Former military man and present-day historian Andrew Bacevich on the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz attitude toward 9/11, here.
Yes,it was a disaster. Yes, it was terrible. But by God, thiswas a disaster that could be turned to enormous advantage. Herelay the chance to remove constraints on the exercise of Americanmilitary power, enabling the Bush administration to shore up, expand,and perpetuate U.S. global hegemony. Toward that end, seniorofficials concocted this notion of a Global War on Terror, really acover story for an effort to pacify and transform the broader MiddleEast, a gargantuan project which is doomed to fail. Committingthe United States to that project presumed a radical redistribution ofpower within Washington. The hawks had to cut off at the kneesinstitutions or people uncomfortable with the unconstrained exercise ofAmerican power. And who was that? Well, that was theCIA. That was the State Department, especially the StateDepartment of Secretary Colin Powell. That was the Congress.
Meanwhile,Gregory D. Foster, professor at the Industrial College of the ArmedForces at the National Defense University. wrote a brilliant op-ed in The Baltimore Sun a few weeks back. Here are some excerpts:
Evenas Long War rhetoric artfully circumvents such politically discomfitingterminology as "insurgency," its underlying message should be clear: Wedutiful subjects should be quietly patient and not expect too much (ifanything) too soon (if at all) from our rulers as they prosecute theirunilaterally proclaimed war without end against ubiquitous evil.
Theintent of the message is to dull our senses, to dampen ourexpectations, to thereby deaden the critical, dissenting forces ofdemocracy that produce political turbulence and impede autocraticlicense. Being warned here amounts to being disarmed - intellectuallyand civically.
President Bush; DefenseSecretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs ofStaff, Gen. Peter Pace; the head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. JohnP. Abizaid; and the recently released Quadrennial Defense Review, amongother authoritative purveyors of received wisdom, all warn us thatwe're embroiled in - and destined to be further subjected to - what isto be known as a Long War.
It would be onething if such semantic legerdemain reflected revelatory strategicinsight or a more sophisticated appreciation of the intrinsic nature ofpostmodern conflicts and enemies. But that is not the case. In fact,it's hard to avoid the cynical view that America's senior militaryleaders are willfully playing public relations handmaiden to theirpolitical overlords at the expense of a naive, trusting citizenry.
And lest we forget, the Tiger Force book is out, here.
Let us not let the passing of Jim Careypass without noting his pioneering. I knew the man only slightly,but when I was writing my first book, Sound & Fury, back in 1989, Ihad a lot of unformed notions (and more than a little anger) about themedia, but it wasn't until I discovered Carey's work that I found anintellectual framework--particularly regarding his discussions of JohnDewey--to make sense of what I was seeing and hearing in a fashion thatmight give these notions some lasting value. I find that I havereturned to these ideas over and over during the intervening period andI hope my own works carries on a small part of the tradition he helpedestablished.
Correction: Rick Stengel informs he was a power-forward, not a guard in high school. We'll take his word for it.
P.S. The Clintons "have all but insisted we analyze" their marriage about as much as Little Roy
has insisted we examine his online dating habits, methinks. At
what point, other than in this man's fervid imagination did the
Clintons ever ask anyone to examine their marriage? Yes they were
forced to discuss it by a media that lacked all respect for privacy,
but Andy was forced to discuss his personal ads? Was he
"insisting" we discuss his sex life as well? The hypocrisy
astounds... (And by the way, this blog/columnist never discussed
either one, and won't.)