administration can hardly be unaware of the dangers, the answer comes down to the unhappy likelihood that Bush and Company are ready to be hit by a major terrorist attack. As well as any number of smaller ones. Either way, it will strengthen his hand. America will gather about him again. We can hear his words in advance: “Good Americans died today. Innocent victims of evil had to shed their blood. But we will prevail. We are one with God.” Given such language, every loss is a win.

  Yet so long as terrorism continues, so will its subtext, and there lies the horror to its nth power. What made deterrence possible in the Cold War was not only that there was everything to lose for both sides, but there was also the built-in inability on either side to be certain it could count on any particular human being to flip the apocalyptic switch over to world domination. In that sense, no final plan could be counted on. How could either of the superpowers be certain that the up-to-now wholly reliable human selected to push the button would actually prove reliable enough to obliterate the other half of the world? A dark cloud might come over him at the last moment. He could fall to the ground before he could do the deed.

  This human unreliability does not apply, however, to a terrorist. If he is ready to kill himself, he can also be ready to destroy the world. The wars we have known until this era, no matter how horrible, could offer at least the knowledge that they would come to an end. Terrorism, however, is not attracted to negotiation. Rather, it would insist on no termination short of victory. Since the terrorist cannot triumph, he cannot cease being a terrorist. They are a true enemy, far more basic, indeed, than Third World countries with nuclear capability that invariably appear on the scene prepared to live with deterrence and its in-built outcome—agreements after years or decades of passive confrontation and hard bargaining.