The enemy that hit us on September 11 was real. But our citizenry wasn’t asked to confront a real enemy. The arrest and prosecution of our antagonists seemed to be of only secondary concern. Instead, we were enlisted in a symbolic war at home, a war to repair and restore our national myth of invincibility.This quote is at the core of Jane Hamsher's discussion of the problem we are facing with the Bush administration and terrorism. The so-called Global War on Terrorism has been a big bait-and-switch scheme by conservatives who recognize that America no longer has the kind of international power that it had coming out of WW II.
They see much of the rest of the world catching up (and in many ways surpassing) America economically as a real decline in American power, and they have long wanted to do something about it. They saw the stalemate in Korea and then the clear military defeat in Vietnam as being symptoms of America's decline, something they blamed on the push for Civil Rights and on the raucous counterculture which did not respect their successes demonstrated by promotions in the business hierarchy.
Conservative followers are people who innately cannot deal with ambiguity. They expect The Leader to winnow down the various possible alternatives to a single idea, problem or ideology, then direct them in how to act to resolve that one defined problem or limited and related set of problems.
When that process fails, it is because people are acting "immorally" and cannot be trusted to work with them to solve "The Problem." So part of the solution is to corral the immoral people and force then to helm resolve "The Problem" or to exclude them from much of society through imprisonment or ostracism/segregation.
The big problem of America's decline over the last six decades is not one that has a clear solution. Part of the problem is that economically it has been a problem of competing nations being more successful than America so that they have grown more rapidly. But a relative decline still feels like a real decline. Part of the problem is that the social changes over the last six decades are a direct result of improved communications. The social changes are actually solutions to much older severe problems, but they force individuals to adapt to a world very unlike the one they grew up and were successful in.
The only area in which America has not declined significantly has been the ability to project military power anywhere in the world. The loss of the USSR as a competitor made much of the existing American military power redundant, so it has begun to be cut back. The attack on 9/11 offered a way to use the still overwhelming military power that American can wield.
But 9/11 itself was a new problem. It was conducted by a non-state actor. The overwhelming American military power was designed to be used against a clearly identified state enemy. Afghanistan was to some extent an appropriate target for our military forces, if used sparingly. The Taliban did control Afghanistan, and they also were allies and supporters of bin Laden's al Qaeda. The Taliban was locally disliked and fighting a civil war, so all we had to do was help the other side in an on-going war, then watch and assist as they put their own nation back together. Our military could do much of that, and the CIA's special operations people could pick and choose appropriate targets while supporting the preferred winning side in the civil war.
But Iraq was a severe overreach. Conservatives have a large set of institutions and publicity organizations designed to create simple solutions to complex and frightening problems. Their interest in the peoples in other nations are largely defined by how much money they can make trading there. Since a free-market small-government philosophy allows them to make the most money, they assume that everyone really wants their country to be run that way, and that the reason most are not is the entrenched powers of government bureaucrats and immoral people.
9/11 allowed the conservatives in the Bush administration to break the restrictive entrenched powers of government bureaucrats and use fear to get the electorate to overcome their distaste for starting an unnecessary war. Thus the preemptive invasion of Iraq. It was supposed to create a conservative free-market small-government society in the center of the Middle East and convince the rest of the nations in the Middle East how wrong they had been before and how outstanding the future in a free-market small-government mostly Libertarian society would be.
Since education hadn't overcome the entrenched interests to create this, America's very powerful military would do so. As a side effect, the reasons for terrorism would disappear. As another side-effect, the American military would be permanently located close to the Middle East oil fields after world oil passed Peak Oil. The mechanics of these things were not explained. They were just assumed to be inevitable.
As I said, conservatives work hard to apply simple answers to very complex and generally ambiguous problems.
Very few of the conservatives who made the decisions to go to war had any experience in the military or even much military education. They thought of war as being a strategic exercise like playing chess or 'Risk.' They did not accept the idea that if we attacked Iraq, even those people who were very oppressed by Saddam would be angry at the invaders first.
Then they just assumed that governments operated because the leaders wanted to oppress the people. Police existed just to oppress the Iraqis, not to stop criminals. In the Libertarian Paradise, people do not commit crimes because their reputation is too precious to them - or something. Ownership of Property is not something government makes happen. It is a natural characteristic of society given by God.
Then they assumed that a state-run economy would easily become a free-market economy when the 'dead hand of government' was removed. Again, this is a natural characteristic of society, given to men by God. No planned mechanisms would be necessary. In a free market those magicians called 'Entrepreneurs' would make all these things happen.
Hadn't Saint Ayn Rand (and Grover Norquist, her prophet) said these things were all true?
Ask the conservatives. America had gone into decline for the last sixty years after WW II because of the dead hand of government bureaucracy and immoral people. The solution was to bring back John Wayne with his six-guns, clean up the town by killing all the bad guys and everyone would ride off happily into the sunset.
9/11 was the trigger that fired off this fantasy crossbow. The constant, perhaps even growing fear of America's decline among conservatives has been the tension in that crossbow, a tension strengthened as each indicator of America's economic and moral decline was reported. Gays? Parading and demanding marriage rights? That's what happens when Blacks and Whites are allowed to marry (1967 Supreme Court decision.)
And Iraq? An easy target that our military could easily deal with, as they had proven in 1991. Oh, and they conveniently sit on top of the second largest known pool of oil in the world, so there was a reason why conservatives might even know they existed.
Simple solutions to complex problems. Terrorism isn't the threat. Big government and social immorality is. And a free-market small-government demonstration project in the Middle East was to be the solution.
So Osama bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center for the second time in 2001, and the conservatives invaded Iraq. Bin Laden wasn't the problem. America's decline because of bloated government, restrictions on business and immorality was.
Ask your frightened neighborhood conservative.
See also Scarecrow's What Should Have Followed 9/11 at Firedoglake.
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