Under the Banner of the 'War' on Terror (Page 2)

My advice for Americans is also an urgent warning: Get a grip, before it is too late. Take a hard look at your own fears, reconsider the probabilities of danger in the larger context of life's many risks and obstacles. The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry--some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war," like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda--the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization. The transformation is well under way. The consequences, if left unchallenged, will be very difficult to reverse. Let us count them:

§ As a first consequence, politics collapsed. That is, the usual contentiousness of opposing viewpoints and disputed facts virtually evaporated before the sweeping logic of Bush's mobilization. With a few brave exceptions, Democrats embraced the premises of Bush's pronouncement, supported his plans for hot war and elaborated their own ideas for defending the homeland. Major media played an important role in the political passivity, as they whipped up the fear factor and fell into line behind Bush's "war." Critics asking questions were ignored or scolded for their timidity. Labor unions were told that the long-established rights of workers were not compatible with waging war on unknown terrorists.

Now that the war in Iraq has gone so badly and public doubts are growing rapidly, many more Democrats and even some Republicans are willing to attack the President's management, but still do not challenge the breadth and nature of his "war" commitment. Indeed, with ill-concealed relish, the Democratic Party "is attacking Bush from the right" on domestic security, as a Senate Democratic aide put it, waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 and accusing Republicans of failing to protect citizens on the endangered home front.

§ US foreign policy has been stood on its head. Every complexity and volatile force in global affairs has been redefined as subsidiary to terrorism and, in most cases, pushed aside. After decades of organizing and leading global alliances, the aggrieved superpower claims a new right for itself--to wage pre-emptive war (unilaterally if necessary and justified by its own facts) against any nation-state that supports terrorists or appears to tolerate their presence. The United States subsequently added another legitimizing cause for war: the defeat of brutal dictators so that democracy may be planted on alien soil. This claim is based on the tenuous belief that democracies do not sponsor terrorist acts against innocent civilians. (For contrary evidence, see the history of CIA covert actions in the cold war.)

Between these two rationales, the world provides a very long list of potential battlefields and available adversaries, if Bush so chooses to target them. The strategic intent in Iraq, it seemed, was to compel by example: Conquer one rogue nation with overwhelming military force and others will fall into line. This approach assumes that national governments are the principal agents behind terrorist groups. If so, which nations are behind the ongoing chaos in Iraq? Must we invade them, too?

John Kerry, while he criticizes the unfolding chaos in Iraq, is not prepared to call the war a mistake or to abandon Bush's initial premise that pre-emptive invasion and wall-to-wall defenses are justified in these new circumstances of terrorist attacks. In total war, skepticism is weakness, silence is patriotic, admission of error is dishonorable. Throughout the cold war, this corrupted logic intimidated conventional politicians with fiendish effectiveness.

§ For the armed services and the arms industry, terror blew the lid off the Pentagon budget. Before September 2001 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was confronted with a severe budget crunch--the military-industrial complex's inflated appetite far surpassed the available money. Rumsfeld was losing the struggle, his "military reform" proposals brushed aside by the Joint Chiefs and Congress. After 9/11 the military forces could have whatever they needed and much more. What politician would say no? More than $300 billion in new spending has been added to the Pentagon budget in less than three years--most of it to fight two wars, but scores of billions were also devoted to beefing up security at military installations and for launching such long-sought (but terror-irrelevant) projects as the $53 billion missile defense system. This high-tech antimissile shield will allegedly protect the continental United States from North Korean missiles, but it still has not passed conclusive reliability tests. We'll probably never find out whether or not it works, but, like so many cold war concoctions, it may make people feel safer and stronger.

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