|
Some
Irreverent Thoughts in a Time of Irreverence
BY
RICHARD JAEGGI
Flashback
When I
was a boy growing up in the '50s and '60s, there was only
one war. It was the war and it was fought by my father,
all my friend’s fathers and, in hindsight, our mothers,
although we didn’t think like that back then.
All the
boys wore crew cuts in the '50s because it made us look like
GIs, and the war movies were about American boys fighting
the Germans in battles with names like D-Day and Battle of
the Bulge. Sometimes the Americans fought the Japanese too.
When we played "guns" we were American heroes like
our fathers, shooting Nazis and Japs like vermin in the woods
behind the house. There was a lot of make-believe blood on
my hands in those days, but I never lost any sleep over it.
On
War
"[Then
Athene]…snatched out of his heavy hand, the bronze spear,
and fixed it apart, and then in speech reasoned with violent
Ares: 'Madman, mazed of your wits, this is ruin! Your ears
can listen still to reality, but your mind is gone and your
discipline.’"
—The
Illiad
On
President Bush
It should
be noted that George Walker Bush is our first log cabin president
in a long time–only in reverse. Having overcome the advantages
of wealth and education, he has transformed himself, through
sheer will to ignorance, into a rube on a ranch. It should
also be noted that liberals, who enjoy their disgust with
"the Dubya’s" colossal capacity for ignorance,
seem themselves to be ignorant of the fact that far from being
a weakness, this ignorance is the very strength of his presidency.
They have mistaken ignorance for stupidity.
On
neoconservatives
Of all
the neoconservative skin shedders, Norman Podhoretz is the
most endearing snake because he is the most honest. World
War IV, as he has christened the recent foreign adventure
(the Cold War was WWIII), is the beginning of a crusade to
openly establish the Pax American, a recognition of "America's
unique role in preserving and extending an international order
friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."
He is not ashamed to use the word "imperialism"
where his President prefers the more demure "leadership."
And for this new direction, the neoconservative revolution
is most indebted to the September 11 attacks. As he explained
to an audience last month:
"The
thoughtful observer of Islamic terrorism will…experience
a certain gratitude for a providence which, by providing the
American people with this implacable challenge, has made their
entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves
together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political
leadership that history plainly intended them to bear."
In war,
the bedfellows only get stranger, don’t they, Mr. Bin
Laden?
On
Leaders
"Of
course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the
leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's
always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's
a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament or a communist
dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you
have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce
the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country
to greater danger."
—Hermann
Goering
The
Herd Instinct
A nation
of Thoreaus would not be viable. The national instinct to
circle and close ranks in times of danger–whether that
danger is real or imagined–is a mechanism of self-preservation.
Without this instinct we would perish.
Still,
every people needs its Jesus, its Socrates, its Thoreau to
bang the pot and hold up the mirror to our ugliness. Naturally,
we despise them as heretics, or corruptors, or traitors, but
without them we would perish of our own stupidity.
Invading
Iraq
One of
the advantages of living in a consumer culture is the great
number of choices we have. This was amply demonstrated in
the reasons offered for going to war. Each American was given
the freedom to choose the rationale that fitted him or her
most comfortably. In the last few months our President has
served up a whole menu of reasons:
- We
must invade Iraq because Saddam is an ally of Osama.
- We
must invade Iraq because Saddam threatens us with weapons
of mass destruction.
- We
must invade Iraq because Saddam is a tyrant that oppresses
his own people.
- We
must invade Iraq because this will bring democracy to the
Middle East.
But for
those who have followed the writings of the President’s
neoconservative advisors, his roundtable of American Likudim
and Crusaders of the Cross, there are still more reasons.
In August
of this year Richard Perle, Chairman of the Defense Policy
Board, invited a Rand Corporation analyst to explain how overthrowing
Iraq would allow the United States to establish a friendly
oil-exporting regime. Our dependence on Saudi Arabia thereby
diminished, we would be able to confront that nation over
its support of terrorism.
In 1996,
Perle, as leader of a study group for the Institute for Advanced
Strategic and Political Studies co-wrote a paper entitled
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.
The paper sought to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu to replace a "Land for Peace" strategy
with a "Peace through Strength" strategy. The overthrow
of Saddam Hussein, "an important Israeli strategic objective
in its own right," was presented as strategic steppingstone
to "weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria."
For Pat
Robertson, who always takes the big picture, Iraq is Babylon,
and as any Sunday school kid with a bible can tell you, Babylon
is a "source of evil." Case closed.
Still,
in the end, we are left with the same nagging riddle that
haunts us as we hold the television remote. How is it that
with so much selection, we have so little choice?
On
Ahimsa (non-violence)
"Man
as animal is violent but as spirit is non-violent. The moment
he awakes to the spirit within he cannot remain violent. Either
he progresses toward ahimsa or rushes to his doom."
—Mahatma
Gandhi
Flashback
We never
thought about who were the good guys and who were the bad
guys back then; we just knew. But secretly, we kind of admired
the Germans, even though they never smiled except when they
killed babies, but they were good fighters and smart and their
weapons had hard, dangerous sounding names like Lugar and
Messerschmitt. But the Italians–we just made jokes about
them. The Japs were easiest to kill because they didn’t
even seem like people. In those days, the Germans were the
ones who started wars, and the Americans were the ones who
finished them.
|
