The Fall 2002 Middle East Quarterly (an excellent publication which has been way ahead of the curve for a long time and with which I have no connection other than as a subscriber) has a commentary piece by Angelo M. Codevilla called "Postmortem on a Phony War." It's not published on line, but it's worth seeking out a copy of the journal to read the whole thing. With the anniversary of 9/11 just a little over a day away, I found this article particularly apt and more than a little disturbing. A lot of it makes sense. Some of it doesn't. Some excerpts: The Bush team's chief objective, "stability," was the least possible of things. The vision of an orderly, multicultural, "international community" was as powerful in Bush's Washington as it had been in Woodrow Wilson's -- and as far removed from reality. The right of Third World regimes to sovereign existence under housebroken tyrants, America's right and capacity to make peace in places it does not rule, America's unworthiness to stigmatize foreign cultures (much less to kill foreign regimes), the U.S. government's need to heed "the allies," especially "the Europeans," and to restrain the "unsophisticated," "unilateralist" American public -- these and a host of other unserious assumptions continued to reign. Moreover, the Bush team employed the same kind of people and modus operandi as its predecessors. They spoke loudly and wasted America's stick on the least significant enemies. * * * To derail the Bush team from America's war to their own, the Arab terror regimes had to manufacture a war. The spring of 2002 saw a dramatic increase in the attacks by various Palestinian forces against Israel. This made Palestinians immeasurably worse off materially and subjected them to constant danger of execution as collaborators. Saddam's regime and the Saudi royal family as well supplied the money for the family endowments that effectively purchased the war's principal weapon, suicide bombers. Having helped organize the carnage, the Saudis demanded that Bush stop it by making concessions to them.By spring 2002, the Bush administration's pretense that it was making war had worn thin. The Bush team had declared that September 11 had "changed everything," that "those who are not with us are against us," and that its "war on terrorism" would dispense with latter-day American reticence about foreign engagements and warfare. Nevertheless, the Bush team fought a classic phony war, because its chief priority was to change as little as possible the visions, objectives, assumptions, and modus operandi of late-twentieth-century American elites. This calls for something of a postmortem on the "war" that never was.
Codevilla also asserts, among other things, that the "Bush team," with the help of the inept CIA, has been deliberately focusing on the wrong targets in its "war," most specifically trying at all costs to divert attention that should be aimed at Iraq to the shadowy figure of UBL. And then Codevilla pulls out the really heavy artillery. * * * America became fully contemptible when the Bush team recoiled from the Arab world's brandishing of the ultimate terror weapon, suicide bombing. Count on it: the next stage of the war will feature suicide bombings on American streets.The facts of the war on terrorism are as outlined above: in practice, the Bush team is fighting a war to salvage the visions, assumptions, and ways of current elites, not to mention their reputations. Abroad, the "war on terrorism" is of a piece with the Gulf war, the Vietnam war, and the Korean war. America kills lots of people whose deaths do not bring victory. This makes us hated. And America leaves enemy regimes standing. This makes us contemptible. At home, the "war" consists of a fateful combination of bellicose rhetoric and impotent, silly security measures. Thus even more than previous wars, the "war on terrorism" wastes the good will of the American people -- the most precious thing of all. The ends of war cannot be achieved by the means of phony war.
I don't know. When I read this article a few days ago, I was really impressed with the revelations and reasoning I found. But in picking it apart to excerpt here, I'm finding a lot of it pretty sensational and, well, those four little words "this makes us hated," coming in connection with any discussion of 9/11, always send my defenses roaring into gear. Codevilla seems to be picking on a number of straw men here, but perhaps it just appears that way because it's emotionally hard to accept his conclusions. He's painting a picture of a government that at heart is indifferent to the suffering this nation has endured in the past year. If diversionary tactics are being used, isn't it at least worth considering that the intent is to divert our enemies? Does anyone doubt that such a diversion would necessitate being less than forthcoming with the general public while the battle is being waged?
Or am I just being naive? Could the "war on terror" really be just a hollow facade to placate the rage of the American people in the wake of last year's atrocities while the government pursues business as usual and dedicates its real energies to preserving the status quo? I'd hate to think so. Because if that did turn out to be the case, I think (or hope) that our rage in response to last 9/11 would pale to a feeble flutter in comparison with our reaction to that kind of betrayal by our elected leaders.
