Norman and John Buffalo Mailer, from The Big Empty (Nation Books, New York, 2006).
What Took Us Into Iraq?
JBM: I know you've answered this question in a number of ways, but it just can't be asked enough. Why are we in Iraq? I cannot believe that Bush and Company are a gaggle of fools, not by a long shot. They are the most calculating administration I've encountered in my life.
NM: I like that. The most calculating administration. Yes. Lots of know-how, and no honorable ethic.
JBM: Given their intelligence, how could this administration not have anticipated the long haul of this war? By now, they have changed their reasons for the invasion so many times, Americans are getting hip to the fact that, at the very least, Saddam Hussein posed no significant threat to our national security. This war is developing into an extraordinary political cost for the administration. Why was it worth it to them? It can't just be the oil. Oil prices are up. How does this supposedly Christian administration justify hordes of innocent people killed--
NM: Come on, man, save time. These administration honchos are very, very intelligent with what they are intelligent at, but they're stupid as sludge when they are stupid. I will say this characterizes almost all political regimes. Take Camelot. As open and bright and quick as the Kennedy administration proved to be, look at how wrong they were on the Bay of Pigs. Why? Because they didn't know a lot about Cuba when they came into office, so they listened to Allen Dulles and the CIA. It was a very painful lesson, but they learned that the CIA wasn't always right.
OK, all I'm getting at is the Bushies in the wake of the 2000 election had a host of problems for which war could be a pro-tem solution. The novelist in me would even warrant that the cynics among the Bush honchos loved the idea of selling America on bringing democracy to Iraq. They may even have known they were not going to succeed on any real level. But they did have great faith in the stupidity of the American people. So, they assumed they could carry it off one way or another. With our mighty military, how could they not find something they could paint as a positive?
JBM: I was twenty-four years old at the time, a writer/actor in LA, and I saw what was going to happen if we invaded. How could they not have seen it? It's hard for me to believe that they didn't know Iraq would turn into a quagmire.
NM: Listen, these are men who have been successful all their lives. They've gone through many crises. Their feeling is, "Yes, there's going to be trouble. A lot of shit will hit the fan, a good deal is probably going to go wrong. But we will handle it." Not Bush, but Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld. Take a guy like Cheney. His whole attitude is: "Can do. Will do." I would say their honcho feeling goes like this: "We'll take the sludge that comes our way, but it will be a lot better than chasing bin Laden all over Afghanistan and Pakistan. That won't do it. The Democrats will be too ready to carp about everything that's going wrong in America. So let's shift the war to Iraq. This country is so patriotic. 9/11 brought us back again to operating speed and now we can coast on that patriotism." You have to understand the depth and breadth of the cynical optimism these guys possess. They are able to live with very bad odors, spiritual stinks most of us can't endure. Their strength is in their ability to avoid bad conscience. Immoral is not even a word to apply to these guys. Amoral is no better. They have a God-given or diabolically driven capacity to live with bad conscience. They really don't give a damn. "Hey," goes their credo, "I'm tough. So I can live with this. Others couldn't, but I can take it. I will endure. And even if it doesn't work, it will work anyway, because we will always be able to find a new slew of spokesmen, even intelligent people, who will claim that democracy is beginning to work in Iraq. All those neocons. They keep saying that the Middle East is ready for democracy. Well, I think they are a bunch of Israel-serving, self-serving sons of bitches myself, but if they are right, then we get the oil, and if they're wrong, we'll yet be able to blame them for the consequences." So, yes, John, to speak for myself again, I take them seriously. As they saw it in 2001, the country was in bad shape and they needed a tool big-time to clear it up, especially when they were bound and determined to send all that tax money upstairs to the rich.
JBM: So, instead, they send the poor to die in Iraq.
NM: Don't you think that is one of the themes of history, which repeats itself over and over?
JBM: My question is, Why is the chain never broken?
NM: The reason may be that there are too many strong and skilled people who spend their lives working to keep the chain intact. They labor at it reverently. So they succeed in keeping the majority stupid, even if in a democracy it's just fifty-two percent of the voting populace. They know so well that stupidity is their greatest asset, their political mojo. They work, systematically, to enhance it. They take pride in generating more and more stupidity even as advertising men take pride in selling a piece of crap. After all, anyone can market a Rolls Royce. But try palming off sleaze on a big scale. Hell, yeah! "Bring 'em on."
This is a timeless description of the psyche of the "thug". Just because someone has the big office, it doesn't provide them absolution from the judgment of being a street thug. And not the garden variety mindless hoodlum. The clear of thought and intention. The most dangerous and the very worst.
As history is retold, here is hoping it eventually puts Dick Cheney under the proper light of day. All of the others had some qualities which helped them fulfill their part in this production. But it was Cheney who had complete command of the soul of a thug.
Bush hungered for Cheney's effortless hardness. Bush already knew how to not "give a damn", but it was developed from dysfunctional adaptations. It was not the pristine callousness for which Cheney should be known.
Probably Cheney mentored Bush. Perhaps Bush just learned from example. He did very well. Pathetically, there are still moments when Bush appears just the head mafioso's son. Stretching to fill his father's shoes, looking the part, yet fumbling, or excessive for the weight of the moment. He lacks the cold, dismissive finesse. It is difficult to say whether he falls short of a full mind or a completely empty soul.
Thank you for the post.
Norman Mailer had a wonderful mind and soul for the representation of thought through word.
Thanks for this post with NM & NBM. Should be the basis of an American war cry on Washington letting them know enough is enough. It says a lot about how he viewed our elected officials but even more about the people behind them.
(AND they have been proven correct)
,
I think that after Vietnam there would be more of us who question and I can hardly believe that the CIA couldn't see what was happening, they were probably in the loop.
My only hope is that once we vote in someone who will take us out of Iraq NOW (and it is not any of the leading candidates), that these people are prosecuted to the full extent of the laws.
We are in Iraq because of empire. We have always been interested in using the military for accumulation of wealth and extending our influence. I wish we would just say that instead of couching rationales in elementary school lies. Spreading so called truth, justice and the American way mean absolutely 100% nothing and are just platitudes.If the public understood the real reasons they would not volunteer to put their blood on the line. If they knew that the war, in part, meant $3.00 plus a gallon for oil and that the immense profits go into just a very few coffers they would not be so quick to commit their sons and daughters so that CEO's of oil companies and wealthy Arab dictators would become very very very rich. We have supported and still support dictatorships all over the world without expending two thoughts about it.
One true rationale for Iraq, as Alan Greenspan aptly said in his book "Age of Turbulence", is oil. We also wanted revenge for 9/11. The money for 9/11 though was gleaned through Pakistan. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi in origin and Whabbi in spirit so why invade Iraq? We did because we could.
Bush NEVER calculated on the fracturing of Iraq because in his ignorance, he knew nothing and cared nothing about Iraq's history or its people. We have paid a heavy price in blood and treasure for the miscalculations of the Iraq War.
Norman Mailer recently said he was not at all surprised by what has happened in the history of his time. He believed most people were really fascists at heart. It is a sad commentary on who we are made even sadder because we as Americans claim to be much better than that.
Natalie Rosen
Framingham, MA
Maybe The Chimp will have to move to central Asia, a few hilltops away from Osama... They'd be neighbors!
Voter stupidity helps, but the media, by not pointing out even the most painfully obvious lies, contributed a lot. They also relied on the stupidity (whether real or feigned) of the Democratic Party.
Allen Dulles and the CIA left a big mark on foreign policy, a legacy of ashes. So much for the American dream. "Camelot" was a fantasy, also.
The chain is unbroken, Lord, bye and bye. May we continue to go to war to be "patriotic" - just so long as someone else does the dying and the fighting. The tax money was all sent "upstairs" to the rich. Support the troops? Mailer says it's all about warbucks. History repeats itself, it seems. When you have been around for a couple of these wars of choice, one must agree - following the money leads to the right answer more than geopolitics. War insures re-election and extraordinary powers, too. It's a win-win. Where is the downside to this war-mongering behavior for those in charge?