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CounterPunch
November
16, 2002
Hegel Laughs
Last
The Ironies of History
by TODD MAY
Hegel would have loved it. The nineteenth century
German philosopher who taught us to beware the ironies of history
would have felt vindicated. As the United States marches blindly
to war, intent on demolishing an enemy that may have already
vanquished it, Hegel would have smiled. Be careful in what you
ask for, he might have warned us.
For those who thought irony was dead
in the post- September 11th period, the last year must be a sorry
disappointment. Al-Qaeda, hoping to defeat the United States,
is largely defeated itself. The prey has become the predator.
On the other side of the coin, the U.S., hoping to bring the
world together to fight terrorism, stands isolated as never before
in its post-Vietnam history. The leader has found itself without
followers. Italians march against us by the hundreds of thousands.
Germans elect a Prime Minister on a platform of opposition to
us. Saudi Arabia denies us the use of its military bases. How
did this happen?
Hegel wrote that history is not stable.
Every historical circumstance contains the seeds of its own destruction.
It embodies tensions that, when they break out, turn things into
their opposite. Slavery becomes mastery, intimacy becomes distance,
what is essential becomes merely circumstantial. This is not
by accident but because it is the necessary movement of history
itself. History is ironic. It is a lesson we have yet to learn.
For reasons that are not entirely clear
yet, the terrorists from al-Qaeda decided to launch a military
assault against the United States. They most likely thought,
as many think, that we are weak. Life is too comfortable here.
We have become soft in our dominance. A blow to our financial
and political centers would lay us low.
It did not. What sought to make us weaker
only strengthened us. We became as one, standing with those who
had been slaughtered and against those who would treat us so.
The stores and buildings of Manhattan, which Spalding Gray once
described as an island off the coast of America, became awash
with American flags. Through the stroke that sought to drive
us apart we found our unity.
And we displayed it.
Terrorism will be fought everywhere and
without regard to national boundaries. As our president told
the world, either you are with us or you are against us. And
with that the ironic wheel took another turn. Those who violated
our national boundaries would now learn that we would pursue
them and kill wherever they are, without respecting national
boundaries. Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq. Their borders mean nothing
to us. And in our determination to provide a united front against
terror, we killed untold hundreds (if not thousands) of civilians,
we violated the integrity of states, and we bullied both those
without and those within who dared question the nobility of our
mission. Even Robert Byrd found himself in the curious position
of being an enemy of the state.
And with that our strength becomes our
weakness. Because we could attack others without the cooperation
of the rest of the world, we did. And, if the president's resolve
is what it seems, we will continue to do so. We have the military
means. The voices of Europe, of the Arab countries, of Asia and
Africa, do not matter to us because we do not need their cooperation.
We ignore them or we threaten them. They turn away from us. We
become isolated. And our ability to fight terrorism, a war that,
unlike the coming war against Iraq, does not know borders and
therefore requires the cooperation of all, is diminished or ended.
We should read more literature. At the
end of War and Peace, Tolstoy analyzed Napoleon's defeat in Russia
in 1812. The French army pushed into Russia, oblivious to the
fact that it could not endure the entirety of a Russian winter.
The Russians resisted, oblivious to the fact that their only
chance of survival was to lure the French deeper into Russia.
Each fought to do the very thing that would destroy it. In the
end the French were not to be denied. They pushed further. Then
winter came on and they were decimated. They were stronger, so
they lost.
There is another lesson that Hegel taught
us, although we could have learned it from others as well. History
is a slaughterhouse. Its ironies are never grasped in time. Instead
they are lived by those who cannot see them, and who consequently
perish by them. Our history, he might say, lies right there behind
us, waiting patiently for us to catch up with it. From the look
of things, it will not have to wait long.
Todd May
is a professor of philosophy at Clemson University. He can be
reached at: mayt@clemson.edu.
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