Is Our Democracy Sleepwalking Into a Nightmare?
By Gene Lyons
04/26/06 "Democrat
Gazette" -- -- We hear a lot about “madmen”
taking power in far-off lands, most often lands with large oil
reserves. A few pertinent questions: Has the White House lost
its collective mind ? Do the president and his minions believe
that Americans can be stampeded into another needless war to
save his party from the consequences of the catastrophe in Iraq
? Is the Bush administration seriously thinking of bombing Iran
for political purposes ? Of a nuclear strike ? Is it actually
possible, as has been said, that George W. Bush believes himself
to be on a divine, messianic mission ? If the answer to any of
these questions is yes, then our democracy may be sleepwalking
into its worst crisis since the Civil War. A pre-emptive strike
on Iran, because it might hypothetically develop nuclear weapons
five or 10 years hence, would be a naked act of aggression. Not
to mention an offense against the U. S. Constitution. On what
authority would Bush make war on a nation that played no role in
9 / 11, bears enmity toward al-Qa’ida and has never seriously
threatened to attack the United States ? His own God’s ?
So far, Iran hasn’t even violated the non-proliferation treaty
giving signatories the right to develop nuclear energy for
peaceful use. It boasts of purifying a small amount of uranium
ore to the standard needed to generate electricity. Experts say
Iran would need roughly 100 times its present refining capacity
over several years to accumulate enough weapons-grade uranium to
make a bomb. Despite the absurd and offensive posturing of its
president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a demagogic politician playing
to his own base, no immediate danger exists.
Yet many of the same keyboard commandoes who orchestrated the
propaganda campaign that drove the U. S. into Iraq are beating
war drums. Scary “intelligence” claims again proliferate. The
same geniuses who claimed to know the precise location of Iraq’s
nonexistent weapons of mass destruction now warn us of Iran’s
double-secret arms programs. Full-page ads have appeared in
newspapers in the U. S. and Europe conjuring the prospect of
Iranian nuclear attacks against Israel and the West, an entirely
imaginary scenario.
The other day Bush, sounding like a Valley Girl, told a
California audience he’d tried to avoid war with Iraq
“diplomatically to the max,” a falsehood so brazen that it’s
almost tempting to fear he believes it. Given that British
government documents portray Bush discussing with Prime Minister
Tony Blair how to justify an attack against Saddam Hussein in
early 2003, it’s reasonable to wonder what schemes he’s
conjuring now. He also credited “the Almighty” as the
inspiration for his foreign policy.
At times like these, it’s worthwhile recalling George Orwell’s
distinction between patriotism and nationalism. Orwell wrote the
essay “Notes on Nationalism” in 1945, just as the most
cataclysmic war in human history was ending in Europe.
“By patriotism,” he wrote, “I mean devotion to a particular
place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the
best in the world, but has no wish to force upon other people.
Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and
culturally.”
Nationalism, as Orwell defined it, “is inseparable from the
desire for power.... A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or
mainly, in terms of competitive prestige.... His thoughts always
turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations.” To
Orwell, it was “power hunger tempered by self-deception,” a kind
of moral insanity.
Presaging his masterpiece “1984,” Orwell was most alarmed by the
fervid nationalist’s indifference to reality: “Actions are held
to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who
does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage—torture, the
use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment
without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of
civilians—which does not change its moral colour when it is
committed by ‘our’ side.”
An interesting list under present circumstances, don’t you think
?
More recently, the eminent Israeli military historian Martin van
Creveld has cautioned that hysterical warnings about this or
that country—Russia, China, Pakistan, India—developing nuclear
weapons have occurred regularly since Hiroshima. Yet the taboo
against their actual use has held, partly because rational
actors know that even the “tactical” weapons which Bush
administration toughs fantasize about are upward of 10 times
more powerful than the A-bombs dropped on Japan. Also because,
van Creveld makes clear, deterrence works. Israel, he writes,
“can quickly turn Tehran into a radioactive desert—a fact of
which Iranians are fully aware.” To violate that taboo would
justifiably turn the U. S. into a pariah state. It would all but
guarantee eventual retaliation in kind. Even a conventional
bombing campaign against Iran would, at minimum, send world oil
prices skyrocketing, with disastrous economic consequences. Real
patriots must prevent this madness from happening. The generals
are speaking out. Where are the Democrats and the sane
Republicans ?
Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and
recipient of the National Magazine Award.
© 2006 The Democrat Gazette
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