The United States of Fear

by Tom Engelhardt

  War has a way of turning almost anything upside down, including language. This undoubtedly means that you’re using a set of antediluvian war words or definitions from your father’s day. It’s time to catch up. So here’s the latest word in war words: what’s in, what’s out, what’s inside out. What follows are nine common terms associated with our present wars that probably don’t mean what you think they mean.

  Victory: Like defeat, it’s a loaded word and rather than define it, Americans should simply avoid it.

  In his final press conference before retirement, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was asked whether the United States was “winning in Afghanistan.” He replied, “I have learned a few things in four and a half years, and one of them is to try and stay away from loaded words like ‘winning’ and ‘losing.’ What I will say is that I believe we are being successful in implementing the president’s strategy, and I believe that our military operations are being successful in denying the Taliban control of populated areas, degrading their capabilities, and improving the capabilities of the Afghan national security forces.”

  In 2005, George W. Bush, whom Gates also served, used the word victory fifteentimes in a single speech (“National Strategy for Victory in Iraq”). Keep in mind, though, that our previous president learned about war in the movie theaters of his childhood where the marines always advanced and Americans actually won. Think of his victory obsession as the equivalent of a mid–twentieth-century hangover.

  In 2011, despite the complaints of a few leftover neocons dreaming of past glory, you can search Washington high and low for “victory.” You won’t find it. It’s the verbal equivalent of a Yeti. Admittedly, the assassination of Osama bin Laden was treated as if it were VJ Day ending World War II, but actually win a war? Don’t make Gates laugh!

  Maybe, if everything comes up roses, in some year soon we’ll be celebrating DE (Degrade the Enemy) Day.

  Enemy: Any super-evil pipsqueak on whose back you can raise at least $1.2 trillion a year for the National Security Complex.

  “I actually consider al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula with Al-Awlaki as a leader within that organization probably the most significant risk to the U.S. homeland.” So said Michael Leiter, presidential adviser and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, in February 2011, months before Osama bin Laden was killed (and Leiter himself resigned). Since bin Laden’s death, Leiter’s assessment has been heartily seconded in word and deed in Washington. For example, in June 2011, New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti wrote, “Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is believed by the C.I.A. to pose the greatest immediate threat to the United States, more so than even al-Qaeda’s senior leadership believed to be hiding in Pakistan.”

  Now, here’s the odd thing. Once upon a time, statements like these might have been tantamount to announcements of victory: That’s all they’ve got left? Of course, once upon a time, if you asked an American who was the most dangerous man on the planet, you might have been told Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong. These days, don’t think enemy at all. Think comic book–style arch villain like Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom—anyone, in fact, capable of standing in for globe-encompassing Evil.

  Post–bin Laden, America’s super-villain of choice is Anwar al-Awlaki, an enemy with seemingly near superhuman powers to disturb Washington, but no army, no state, and no significant finances. The U.S.-born “radical cleric” lives as a semi-fugitive in Yemen, a poverty-stricken land of which, until recently, few Americans had heard. Al-Awlaki is considered at least partially responsible for two high-profile plots against the United States: the underwear bomber and package bombs sent by plane to Chicago synagogues. Both failed dismally, even though neither Superman nor the Fantastic Four rushed to the rescue.

  As an Evil One, al-Awlaki is a voodoo enemy, a YouTube warrior (“the bin Laden of the Internet”) with little but his wits and whatever superpowers he can muster to help him. He was reputedly responsible for helping to poison the mind of army psychiatrist major Nidal Hasan before he blew away thirteen people at Fort Hood, Texas. There’s no question of one thing: he’s gotten inside Washington’s war-on-terror head in a big way. As a result, the Obama administration is significantly intensifying its war against him and the ragtag crew of tribesmen he hangs out with who go by the name of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

  Covert war: It used to mean secret war, a war “in the shadows” and so beyond the public’s gaze. Now, it means a conflict in the full glare of publicity that everybody knows about, but no one can do anything about. Think: in the news, but off the books.

  Go figure: today, our “covert” wars are front-page news. And America’s most secretive covert warriors, elite SEAL Team 6, caused “SEAL-mania” to break out nationwide after Osama bin Laden was killed. Moreover, no minor drone strike in the “covert” CIA-run air war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands goes unreported. In fact, future plans for the launching or intensification of Pakistani-style covert wars are now openly discussed, debated, and praised in Washington, as well as widely reported on.

  Think of covert war today as the equivalent of a heat-seeking missile aimed directly at the mainstream media newshole. The “shadows” that once covered whole operations now only cover accountability for them.

  Permanent bases: In the American way of war, military bases built on foreign soil are the equivalent of heroin. The Pentagon can’t help building them and can’t live without them, but “permanent bases” don’t exist, not for Americans. Never.

  That’s simple enough, but let me be absolutely clear anyway: Americans may have at least 865 bases around the world (not including those in war zones), but we have no desire to occupy other countries. And wherever we garrison, we don’t want to stay, not permanently anyway.

  In the grand scheme of things, for a planet more than four billion years old, our ninety bases in Japan, a mere sixty-odd years in existence, or our 227 bases in Germany, some also around for sixty-odd years, or those in Korea, fifty-odd years, count as little. Moreover, we have it on good word that permanent bases are un-American. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said as much in 2003 when the first of the Pentagon’s planned Iraqi megabases were already on the drawing boards. Hillary Clinton said so again in June 2011 about Afghanistan, and an anonymous American official added for clarification: “There are U.S. troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently.” Korea anyone? So get it straight, Americans don’t want permanent bases. Period.

  And that’s amazing when you think about it, since globally Americans are constantly building and upgrading military bases. The Pentagon is hooked. In Afghanistan, it’s gone totally wild—more than four hundred of them and still building! Not only that, Washington is now deep into negotiations with the Afghan government to transform some of them into “joint bases” and stay on them if not until hell freezes over, then at least until Afghan soldiers can be whipped into an American-style army. Latest best guesstimate for that? 2017without even getting close. Fortunately, we plan to turn those many bases we built to the tune of billions of dollars, including the gigantic establishments at Bagram and Kandahar, over to the Afghans and just hang around, possibly “for decades,” as—and the word couldn’t be more delicate or thoughtful—“tenants.”

  And by the way, accompanying reports that the CIA is preparing to lend the U.S. military a major covert hand, drone-style, in its Yemen campaign, was news that the agency is building a base of its own on a rushed schedule in an unnamed Persian Gulf country. Just one base. But don’t expect that to be the end of it. After all, that’s like eating one potato chip.

  Withdrawal: We’re going, we’re going . . . just not quite yet, and stop pushing!

  If our bases are shots of heroin, then for the U.S. military leaving anyplace represents a form of “withdrawal,” which means the shakes. Like drugs, it just feel so darn good to go in that Washington keeps doing it again and again. Getting out’s the bear. Who can blame them
if they don’t want to leave?

  In Iraq, for instance, Washington has been in the grips of withdrawal fever since the Bush administration agreed in 2008 that all U.S. troops would leave by the end of 2011. You can still hear those combat boots dragging in the sand with top administration and military officials practically begging the Iraqis to let us remain on a few of our monster bases, like the ill-named Camp Victory or Balad Air Base. But here’s the thing: even if the U.S. military officially departs, lock, stock, and (gun) barrel, Washington’s still not really planning on leaving. Instead, the Obama administration is planning to militarize the State Department, turning its embassy in Baghdad and its consulates into a little archipelago of bases defended by 5,100 hire-a-guns and a small mercenary air force.

  In sum, “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Ya” is not a song that Washington likes to sing.

  Drone War (see also covert war): A permanent air campaign using missile-armed pilotless planes that banishes both withdrawal and victory to the slagheap of history.

  Is it even a “war” if only one side ever appears in person and only one side ever suffers damage? In this sense, America’s drones are something new in the history of warfare. Drones are, of course, the weaponry of choice in our covert wars, which means that the military just can’t wait to usher chosen reporters into its secret labs and experimental testing grounds to reveal dazzling visions of future robotic destruction.

  To make sense of drones, we probably have to stop thinking about “war” and start envisaging other models—for example, that of the executioner who carries out a death sentence on another human being at no danger to himself. If a pilotless drone is actually an executioner’s weapon, a modern airborne version of the guillotine, the hangman’s noose, or the electric chair, the death sentence it carries with it is not decreed by a judge and certainly not by a jury of peers.

  It’s assembled by intelligence agents based on fragmentary (and often self-interested) evidence, organized by targeters, and given the thumbs-up by military or CIA lawyers. All of them are scores, hundreds, thousands of miles away from their victims, people they don’t know and may not faintly understand or share a culture with. In addition, the capital offenses are often not established, still to be carried out, never to be carried out, or nonexistent. The fact that drones, despite their “precision” weaponry, regularly take out innocent civilians as well as prospective or actual terrorists reminds us that, if this is our model, Washington is a drunken executioner.

  In a sense, Bush’s Global War on Terror called drones up from the depths of its unconscious to fulfill its most basic urges: to be endless and to reach anywhere on Earth with an Old Testament–style sense of vengeance. The drone makes mincemeat of victory (which involves an endpoint), withdrawal (for which you have to be there in the first place), and national sovereignty (see below).

  Corruption: Something inherent in the nature of war-torn Iraqis and Afghans from which only Americans, in and out of uniform, can save them.

  Don’t be distracted by the $6.6 billion that, in the form of shrink-wrapped $100 bills, the Bush administration loaded onto C-130 transport planes, flew to liberated Iraq in 2003 for “reconstruction” purposes, and somehow mislaid. The U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction did suggest that it might prove to be “the largest theft of funds in national history.” On the other hand, accidents happen.

  Iraq’s parliamentary speaker claims that up to $18.7 billion in Iraqi oil funds have gone missing in action, but Iraqis, as you know, are corrupt and unreliable. So pay no attention. Anyway, not to worry, it wasn’t our money. All those crisp Benjamins came from Iraqi oil revenues that just happened to be held by U.S. banks. And in war zones, what can you do? Sometimes bad things happen to good $100 bills!

  In any case, corruption is endemic to the societies of the Greater Middle East, which lack the institutional foundations of democratic societies. Not surprisingly then, in impoverished, narcotized Afghanistan, it’s run wild. Fortunately, Washington has fought nobly against its ravages for years. Time and again, top American officials have cajoled, threatened, even browbeat Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his compatriots to get them to crack down on corrupt practices and hold honest elections to build support for the American-backed government in Kabul.

  Here’s the funny thing though: a report on Afghan reconstruction released by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority staff in June 2011 suggested that the military and foreign “developmental” funds that have poured into the country, and which account for 97 percent of its gross domestic product, have played a major role in encouraging corruption. To find a peacetime equivalent, imagine firemen rushing to a blaze only to pour gasoline on it and then lash out at the building’s dwellers as arsonists.

  National sovereignty: 1. Something Americans cherish and wouldn’t let any other country violate; 2. Something foreigners irrationally cling to, a sign of unreliability or mental instability.

  Here’s the credo of the American war state in the twenty-first century. Please memorize it. The world is our oyster. We shall not weep. We may missile (bomb, assassinate, night raid, invade) whom we please, when we please, where we please. This is to be called “American safety.”

  Those elsewhere, with a misplaced reverence for their own safety or security, or an overblown sense of pride and self-worth, who put themselves in harm’s way—watch out. After all, in a phrase: Sovereignty ‘R’ Us.

  Note: As we still live on a one-way imperial planet, don’t try reversing any of the above, not even as a thought experiment. Don’t imagine Iranian drones hunting terrorists over Southern California or Pakistani special operations forces launching night raids on small Midwestern towns. Not if you know what’s good for you.

  War: A totally malleable concept that is purely in the eye of the beholder.

  Which is undoubtedly why the Obama administration decided not to ask Congress for approval of its Libyan intervention as required by the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The administration instead issued a report essentially declaring Libya not to be a “war” at all, and so not to fall under the provisions of that resolution. As that report explained: “U.S. operations [in Libya] do not involve [1] sustained fighting or [2] active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve [3] the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties, or a serious threat thereof, or [4] any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.”

  This, of course, opens up the possibility of quite a new and sunny American future, one in which it will no longer be wildly utopian to imagine war becoming extinct. After all, the Obama administration is already moving to intensify and expand its (fill in the blank) in Yemen, which will meet all of the above criteria, as its (fill in the blank) in the Pakistani tribal borderlands already does. Someday, Washington could be making America safe all over the globe in what would, miraculously, be a thoroughly warless world.

  Chapter 7

  Imperial Decline

  Living in the Fifty-First State (of Denial)

  I graduated from college in 1966 on a gloriously sunny day. Then again, it was a sunnier moment in this country. We were, after all, still surfing the crest of post–World War II American wealth and productivity. The first oil crisis of 1973 wasn’t even on the horizon. I never gave a thought to the gas I put in the tank of the used Volkswagen “bug” I bought with a friend my last year in college. In those days, the oil for that gas had probably been pumped out of an American well on land (and not dumped in the Gulf of Mexico). Gas, in any case, was dirt cheap. No one thought about it—or Saudi Arabia (unless they were working for an oil company or the State Department).

  Back in 1966, the world was in debt to us. We were the high-tech brand you wanted to own—unless, of course, you were a guerrilla in the jungles of Southeast Asia who held some quaint notion about having a nation of your own.

  Here’s what I didn’t doubt then: that I would get a job. I didn’t spend much
time thinking about my working future, because American affluence and the global dominance that went with it left me unshakably confident that, when I was ready, I would land somewhere effortlessly. The road trips of that era, the fabled counterculture, so much of daily life would be predicated on, and tied to, the country’s economic power, cheap oil, staggering productivity, and an ability to act imperially on a global stage without seeming (to us Americans at least) like an imperial entity.

  I was living in denial then about the nature of our government, our military, and our country, but it was an understandable state. After all, we—the sixties generation—grew up so much closer to a tale of American democracy and responsive government. We had faith, however unexamined, that the government should hear us, that if we raised our voices loudly enough, our leaders would listen. We had, in other words, a powerful, deeply ingrained sense of agency, now absent in this country.

  That, I suspect, is why we took to the streets in protest—not just because we despaired of American war policy, which we did, but because under that despair we still held on tightly to a hope, which the next decades would strip from our world and later generations. And we had hopeful models as well. The great civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was still a force to be reckoned with—and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., the riots of 1968, the shock of American troops occupying American inner cities, as yet had no reality for us.

  Even in protest, there was a sense of . . . well, the only word I can think of is “abundance.” At the time, everything seemed abundant. President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program was expansively under way in the midst of war—and even guns and butter seemed (for a while) a plausible enough combination for a country like ours. The Peace Corps, that creation of the Kennedy presidency—which my future wife joined in 1964—was still new and it, too, encapsulated that sense of American abundance and the hubris that went with it. It was based, after all, on the idea that you could take a bunch of American kids, just out of college, with no particular skills, and ship them off with minimal training to needy nations around the world to improve life, all as part of a great Cold War publicity face-off with the Soviet Union. And those kids, who turned out in droves to experience something bigger and better than themselves, did often enough find ingenious ways to offer limited amounts of help. The Peace Corps was but one small measure of a pervasive sense—about to be shattered—of our country’s status as the globe’s preeminent can-do nation. There was nothing we couldn’t do. (Hadn’t we, after all, singlehandedly rebuilt devastated Europe and Japan after World War II?)