I was watching Star Trek recently when it became clear that the entire Bush administration rationale for invading Iraq and attempting to bring overnight democracy to a civilization that had never before held elections came from a 1968 episode entitled: "The Gamesters of Triskelion."
In the show, Capt. Kirk, Mr. Chekov and Lt. Uhuru are transplanted to a world where slaves known as Thralls are forced to fight to the death while three living brains called Providers bet on the outcome of the matches. In the climax of the episode, the Providers say they will kill Kirk and enslave the crew of the Enterprise unless the captain agrees to battle three Thralls in a fight to the death. In a negotiation between Kirk and the Providers, the captain agrees on two conditions.
KIRK: The Enterprise and its crew leave here in safety. Furthermore, all the Thralls on the planet must be freed
PROVIDER: Anarchy! They would starve!
KIRK: You will educate and train them to establish a normal self-governing culture.
PROVIDER: Thralls? Govern themselves? Ridiculous!
KIRK: We have done the same with cultures throughout the galaxy. Are you willing to admit we can do what you can't?
For the purposes of this column, let's pretend that the Thralls are the Iraqis, Bush is Kirk (if only) and the Providers are everyone else who thought it folly to invade Iraq. Wouldn't Gene Roddenberry (and episode writer Margaret Armen) have been surprised to learn 40 years later that it was the bad guys (the Providers) who got it right and that it was Kirk who was the misguided one.
Roddenberry's utopian point of view was written into just about every episode of
Star Trek. Treat foreigners with respect, there's good in everyone, live and let live, good triumphs over evil, and force should be used only for self defense. Most importantly, though, was the doctrine of non-interference. In today's parlance, don't muck about in someone else's business -- let history take its course for better or worse.
In Kirk's speech, he boasted that the Federation had brought democracy to cultures "throughout the galaxy." Oh really?
The number of nations in the history of the Earth that have smoothly and quickly transitioned from dictatorship to democracy is two: Japan and Germany, and each of them only relented after millions of their citizens had been killed and their lands laid waste. Other nations that have transitioned from monarchy to democracy, England and France being two of the most notable, accomplished the feat internally by popular revolt.
So what's my point? The Bush Administration said it would be a cake walk to do something that had never before been attempted, let alone accomplished, in the recorded history of Planet Earth. What we know now is that the architects of that war -- Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Dick Cheney (the Gamesters of Bushdom) -- were writing fiction in their arguments for invasion, while pretending it was non-fiction.
For my fiction, though, I prefer a writer like Michael Chabon. He at least knows how to wrap up the plot and write an ending, unlike the amateur fiction writers of the Bush Administration who wrote a good first chapter but didn't have the skill to write a good middle, let alone an ending.
Barry Rosenberg is the co-author of Mavericks of the Sky: The First Daring Pilots of the U.S. Air Mail