The American Rome

Catholic New Times, April 20, 2003 by Lewis Lapham

March 6, 2003 (A part of a talk at Victoria College University of Toronto)

The war in Iraq has all the components of the imperial project. The reformulation of the strategic doctrine, announced last September by U.S. President Bush allows the United Stales the privilege of preemptive strike and declares every country that is not our friend, is our enemy. It makes it quite that America is the only significant power either on heave or earth. This doctrine, first drafted in 1991 by Colin Powell and Dick Cheney has been waiting there to be used tint the occasion arose. I have read those documents and it is clear that the United Stales will tolerate no rival. The military budget must be kept lip to combat strength, even though there was no more Cold War and the Gulf War was little more than a Pentagon trade show.

The question then in Powell's mine and Cheney's mind was how do we keep the military/apparatus fully operational Thus tills doctrine. The attack on the trade towers presented these people with a new enemy, an unending war or terrorism.

Within one week Donald Rumsefeld was announcing the War on Terror which would take more than 30 year's That makes no sense to me. It is too abstract. It is like a war on drugs. There is never an end to it. It is however convenient. It serves the government which wishes to maintain the imperial project. Substitute Iraq for Al Qaeda Unable to find Osama, they now send a punitive assault to the Persian Gulf. They have had trouble explaining this to the Germans, French, Russians, Chinese as well as the American people. It is presented in the language of religious exorcism which President Bush prefers, used in his annual message to Congress, or chopped into nourishing sound bites by National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice for CNN's Live with Larry King. The whole propaganda campaign rests on the principle announced by Rumsfeld a year ago June, at a press conference in Belgium. Asked for proof of assertions that Iraq presents a clear and present danger, he said: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." It is the same kind of thinking which animates the justice department and the police power given random search, arbitrary arrest and the loss of civil liberties.

Then we had Colin Powell at the UN with the slide show on February 6 trying to convince the Security Council of the need to promptly attack Iraq. I watched that. We saw Iraqi trucks that demanded the same kind of arcane exposition that New York art critics attach to exhibitions of abstract painting. Very unconvincing. Also to make the argument on behalf of military empire, the government, a week later presents a tape with a message from Osama and Powell proclaims a link from Bin Laden to Iraq. No such conclusion could possibly be drawn and the government morphs Osama and Hussein into the same enemy. It is not convincing to our European allies, but it is immensely convincing to the American news media. I was surprised to hear the universal praise in the U.S. press. The Wall Street Journal calls it, "Echoes of Metternich and Talleyrand." The New York Times Magazine proclaims on its cover, "The American Empire: Get used to it!" Time Magazine proclaimed Bush "a warrior king" and Newsweek reported that "Bush was a leader comfortable in ermine." The adoration of American media for American empire is a sight to see.

Where else do we live but in fear?

Another objection to U.S. policy is this. Bush constantly makes the statement, (October 7 in Cincinnati), "We refuse to live in fear." Of all the lies being told by the government's faith healers and gun salesmen, I know none as cowardly as that one. Where else does the Bush administration ask the American people to live except in fear? On what other ground does it justify its deconstruction of the nation's civil liberties?

Ever since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, no week has passed in which the government has failed to issue warnings of a sequel. Sometimes it is the director of the FBI, sometimes it is the Attorney General or the Department of Homeland Security, but always the same message: suspect your neighbor and watch the sky. Buy duct tape, avoid the Washington monument, hide the children. If too many citizens ask impertinent questions about the shambles of the federal budget or the disappearance of a forest in Montana, the government sends another law enforcement officer to a microphone with a story about a missing tube of plutonium or a newly discovered nerve gas. Washington today suffers no shortage of visionary geopoliticians touting the wonders of American empire, imposing by acts of conscience and force of arms, peace on earth and good will to men.

The prophets of empire, many of whom write for the extreme right wing press--the Murdoch papers, the National Interest, some of the columnists of the New York Times, almost gill of the cable news networks, the voices of Bill O'Reilly, Fox News etc.--enjoy the patronage of power. They envision a kind of slum clearance project for the whole Islamic Middle East--Iraq to be the first of modern democracies to be erected, followed by Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We do seem to have ideologues in power in Washington now and I find that frightening. I also find the messianic habit of mind frightening. I believe politics are secular; democracy is secular. People make their own democracy and politics is the way they do it. I think that is the greatness of the America experiment and the American constitution. That is not a view shared by Attorney General Ashcroft, or I am afraid, by president Bush.