On Sun, 13 Oct 2002, Gordon Fitch wrote:
> Apparently that's the only thing which dissuades the imperially-minded
> from their sport. 20th-century Germany had to be ruined twice before
> the Germans, as a community, decided conquering the world wasn't such a
> good thing after all. Vietnam cooled out the U.S. for 15 or 20 years --
> now they -- "we" -- are ready to go again. I'm definitely working on
> other ways to destroy imperialism and militarism, but so far, the long,
> destructive, painful, bloody and costly results of practicing them are
> 'way ahead of other methods. Any suggestions? Moral and aesthetic
> suasion don't seem to do a thing as far as the powerful are concerned.
I have to disagree with this Gordon. First Germany wasn't deterred from war by losing. If it was, it would have stopped after WWI. It was deterred by having its war machinery dissassembled and by enjoying such enormous material returns from peace that no one in their right mind would want to trade them.
Secondly, Vietnam wasn't stopped by casualties in themselves. We lost just as many soldiers in much less time in an equally futile effort in the Korean War, and yet we were ready to take over duties in Vietnam the following year as if nothing had happened.
What made Vietnam a syndrome were exactly the moral qualities -- the national feeling that it had been shameful and futile, a sacrifice for nothing, for less than nothing, for evil to all concerned. These didn't spring from the deaths themselves. They sprung from a change in the climate of ideas. And from new media that started out excellent churner- outers of the big lie and ended up a terrain of conflict.
And as for the present conflict, I'm probably the last man standing who still thinks it is possible to stop. Because the longer it is delayed, the more these people say crazy things. Their release of their doctrine, which they didn't have to do, alienated lots more people and made imperialism a mainstream word. This idea of a six year occupation was also something they didn't have to release and will also make people increasingly leery. Stall them some more, I say, and they'll talk about dropping the bomb themselves and owning the oil. And even if we can't in the end stop it, we can make the atmosphere such that such reverses as there are will loom larger in the future. Our plan B, if we can't stop this war, is stop this way of dealing with the world from going forward from that point on.
For better or worse, I think there there is an underlying prejudice in the American people across the spectrum against overseas entanglements -- a disposition to see them as prone to fuck up, and to say after they do "See? What did I tell you? Let's never do that again. We never should have tried." We saw it after Somalia; Kosovo was in large part a concerted effort to get over that. And you don't need to lose a war to set that off. You can just lose men in a terrorist bombing during peacekeeping duties. Like the marines in Beirut.
Supporting a bombing raid on your enemy is one thing, it's like being for punching your enemy in the nose. Occupation, done in it's own name, is something very different. It will wear on America.
In short, if invading and conquering the Middle East is a bad idea, and this is borne out, there *will* be a popular underlying disposition to say it was all a mistake -- and the left should do everything it can to encourage it and to make that come about sooner. One needn't lose a war. Domestic cuts and economic distress juxtaposed to military spending could well be enough. Iff the political climate were right.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com
"I'm an optimist because it's intellectually more challenging" __________________________________________________________________________