April 23, 2006
We have praised Boston Globe columnist and novelist James Carroll highly here, and will do so again soon in a review of his upcoming book, House of War, which I have had the privilege and great pleasure of seeing in proof. The book, subtitled, The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power,
is a masterpiece, a landmark work that popularizes, and personalizes,
the largely hidden history of America's moral and political corruption
by the disease of militarism – an illness now reaching a perhaps fatal
crisis.
But today, reluctantly, we have to take issue with Carroll's latest Globe column
– or at least with one of its central insights. Carroll writes,
correctly I think, of how "Americans' anger and despair" is shaping US
policy:
"…anger
and despair so precisely define the broad American mood that those
emotions may be the only things that President Bush and his circle have
in common with the surrounding legions of his antagonists. We are in
anger and despair because every nightmare of which we were warned has
come to pass. Bush's team is in anger and despair because their grand
and -- to them -- selfless ambitions have been thwarted at every turn.
Indeed, anger and despair can seem universally inevitable responses to
what America has done and what it faces now.
"While
the anger and despair of those on the margins of power only increase
the experience of marginal powerlessness, the anger and despair of
those who continue to shape national policy can be truly dangerous if
such policy owes more to these emotions than to reasoned realism.…"
Leaving
aside the arguable notion that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld power faction
actually feels "selfless" in their quest to impose "full spectrum
dominance" on the world (as opposed to pursuing this dominance with
mindless avidity, oblivious to any consideration of whether it hurts
others or not), Carroll's analysis here is penetrating. But then he
goes on to say:
"It
was the Bush administration's anger and despair at its inability to
capture Osama bin Laden that fueled the patent irrationality of the
move against Saddam Hussein. The attack on Iraq three years ago was, at
bottom, a blind act of rage at the way Al Qaeda and its leaders had
eluded us in Afghanistan; a blindness that showed itself at once in the
inadequacy of US war planning."
But
here I think that Carroll's novelist's sensibility – personalizing,
psychologizing – which serves him so well in his columns and the book,
in this case fails to encompass the full political reality. Yes, the
Bush factionalists are obviously wrathful characters given to patent
irrationality in their policies and their underlying paranoid vision of
the world. But their attack on Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with
their emotional reaction to Osama bin Laden's apparent escape from
their clutches in late 2001.
As Carroll himself delineates in House of War,
the plan for invading Iraq is part of a long-term scheme to ensure
American dominance of world affairs that goes back to the 1992 "Defense
Planning Guidance" document drawn up by Paul Wolfowitz at the behest of
then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. This plan was then revised, refined
and expanded by a series of intertwined "think tanks" and pressure
groups during the 1990s, culminating in the Project for a New American
Century group, whose "Rebuilding America's Defenses" document, issued
in September 2000 – a year before the 9/11 attacks, and several months
before the Bush team took power in Washington – provides a detailed
blueprint of the vast expansion and "forward thrust" of American
military might that we have seen in the past five years. (I've written
of this in much greater detail here.)
As
often noted here, this PNAC document from 2000 explicitly stated that
America should establish a military presence in Iraq no matter what the
political situation in that country might be; this was an urgent need
that "transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." It is now
abundantly clear, from a nearly overwhelming number of sources,
including some from inside the Bush Administration itself, that the
Bush Faction intended to invade Iraq from their first moments in power.
As for the effect of September 11 on the faction, we also know that in
the very first hours after the devastating attacks, Donald Rumsfeld and
Wolfowitz were pushing for an attack on Iraq. This urge had nothing to
do with Osama bin Laden's escape; this was before the assault on
Afghanistan, before bin Laden's legendary escape at Tora Bora – indeed,
bin Laden had not even been identified by the Bush Administration as
the author of the attacks at that time.
So
with all due respect to Carroll – and the massive research, masterly
analysis and hearts blood he put into House of War commands enormous
respect – on this particular point, I believe he is mistaken.
He
is on much stronger ground, however, in the rest of the column,
describing the fevered irrationality at work behind the present
warmongering against Iran. The main thrust of the policy, as he says,
seems to boil down to this: "To keep you from getting nukes, we will nuke you."
He then concludes, with deep insight:
"Set
the cauldron of Iraq to boiling even hotter by daring Iran to join in
against us. Justify Iran's impulse to obtain nuclear capacity by using
our own nuclear capacity as a thermo-prod. How self-defeating can our
actions get?
"Surely,
something besides intelligent strategic theory is at work here. Yes.
These are the policies of deeply frustrated, angry, and psychologically
wounded people. Those of us who oppose them will yield to our own
versions of anger and despair at our peril, and the world's. Fierce but
reasoned opposition is more to the point than ever."
This
is the crux of the matter: how to channel the unavoidable anger and
despair produced by the murderous unreason of the nation's leaders into
a response that does not itself become infected by the madness it must
grapple with.
I confess that I don't know how to do this. And for a long time, I never felt the need to
do it; it seemed to me that the articulation of rage and despair at the
criminal regime was itself a necessary and important act, given the
vast cloud of official lies and media mythmaking that sustained the
Bush Faction at such a high level of popularity and unaccountability.
You first had to make people see that something was wrong, abysmally
wrong, with the Regime and its policies before you could even start
trying to rectify the situation.
Now,
of course, the Faction has lost its popularity; its myths have been
punctured, and the stench of its corruption is pouring out through the
fissures, sickening – and awakening – millions of people across the
land. But the unaccountability – from most of the media and from almost
the entire Establishment – still remains. There is, I think, still a
pressing need for, in effect, shouting down the lies and myths that
continue to enshroud the Regime. There is still the need, to borrow
Henry Miller's phrase, for "inoculating the world with
disillusionment."
But
it's also true that the times now call for something more than this.
Disillusionment and anger are still required, yes – but so is something
more constructive. I don't know exactly what that should be. Nothing
utopian, certainly; nothing that requires more of human nature than it
can give, nothing that posits an end to the manifold imperfections and
corruptions endemic to all humankind. Nothing exclusionary, nothing
dogmatic –and nothing that partakes of the sickness unto death that has
brought us to this degraded state: violence, brutality, vengeance,
domination.
Whatever it is, I think it must be some form – or many forms, on many levels – of satyagraha,
the Gandhian principle of resolute, non-violent resistance to evil, a
force based on compassion, that "seeks to liquidate antagonisms but not
the antagonists themselves." If this is not the guiding principle
of dissent against the gargantuan engines of militarism, sectarianism,
corporatism, ignorance and inequality that maim the world, then we are
well and truly lost, and will become, in one fashion or another, a
creature of the malign forces we hope to dethrone.
But
how best to balance cleansing rage and healing compassion is a wisdom
far beyond me at this point. "I and my bosom must debate awhile" on
this matter. Meanwhile, James Carroll – despite the slight disagreement
here – provides rich material for such meditations.
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