Under the Banner of the 'War'
on Terror
by William Greider
The Nation magazine, June
21, 2004
When President Bush called Americans to
enlist in his "war on terror," very few citizens could
have grasped the all-encompassing consequences of the proposition.
The terrifying events of 9/11 were like a blinding flash, benumbing
the country with a sudden knowledge of unimagined dangers. Strong
action was recommended, skeptics were silenced, and a shallow
sense of unity emerged from the shared vulnerabilities. Nearly
three years later, the enormity of Bush's summons to open-ended
"war" is more obvious. It overwhelmed the country, in
fact deranged society's normal processes and purposes with a brilliantly
seductive political message: Terror pre-empts everything else.
What this President effectively accomplished
was to restart the cold war, albeit under a new rubric. The justifying
facts are different and smaller, but the ideological dynamics
are remarkably similar-a total commitment of the nation's energies
to confront a vast, unseen and malignant adversary. Fanatical
Muslims replaced Soviet Communists and, like the reds, these enemies
could be anywhere, including in our midst (they may not even be
Muslims, but kindred agents who likewise "hate" us and
oppose our values). Like the cold war's, the logic of this new
organizing framework can be awesomely compelling to the popular
imagination because it runs on fear-the public's expanding fear
of potential dangers. The political commodity of fear has no practical
limits. The government has the ability to manufacture more.
Nor is there any obvious ceiling on what
the nation must devote-in JFK's famous phrase-"to pay any
price, bear any burden" in defense of liberty and homeland.
Long after the Soviet Union was recognized as a failed economic
system, US intelligence agencies continued to warn that it was
surpassing America's arsenal of defense and so new, much larger
weapons must be built. The year before the Berlin wall fell, CIA
analysts reported that Communist East Germany's economy was larger
than West Germany's. People believed them. In much the same way,
the worldwide network of supposed or potential allies of Osama
bin Laden has been steadily expanded by government alerts since
9/11. These fanatical terrorists are not just in the Middle East;
the same type has been spotted in East Asia and Africa, even South
America. National security experts urge counterterror actions,
just in case. Who can say the "intelligence" is wrong?
How can citizens even weigh the "facts" when government
keeps most of them secret?
"War on terror" is useful for
the President, but irrational for the nation. Terrorism is not
an enemy; it is a method of using violence to gain political objectives.
Its tactics are usually employed by weaker, irregular groups against
governments that possess organized armies and the modern means
for waging war formally and more destructively (both methods of
violence may target and destroy the lives of innocents). Terror
campaigns are cruel by nature but in some instances are regarded
as righteous, when the violence is used to liberate oppressed
peoples from colonial rule, as in Vietnam or Ireland, the creation
of Israel or even the United States.
Ronald Spiers, a retired diplomat who
served as US ambassador to Turkey and Pakistan and as Assistant
Secretary of State for Intelligence, explained these distinctions
in an incisive essay published in Vermont's Rutland Herald. "How
do you win a 'war' against a tool that, like war itself, is a
method of carrying on politics by other means?" Spiers asked.
"A 'war on terrorism' is a war without an end in sight, without
an exit strategy, with enemies specified not by their aims but
by their tactics. Relying principally on military means is like
trying to eliminate a cloud of mosquitoes with a machine gun....
It brings to mind Big Brother's...war in Orwell's 1984. A war
on terrorism is a permanent engagement against an always-available
tool."
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.
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.
The $300 billion is only a beginning.
Once Iraq is resolved, the Pentagon will need more money to replenish
munitions and replace destroyed vehicles, but also to restore
troop strength, as reservists and regulars opt out in droves.
Iraq will surely leave behind a public distaste for pre-emptive
war, but given the vast and unknowable "threat," it
would be irresponsible for military leaders not to prepare for
the next war and the next one after that. Meanwhile, a new generation
of expensive weapons systems, inherited from cold war planning,
is approaching the production stage, and costs are soaring. In
other words, the Pentagon's budget crunch is returning with a
vengeance. Based on already known commitments, the "war on
terror" will add another $885 billion to federal deficits
in the next ten years, according to the Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments (more than enough to finance a system of
universal healthcare). Congressmen suggesting that a revival of
the draft may be needed are not hallucinating.
* The domestic context of American society
may eventually undergo the most drastic (and insidious) changes,
if the current logic advances unchallenged. The quest for homeland
security is heading, in ad hoc fashion, toward the quasi militarization
of everyday life. So far more than $120 billion in new spending
has been devoted to constructing domestic protections, but each
new project merely demonstrates how incomplete the homeland security
system is-and how impossible an airtight defense would be for
an open and free society. Yet nobody in Congress wants constituents
left unprotected. So government is pushed to formulate larger
and more grandiose plans-exotic technological schemes for surveillance
and ready-response to ward off more of the infinite possibilities,
just in case. Addressing fear begets more fear. If danger might
lurk anywhere, maybe everything must be protected and policed.
The security systems involve computers,
cameras, remote sensors, electronic alarms and bomb-sniffing dogs,
but also require old-fashioned political monitors-government agents
watching people for hints of dangerous intentions. Washington
is assembling a "unified watch list" of potential troublemakers-their
identities contributed by every federal agency, names that will
be shared with local and state law enforcement. Any motorist stopped
by a patrol officer can be electronically checked out with the
FBI's Terrorist Screening Center and held for questioning if the
Feds desire. The initial list, Congress is informally advised,
will contain the names of 120,000 citizens who, for one reason
or another, might be regarded as a "threat." An "agro-terrorist"
identified by the Agriculture Department could be someone who
likes to set fires in national forests or maybe a political activist
trying to save trees. Neither type is known to associate with
Osama bin Laden.
"When does a watch list become a
blacklist? That's the problem," ACLU legislative counsel
Timothy Edgar explained. The "lists" are proliferating,
and once your name is on one, it's extremely difficult to get
off. The government has a "no-fly list," used by airlines
to bar passengers from boarding planes (a source of many Kafkaesque
episodes of mistaken identity). The government also has a "shippers'
list" to block "suspects" from getting jobs at
port terminals and aboard cargo ships. A new "Computer Assisted
Passenger Profiling System" is collecting more names by "mining
data" from the voluminous personal records of consumers/employees/citizens.
The FBI's long, sordid history of spying on and intimidating citizens-civil
rights leaders, antiwar activists, political dissidents of the
left and right-illustrates the possibilities.
* Finally, the national economy is significantly
altered too, because terrorism is industrial opportunity. Designing
the software for new surveillance systems, building antiterror
gadgets for homes and offices, developing new drugs to combat
obscure biological attacks, hiring more guards and guard dogs-all
can now be regarded as defense production. Boeing got a $1 billion
no-bid contract to help airports and airlines organize their defenses.
Marmion Air Services is selling explosion-proof air conditioning
and refrigerators ("It truly is a very exciting time in the
company's history," said CEO Wilbert Marmion). Taser International's
stock soared last year from $4.04 to $82.96. The Taser stun-gun
can incapacitate any terrorist who gets closer than twenty-one
feet.
The government has invited private enterprise
to come up with the technological fixes for terror-a familiar
American response to complex problems-and untold billions are
on the table as incentive. The bureaucratic chaos and lack of
priorities at the Department of Homeland Security has frustrated
many business contractors, but a crudely improvised "industrial
policy" is emerging. The "terrorism war" directs
major economic stimuli to key sectors-arms manufacturing, information
technology, pharmaceuticals, biotech research and, of course,
security hardware. Government has indemnified manufacturers of
antiterror devices against consumer lawsuits, just in case the
gadgets fail to work. Many other interests are clamoring for a
piece of the action. The development capital provided by taxpayers
to these "war" industries can be thought of as "terror
pork."
Altogether, the momentous alterations
in government and society derive from Bush's unilateral announcement
of an uncharted war. One should not assume the President himself
fully grasped all of the many consequences in advance, any more
than his team understood what they were getting into in Iraq.
But no matter. "War on terror" is a political slogan-not
a coherent strategy for national defense-and it succeeds brilliantly
only as politics. For everything else, it is quite illogical.
An important question remains for Americans
to ponder: Why have most people submitted so willingly to a new
political order organized around fear? Other nations have confronted
terrorism of a more sustained nature without coming thoroughly
unhinged. I remember living in London briefly in the 1 970s, when
IRA bombings were a frequent occurrence. Daily life continued
with stiff-upper-lip reserve (police searched ladies' handbags
at restaurants, but did not pat down the gentlemen). We can only
speculate on answers. Was it the uniquely horrific quality of
the 9/11 attacks? Or the fact that, unlike Europe, the continental
United States has never been bombed? For modern Americans, war's
destruction is a foreign experience, though the United States
has participated in many conflicts on foreign soil. Despite the
patriotic breast-beating, are we closet wimps? America's exaggerated
expressions of fear may look to others like a surprising revelation
of weakness.
My own suspicion is that many Americans
have enjoyed Bush's "terror war" more than they wish
to admit. Feeling scared can be oddly pleasurable, like participating
in a real-life action thriller, when one is allied in imagined
combat with a united country of brave patriots. The plot line
is simple-good guys against satanic forces-and pushes aside doubts
and ambiguities, like why exactly these people are out to get
us. Does our own behavior in the world have anything to do with
it? No, they resent us because we are so virtuous-kind, free,
wealthy, democratic. The contest, as framed by Bush, invites Americans
to indulge in a luxurious sense of self-pity-poor, powerful America,
so innocent and yet so misunderstood. America's exaggerated fear
of unknown "others" is perhaps an unconscious inversion
of its exaggerated claims of power.
The only way out of this fog of pretension
is painful self-examination by Americans-cutting our fears down
to more plausible terms and facing the complicated realities of
our role in the world. The spirited opposition that arose to Bush's
war in Iraq is a good starting place, because citizens raised
real questions that were brushed aside. I don't think most Americans
are interested in imperial rule, but they were grossly misled
by patriotic rhetoric. Now is the time for sober, serious teach-ins
that lay out the real history of US power
in the world, and that also explain the positive and progressive
future that is possible Once citizens have constructed a clear-eyed,
dissenting version of our situation, perhaps politicians can also
be liberated from exaggerated fear. The self-imposed destruction
that has flowed from Bush's logic cannot be stopped until a new
cast of leaders steps forward to guide the country. This transformation
begins by changing Presidents.
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