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Today's
Stories
September 23,
2004
Michael Neumann
Three
Years and Counting? How Time Flies
September 22,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Zarqawi's
War: the Mysterious Sadist from Jordan
Neve Gordon
The
Wall, the Court and Sharon
Joshua Frank
History Repeating: New York, 1832 and Now
Ron Jacobs
Stormy Seas on the Citizen Ship
Jack Random
Defending Dan? Rather Not
Tarif Abboushi
Kerry's Final Straw: Confessions of a Despairing Voter
Mickey Z
Stupid White Guy Quiz
John L. Hess
Faking the Difference: a Serious Debate?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: The House Rules
September 21,
2004
Gary Leupp
"We
Are Not Secure": Kerry's "Unwavering Commitment"
to Securing a Middle East Realm
Robert Jensen
Large
Dams in India: Temples or Burial Grounds?
Elaine Cassel
Fourth Circuit to Moussouai: Ask Your Questions; Prepare to Die
Stanley Heller
Reagan and the Killing Fields of Lebanon
Adam Federman
America Will Disappoint the World, Again
David Whitehouse
What's Behind the Horror in Darfur?
M. Junaid Alam
How to Avoid Becoming an Anti-American
Paul Craig
Roberts
Attention
Deficit America
Website of the Day
True American War Heroes: the Iraq Refuseniks
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 20,
2004
Cockburn /
Buncombe
Get
Fallujah
David Price
Relying
on Phonies: What If The Problem with Phone Polls is That They
Are Phone Polls
Dave Lindorff
How
Dems Fight: Tigers Against Nader, Pussycats Against Bush
Harry Browne
Pre-Nup at Leeds: Talked Out, But Does IRA Give Up?
Mark Wesibrot
Bush's
Ownership Society: No Taxes for Owners, Only Workers
Karyn Strickler
The Keys to the White House v. the Shrum Curse?
Uri Avnery
The Temple Mount Bombers
September 18
/ 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
Septemeber
17, 2004
Ray McGovern
Gossing
Over the Record
Patrick Cockburn
The New Iraqi Economy: Baghdad's Thriving Kidnapping Industry
Lee Sustar
The State of Working America: an Autopsy of the American Dream
Mike Whitney
John Kerry: 195 Lbs. of Political Helium, Not an Ounce of Sincerity
Victor Kattan
Black September
Ray Hanania
Israel's Demographics
Greg Bates
Nader's Victories: a Mid-Campaign Assessment
Website of
the Day
The Road to Hell
September 16,
2004
Landau / Hassen
Meet
the New Villain: Syria
Joanne Mariner
Inside
Darfur: a Photo Essay
Patrick Cockburn
US
Offers Conflicting Accounts of Baghdad Bloodbath
Greg Moses
Four Million Children Might Be News
Joshua Frank
Nader in the Battleground States
Christopher Brauchli
The Bush Drug Lottery Flops
David Himmelstein
Folke Bernadotte: a Rosh Hashonah Remembrance
Website of the Day
The Abu Ghraib Index
September 15,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Hell
on Haifa Street
Ron Jacobs
Oppose War, Not Just Bush
David Lindorff
Blanking Out Dissent
Joanne Mariner
Talking About Darfur: Is Genocide Just a Word?
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein
An Open Letter to Madonna: Please Don't Support Israeli Apartheid
Dave Zirin
Is the NFL Ready for Us?
Yigal Bronner
"They
Are Building Walls Around Us"
September 14,
2004
Gary Leupp
The
Problem of Chechnya
Jennifer van
Bergen
What's
Wrong with Torture?
Stan Goff
Wake Up and Smell the Jungle Rot
Patrick Cockburn
The
Punishment of Fallujah: US Precision Strickes...on Ambulances
Anis Memon
Nader
in Michigan
Michael Donnelly
The Nuance Comes Off: Former Naderites Beg for Kerry Votes
Werther
Zell Miller: the Peckerwood Pericles
Website of
the Day
Osama Bin Forgotten?
September 13,
2004
Gabriel Kolko
Elections,
Alliances and the American Empire
Phillip Cryan
How Do You Say "Death Squad?": Language in Colombia's
War
Patrick Cockburn
One of Baghdad's Bloodiest Days: "I'm a Journalist! I'm
Dying! I'm Dying"
Noah Leavitt
The War on Civil Liberties
Robert Jensen
Highjacking Catastrophe: Bush, the Neo-Cons and 9/11
Mike Whitney
Alan Greenspan: Fed-Master to the Wealthy
John Chuckman
Stop Talking About the "Election"
Mike Burke
Kerry/Edwards Website Censors Discussion of Israel/Palestine
Issues
CounterPunch
Wire
The Quotations of David Cobb: "I Don't Care How Many Votes
I Get"
Website of the Day
Keep It In Your Pants: the Bush Plan to Combat Teen Promiscuity
September 11
/ 12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Swatting
at Flies
Fred Gardner
Yet Another Prozac Scandal
Saul Landau
When Our Assassins Go Free
Jennifer Van Bergen
How to Beat Bush: a Simple Strategy for the Average American
Roger Burbach
/ Jim Tarbell
The Real Dead Enders: Iraq and the Crisis of Empire
Christopher Reed
9/11 in an Historical Context: a Minor Event When Compared to
Worldwide War Casualties
Francisc Catalin
An ABC of American Interventions
Carl Estabrook
Big Science and Government Terror
Bernard Chazelle
Anti-Americanism: a Clinical Study
Sharon Smith
Third Party Blues
Dave Lindorff
Perhaps This Time We're the Silent Majority
Mike Whitney
Fallujah: an Iraqi Beslan?
Frederick B.
Hudson
Their Sons Perished in the Flames, But Not Their Faith
Mickey Z.
Round Up the Usual Suspects: a Look Back at 9/11
Ron Jacobs
Redneck Music for the New Century
Greg Moses
Soap Opera Moments in Texas School Funding Trial
Benjamin Dangl
/ Andrew Kennis
An Interview with Leslie Cagan
Poets Basement
Del Papa, Albert, Gelman
September 10,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Disappointment
at Samarrah?
Michael Donnelly
Democrats v. Democracy
Alan Farago
Mosquitoes in a Hurricane
Doug Giebel
Karl Rove's Terror Playbook
Mike Whitney
Bob Graham's Political Tsunami
David Domke
God's
Will, According to the Bush Administration
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
Ed Kinane
Abducted in Baghdad
Peter Bohmer
The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future
Todd May
The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
Jeremy Scahill
The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad
Joshua Frank
Green House Party Gasses
Fran Shor
The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist
Act
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome
to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad
Website of
the Day
Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
September 23, 2004
Three Years
and Counting?
How
Time Flies
By
MICHAEL NEUMANN
When John Lee Hooker died three years
ago, my friend Joe said, "I KNEW the heroin would get to
him sooner or later!" It was a good joke, because John Lee
Hooker died at the age of 83. It's like the joke about how Osama
Bin Laden and the Mullah Omar 'can run, but they can't hide'.
It's three years now, and it looks like both of them have done
much more hiding than running.
This simple fact is more important
than whether or not the US is winning its nebulous war on it
abstract enemy, 'terror'. No amount of pith-helmet frothing about
the 'criminals' or 'murderers' responsible for 9-11 can obscure
the political nova they created. In one morning they turned the
pride of New York into poisonous, smoking dust and savaged the
military centre of the United States. They provoked the greatest
rage the most powerful country in the world had ever felt, and
have evaded the intelligence services of the entire Western world
for three years: not cowering, but hitting back, all the time.
If that isn't being able to hide, then what is?
Though this failure is widely
recognized, many don't take it very seriously. Some trivialize
the attacks, saying that more were killed in America's wars.
By this token the number of really significant events in American
history reduces to a half-dozen, and Pearl Harbor by itself was
trivial. Robert Fisk invokes his dead mother: "There was
one thing she would, I feel sure, have agreed with me: That we
should not allow 19 murderers to change our world. George Bush
and Tony Blair are doing their best to make sure the murderers
DO change our world." Others speak of 'bringing the criminals
to justice', as if this shattering conflagration were an ordinary
police matter. That September 11th changed the world has become
a cliché. It does not occur to these people that, if Bin
Laden and the Mullah Omar could get away with *that*, the world
must have changed already. A lot.
Yet this is staring us in the
face. Iraq: could the world have conceived, in 1947, that US
troops could not hold Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich? That American
leaders could only sneak into Germany on furtive, unscheduled
peek-a-boo missions? That the American occupation officials,
hardly daring to emerge from their fortified ghetto, could not
control most of Berlin?  Afghanistan: could anyone have imagined
an America as feckless in its response to Pearl Harbor as to
the even greater humiliation is suffered on September 11th? The
very country that was supposed to feel the full weight of American
wrath now houses a puppet semi-government which cannot even control
its own capital, and a scattering of American troops bring no
results other than their own occasional deaths. The United States
has fallen far. The inability to see the significance of the
change is almost as spectacular as the change itself.
On the left as well as on the
right, Americans are full of excuses. Of course, we are told,
no one is a match of American might. It's just that we didn't
really want to go after the Mullah Omar and Bin Laden. It's just
that we didn't really deploy the forces the military said we
needed. It's just that our intelligence was bad. It's just that
we didn't listen to our intelligence people. It's just that we
alienated the local population. It's just that we alienated the
Muslim world. It's just that the neocons, or Israel, or the Christian
fundamentalists messed with our heads.
All this is reminiscent of
nothing so much as the excuses about why Liston or Frazier or
Foreman or the reincarnation of Rocky Marciano didn't cream Mohammed
Ali. There are always reasons why you fail or you lose, but in
the world as in the boxing ring, it all counts: bad strategy,
bad training, overconfidence, stupidity, ignorance, laziness,
delusional thinking, weakness of will. It is pathetic to insist:
well, but for these things, he coulda been a contender. Yes,
but there were these things, and you're a loser.
I don't know why America is
in decline. I assume that there is a reason, that this is not
somehow the whim of a giant who decides to wither away. In part,
no doubt, it is just that the US has become weaker relative to
other countries who have become stronger. But this does not explain
why the US cannot conquer crippled states like Afghanistan or
Iraq. So deeper sickness is at work. To me, it first showed itself
with the election of Ronald Reagan.
There is debate over whether
Reagan somehow caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, or whether
he merely presided over its collapse from within. This debate
is itself wrong-headed, because the idea of Reagan actually having
a strategy is absurd. The most elementary grasp of reality requires
recognition that Reagan was an idiot, was known to be an idiot,
and was elected because the American people either actively wanted
an idiot, or thought it didn't mattered that their country was
run by an idiot. Whether or not the Soviet Union collapsed from
within, it was apparent that America had started to collapse,
at least partly from within.
The tendency to collapse, like
the same tendency in Rome, has not been relentless. Carter, Clinton,
and Bush the First, whatever their faults, were not idiots, and
Bush the First delivered impressive military and diplomatic achievements.
But his son, despite occasional flashes of cunning, is an idiot.
His neocon advisers are third-raters. His intelligence services
know nothing. His Secretary of Defense is an overconfident amateur,
who thinks he can root out guerrillas from twenty thousand feet
in the air. His army is terribly impressed with its own courage
and expertise, but wouldn't dream of incurring losses on the
scale its enemies accept as a matter of course, and cannot muster
enough troops to attain its objectives in the style to which
it has become accustomed. Americans generally cannot even conceive
what is in military terms a truism: that when you attack, you
should be prepared to lose three times as many men as the defenders.
Yes, in other words, America
'could' subdue Iraq and Afghanistan if it was prepared to lose
90,000 soldiers in each country. In 1945, when America really
was a colossus, it was prepared to do this. But it *can* no longer
be prepared to do this, because Americans would never dream of
tolerating such losses. Americans for years have seen their armed
forces as a career opportunity, not a road to death, nor can
they really grasp that funny-talking, funny-dressing foreigners
so far away could require such suffering on America's part. Their
ignorance, arrogance and love of ideological fantasy preclude
such notions.
These are no mere accidents
of American history. They have roots in many twentieth century
developments: the American victories in two world wars, the emergence
of a baby boomer generation weaned on TV and its fantasies, increasing
dependence on and infatuation with technology, deteriorating
government services including education and consequently the
civil service, and so on. So the 'could' is imaginary. America
cannot suddenly stop being what it has become. It therefore cannot
simply, by some act of a will it does not possess, stop being
ignorant, arrogant, overconfident, or any of the other things
that underlie its shocking failures. Excuses mean nothing when
it comes to America's inability to wield effectively its panoply
of nerd-wet-dream technologies, its mountains of military hardware,
and the millions of draft-age human beings at its disposal. That's
how things are and, with allowance made for the same fits of
efficiency and determination that marked the decline of Rome,
that's how they will stay. That America's weakness lies partly
in its psychology does not make it any less weak.
America's weakness is not a
problem; the problem is that it acts as if it were strong. This
is pretty well understood; it is no news that the US has overreached
itself, or that it needs allies. There is another problem, less
well understood: the left also approaches its objectives as if
America were strong.
Sometimes this results in mere
failures of perspective. For example, religious fundamentalism
in America is seen as powerful cause of America's policy aberrations.
This is a half truth. Fundamentalism, we are often told, is the
reaction of a threatened culture or failed society to international
challenges it cannot meet. This fits America's Christian fundamentalism
very nicely. America, with its minority of participating voters
and its completely aberrant choices of leaders, is as much a
'failed state' as any Islamic fundamentalist nation. Christian
fundamentalism is a reaction to the quite correct perception
that American society is in deep trouble: it is a consequence,
not a cause of that trouble. Rather than worrying about how to
counter Christian fundamentalists, we should worry about how
to deal with the trouble in the first place.
It is in dealing with American
decline as it reflects on foreign policy that the left goes further
astray. The left still sees its central problem as containing
American aggression, just as it did in the 1970s. In fact, the
Iraqis and Afghans do a very good job of containing American
aggression. It is a safe bet that America will never take on
a functioning country not crippled by years of internationally
imposed sanctions: the idea that, having been humiliated in Iraq,
it could tackle Iran is simply ludicrous. This is not only because
of America's own military weakness - the inability to conduct
successful military operations, even for pure psychological reasons,
is military weakness - but because, since the first Gulf War,
there has been a decisive change in the world's willingness to
humour American fantasies. If the US seems isolated in Iraq,
where the UN had already authorized one war and kept a pariah
label on the country, imagine how it will seem attacking anywhere
else. It is not only anachronistic but offensive to suppose -
unlike the rest of the world - that non-Americans are little
people who can't handle America's 'invincible military might'.
Nowhere is the left's obsolete
attitude more apparent and more damaging than in its approach
to the Israel/Palestine conflict. The left tends to see this
as a tale of another brutal American client, crushing the Palestinians
to secure American dominance in the Middle East. Israel, it is
supposed, intimidates the Arab world and enables America to secure
its oil supplies.
This is nonsense. Control of
Middle East oil is one of the few things American can easily
secure on its own: it takes next to nothing to occupy oil fields,
and it has been done many times. As for the oil-producing countries
themselves, Israel doesn't seem to have been much help in controlling
the Iranian oil fields, and the Gulf States régimes have
always been helpless American clients. The only relevant effect
of US support for Israel is that it makes people in the Middle
East furious at the very idea of alliance with or subordination
to the United States: Israel is no help but a huge hinderance
to America's oil security. And one needn't qualify this with
'oil': Israel, by making bitter enemies for America everywhere,
is an enormous hinderance to America's security, period.
America once supported Israel
because Israel was a buffer against Nasser's enormously popular
Arab nationalism and against Soviet influence. This made a little
bit of sense: against the Soviet Union, at least, America found
Israel very handy as a stationary aircraft carrier. But now,
America supports Israel for no good reason: out of inertia and
out of respect for the maudlin absurdity which somehow pulls
the Israeli rabbit out of the holocaust-remembrance hat. The
Israel lobby is so successful, not because America can't resist
it, but because it doesn't want to: it thinks Israel is its good
buddy and it doesn't mind the lobbying, which after all has become
as American as cherry pie. As for the spying, no big deal: friends
do spy on one another from time to time, and it has been rightly
said that the US gives Israel much more sensitive information
than Israel ever gets from its operatives.
Why then does the oil story
persist? First, because the left can't get its head around the
idea that America might do something out of sheer stupidity.
Why not? Is it that the country which elects such brilliant leaders
couldn't possibly stoop so low? Second, the story persists because
the left is wedded to the notion of a strong country whose alliances
cannot be harmful, but must on the contrary extend and manifest
that strength. But the US is harming itself, greatly, by its
alliance with Israel, even as it is being humiliated all over
the world, even as its weakness grows more apparent day by day.
Americans may never give a damn about the Palestinians, but they
do quite rightly worry about their security: with the hatred
they incur, they certainly ought to fear the rest of the world,
which is quite capable of dealing them devastating defeats. That
is why the US needs friends. That it is why it ought to dump
Israel.
Michael Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent
University in Ontario, Canada. Professor Neumann's views are
not to be taken as those of his university. His book What's
Left: Radical Politics and the Radical Psyche has just
been republished by Broadview Press. He can be reached at: mneumann@trentu.ca.
Weekend
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