THE GLASS
GOLIATH
With one well-coordinated
blow, the
entire free world has been paralyzed. It is as if
a rock-wielding David has hit a glass Goliath straight
between the eyes, shattering the imperial colossus and
bringing down the whole top-heavy apparatus with an
earthshaking roar. The
entire US government was shut down. President George
W. Bush, in Florida at the time, was flown at to the
safety of Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Top
government officials and congressional leaders were
secreted
to an undisclosed location: US fighter jets patrolled
the skies above the nation's capital.
DESECRATION
OF THE TEMPLE
Most devastating
of all was the attack on the Pentagon, which took a
devastating hit – 800 dead – and not only
in terms of physical damage. If anything was considered
invulnerable, then surely this building, the sanctum
sanctorum and architectural symbol of American military
power, was it. What could be safer terrain than the
capital of a world empire, a city where the fate of
nations is routinely decided, where the supplicants
of the world gather to humbly present their petitions
to the Senate and lobby the White House?
BLOWBACK
The sheer fragility
of the American Imperium is what is painfully apparent
here. Painful most especially to the US government,
whose complete inability to defend the country while
claiming the mantle of the world's only superpower is
exposed for all to see. It is the weakness of an entity
that has grown too big, too overextended, too blinkered
by pride (some would call it hubris) to see the pitfalls
of the policies it has pursued, not only in the Middle
East but around the world, from the Balkans to the Far
East. Our foreign policy of global military and political
intervention in the internal affairs of other nations,
from Bosnia to Belarus, has produced what policy analyst
Chalmers Johnson has referred to as "blowback."
In his book
of that title, as if in anticipation of the perplexed
"Why?" of the average Americans'reaction to
this carnage, Johnson wrote:
"Only when we come to
see our country as both profiting from and trapped within
the structures of an empire of its own making will it
be possible for us to explain a great many elements
of the world that otherwise perplex us."
THE INVISIBLE
ENEMY
The response of a
weak adversary is always to exaggerate its own power,
to make a great show of faux strength that mostly amounts
to a lot of noise, and that is precisely what the US
is now doing. We have pledged to go after the perpetrators
or those who gave them safe harbor, and the usual
parade of laptop
bombardiers has declared
"war" on "the enemy." But who
or what is the enemy? And, most of all, where
are they?
KAGAN'S
KRISTOL BALL
But the lack of any
tangible, stationary enemy – say, a particular
country or even a group of individuals – shouldn't
stop us from making a formal declaration of war: "Let's
not be daunted by the mysterious and partially hidden
identity of our attackers," says Robert
Kagan in the Washington Post. "It will
soon become obvious that there are only a few terrorist
organizations capable of carrying out such a massive
and coordinated strike." If there are only "a
few," then why not get more specific? Osama bin Laden, the all-purpose
Arab arch-villain, is routinely blamed
for any and all terrorist acts outside of Northern Ireland
and the jungles of South America. However, the ambitious
Kagan – co-author, along with Bill
Kristol, of an infamous article proposing that the
goal of US foreign policy must be "global hegemony"
– is after more than that:
"It will become apparent
that those organizations could not have operated without
the assistance of some governments, governments with
a long record of hostility to the United States and
an equally long record of support for terrorism. We
should now immediately begin building up our conventional
military forces to prepare for what will inevitably
and rapidly escalate into confrontation and quite possibly
war with one or more of those powers. Congress, in fact,
should immediately declare war. It does not have to
name a country. It can declare war against those who
have carried out today's attack and against any nations
that may have lent their support."
A DECLARATION
OF FATUOSITY
We should declare
"war" on a nameless enemy, about whose whereabouts
we haven't a clue – as if some empty resolution
penned by a parcel of politicians could possibly erase
or rectify the horror of the past 48 hours. Surely,
a formal declaration of war against the Unknown Enemy
would only underscore our own impotence. Such a fatuous
proclamation would turn tragedy into farce – a
talent politicians of all stripes have in abundance.
GET THIS
STRAIGHT
Let's see if I get
this straight: Tim McVeigh was a "lone nut"
who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building all by
himself, but the World Trade Center terrorist plot just
had to be aided and abetted by a foreign power.
If Mr. Kagan has information that "some governments"
cooperated with or even knew about the attack in advance,
then why doesn't he name them? The reason is because,
to Kagan and his ilk, it doesn't matter who did
it – the point it to strike out at anyone or anything
within range.
HOROWITLESS
Mindless rage expressed
in terms of a self-conscious demagoguery is what we
get from David
Horowitz, the wild man of the Neocon Right. He
asks how it was possible for 4 commercial airliners
to be hijacked from major airports within a set time
frame, wonders how the Pentagon – the Pentagon
– could've been pulverized so thoroughly, and
avers:
"We know the answer. America
is soft. America is in denial. America is embarrassed
at the idea that it has enemies and must protect itself."
YOU SOFTIE!
Huh? Is our alleged
"softness" to blame for this horrific tragedy
– the softness that prevents us from completely
militarizing America, and converting a free society
into a prison? America – in denial? But how could
that be, when so many millions and so
much rhetoric has been expended in the war on terrorism?
No expense was spared, either in terms of tax dollars
or basic civil liberties – and still it happened.
SHAMELESS
Even more absurd
is the idea that our government is somehow "embarrassed"
by all the enemies it has made, worldwide: you certainly
couldn't tell that from our actions. Indeed, the whole
point of being a superpower is that you don't have
to be embarrassed about anything: you brazenly disregard
moral principle, and go right ahead and bomb a Sudanese aspirin factory
to get a presidential sex scandal off the front pages.
The arbitrary and often deadly exercise of overwhelming
military force is what being a superpower is all about.
BLAMING
AMERICANS FIRST
Oh, but Horowitz
would ascribe this to Clinton's personal evil, and dismiss
any more systematic critical analysis of our role in
the world as simple "anti-Americanism." But
the real anti-Americans are those who would sacrifice
thousands more of their fellow citizens in defense of
a policy and a mindset that is pure hubris. Talk about
blaming America first: Horowitz spends most of his piece
attacking those "soft" Americans who have
"been so eager to cash in on 'peace dividends'
that it has stripped itself of even prudent defenses."
Oh, how dare those selfish soft Americans try to get
some of their hard-earned tax dollars back from a thieving
federal government. Horowitz's big solution is –
yawn – a missile defense "to protect against
even worse terrorist acts in the future." Yeah,
but what about the sort of attacks we have just experienced
– a bunch of knife-wielding terrorists who commandeer
a plane and ram it into the biggest, most visible symbols
of American military and financial preeminence? What
he doesn't want to admit is that there is no defense
against such acts – short of abolishing the Constitution
and instituting martial law, that is.
YOU'RE
SO VAIN
"America is in denial
that much of the world hates us," rants Horowitz,
"and will continue to hate us. Because we are prosperous,
and democratic and free." But the US government
is perfectly well aware that large sections of the globe
have no love for the US government, and yet this has
not had the slightest effect on US foreign policy. The
whole Arab world is united in its opposition to our
mindlessly pro-Israel stance – including the Saudi
and Kuwaiti regimes that we prop up with our troops
and treasure – but that has not altered our position
one iota, no matter who occupies the White House. It
is so typical of the paranoid and reflexively defensive
Horowitz to inveigh against all those terrible foreigners
who supposedly hate us because we're so wonderful. But
I wouldn't count on either prosperity or freedom if
the war Horowitz and Kagan would so dearly love to see
declared and fought should ever come to pass. For the
only way we can "win" such a battle is to
lose the very values that we want to defend in the first
place.
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