The Beat March 2003

Of all the war blather I‘ve seen on American television over the last couple of months—from Dubya‘s State of the Union Address, to Powell‘s testimony at the United Nations Security Council meeting, to the thousands of sound bites reverberating over the airwaves Coast-to-Coast and round-the-clock—the most interesting snippet came from one of those CNBC market wrap-up shows. A panel of four false prophets of the Dow was talking about the war when the egg-headed guy with birth control glasses sitting at the end of the table blurted out, “Bush better make a decision soon because the markets don‘t like all this uncertainty.”

It was at that moment that I knew: It‘s on! Mark a day in March on your calendar for the “Ultimate Cage Match at the Babylonian Smackdown Palace.” The market-watcher had compressed the impetus for bringing the noise to Iraq now down to a sparkling diamond blurb: the Lords of High Finance were not going to wait for the war -- after all, it is the economy, stupid.

You know how certain times and places have a certain vibe, an almost preternatural ominousness: the feeling that you‘re about to wake up from a bad dream in bed with a live boy or a dead girl? Korea felt that way from the moment the U.S. soldiers were acquitted in the deaths of the two schoolgirls until the time I boarded a plane at Christmas for America. It feels that way now here in the States. The home front is feverishly mobilizing.

And so is the peace front, but not just here in the New World. From London to Louisville, Baghdad to Brisbane, much of the world has been taking it to the streets to send a message to the Bushies to slap an icepack on that war fever. Leading the way is Europe—in particular the French, who share a fascination with berets with the Butcher of Baghdad, and the Germans, who love David Hasselhof.

For years, France and America have had something of a strained relationship, but until recently there‘s been relatively little outright acrimony from either side. The French rag on Americans for being culturally vacant, obstinate, bullying, self-interested, and crass, while America‘s view of the Frogs is probably best summed up by the cartoon character Homer Simpson who labeled them “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” Whether fences get mended remains to be seen, but you can damn well bet I‘ll be ordering my “Freedom” Fries with “Freedom” salad dressing, “Freedom” bread, all washed down with a nice bottle of vino from “Freedom,” until the Old World gets its act in gear.

Adding to this pensive atmosphere in the States were the color-coded “Terror Alerts” being put out irregularly by the new Homeland Security agency—Uncle Sam‘s new Big Brother. In mid-February the status was raised to ’Code Orange‘—just below ’Red‘ on the ’Sky-is-falling‘ seriousness scale—indicating a high probability of Bad Karma. Homeland Security‘s recommended precautions in the event of the unthinkable: stock up on duct tape and plastic sheeting, useful tools should you decide to take up serial killing in a post-Apocalyptic world. Across the country you could practically hear the collective sigh of relief after that little ass-saving tip.

But I couldn‘t help but wonder where on Earth this threat was coming from? Of one thing I was certain: it sure as heck wasn‘t coming from Chateau Saddam.
So that means America is going to go to war with Iraq to protect the country against terrorist threats from… somebody else? Go figure. At the risk of stating the obvious, shouldn‘t the administration cut out the middleman and go straight to the source? Lately, the White House appears to be pulling a security slight-of-hand by ratcheting up the fear factor at home while trying to sell another war in the Gulf: now you see the threat from Al-Qaeda, now you don‘t. Perhaps it just reflects a strategy of fight the battles you think you can win—a ploy much discussed in the context of that other point on the “axis of evil”—our neighbors to the North. But who knows?

My second war epiphany occurred a couple of weekends ago between the hours of 11:30 p.m. and o‘dark thirty in the morning while watching the mid-season opener for Saturday Night Live, one of the longest running shows on American TV. Roundabout 12:15 is musical guest time, and this night‘s group was three talented, sugar-sweet and cotton-fluffy Southern girls going by the name the Dixie Chicks.

The band‘s opening song, Traveling Soldier, told the story of a girl too young who falls in love with a GI passing through town who later is killed in ’Nam. Thirty Rockefeller Plaza shook from the thunderous applause from the final chords right up through to the commercial. There‘s nothing that says, “Yee-ha!” like three corn-fed Southern-fried belles singing about the boys over there never coming home. An angry yank on the old heartstrings. They also played another Go-Team ditty with the perplexing non sequitur, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition… I want a ride on the sin wagon.”

SNL is an important arbiter of the American cultural zeitgeist and still the most politically relevant satire on television. Through the years, the show has captured and immortalized a clumsy Jerry Ford, a toothy Jimmy Carter, the devious and sweaty Dick Nixon, Reagan as Super President, Hungry-Horny Clinton, snickering Bush Senior, and the five-cards-short-of-a-deck Bush Junior... and that‘s just making fun of the presidents. The SNL whoopee cushion has been burping some of the wind out of modern American political discourse for almost three decades.

But let‘s get back on message. As SNL‘s A. Whitney Brown used to ask, “What‘s the big picture? Why war? Why now?”

The economy? The short answer is “Yes!” But it‘s so much more than the filthy lucre. After reading Watergate reporter Bob Woodward‘s fawning analysis of the Bush administration‘s handling of the 100 days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, “Bush at War,” my sense is that the members of Team Dubya, including the Man himself, consider themselves visionaries, and this is their defining moment. As one Middle Easterner once phrased it: “Many are called, but damn few are chosen.”

Which brings me to Jesus. David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, just released a book about his tenure with the prez called “The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush.” Frum, who has been forever immortalized for coining the “axis of evil” quip for the political lexicon, shares an intimate portrait of the aura of Bush, the most interesting detail being his piety. According to Frum, who was one of the few Jews in the administration, the Bushies represented “the culture of modern Evangelicalism.” The first thing anyone said to Frum at the White House was, “Missed you at the Bible Study.” White House rules include no smoking, cursing, causal dress, but you could have inhaled as long as you quit after college. George W. is just mad about Biblical references, and he begins every national security meeting with a prayer. In all seriousness—Code Orange—this guy‘s a true believer, some would say zealot. And right now, this war in Iraq is next stage in Dubya‘s Grand Design—In the words of Jake Blues, he‘s on a “mission from God.”

The story of America‘s current war tilt begins back in 1992 when the U.S. Department of Defense issued its Defense Planning Guidance Fiscal Years 1994-99. This was the policy mission statement put out by the top brass at the DoD to guide the post-Cold War strategic and financial decision-making of the U.S. Armed Forces. The document was heavily influenced by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney (now vice-president), then-Chairmain of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell (now Secretary of State), Bush Senior, and most importantly, Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon‘s undersecretary for policy and currently the deputy defense secretary, who was responsible for compiling the report. Wolfowitz was and is the “Man Behind the Curtain.”

And what was the post-Cold War grand strategy articulated in that decade-old DoD policy paper? What stood out for most reviewers was the idea explicit in the document that the United States was to maintain a “preponderance of power” through defense spending to preserve what media pundit Charles Krauthammer, dubbed America‘s “unipolar moment” when the U.S. was crowned “World‘s Only Remaining Superpower.”

To prevent any other country from challenging U.S. global leadership, especially in the regions of Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia, the U.S. military budget would stay at Cold War levels—if not expand—to maintain a globe-girdling force of overseas troops and to stay ahead of the tech curve on the toys of war. All this in an effort to ensure the rest of the kids on the block played nice-nice—what one DoD official called a strategy of “adult supervision” or “babysitting.” Currently, America‘s military expenditures—coming in at just about $300 billion annually—are larger than the next 10 largest countries combined.

Need a practical example of the grand strategy at work? A few of the more savvy newsmakers have challenged the conventional wisdom that the United States is going to war with Iraq for the oil. Well, it is for the oil, but not necessarily oil for America. Who, then?

The U.S. actually has plenty of oil, as well as other partners in trade for oil. In fact, only about 25 percent of U.S. ’black gold‘ consumption comes from Middle Eastern oil reserves. But it‘s not the same case for America‘s friends in Europe and Asia. They get a whole heck of a lot of oil from the Arabian peninsula, and if access to that oil was to be cut-off or curtailed, Europeans and Asians might have a mind to project power to ensure a secure and steady supply of that Texas tea.

And, in the eyes of Washington string-pullers, what follows will be heightened tensions and regional arms races, conflict spirals and war. And this is bad because, while a good fight might be lucrative for the arms industry, when it goes global—or worse yet, nuclear—now that‘s bad for business. And, it is the economy, stupid.

More recently, the U.S. national security community has again redefined its grand strategy in the aftermath of 9/11, keeping the 1992 DoD report‘s twin -- dare I say, “crusades”? -- of maintaining “preponderance” and spreading the American values of democracy and free markets. The so-called “Bush
Continued on page 13...
Sweeping, continued from page 5...

Doctrine” now added the concept of preemption as a guiding principle of policy. Hit ’em fast, hit ’em hard, and hit ’em before they hit you. All Americans are raised on Westerns and know that the guy in the white hat never draws first, but the Texas cowboy in Washington loosened the moral imperative of the Frontier Hero to allow for a more Machiavellian duel in the sun.

The reason Bush and his wrecking crew are taking on Iraq, as well as the related issue of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, is to rise to the occasion on this defining moment in history. Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, for America to begin sweeping up the world, putting the dictators and terrorists into the dustbin of history to pave the way for Bush Senior‘s vision of a New World Order dominated by capitalist democracies.

Now to what ends are these American janitorial services being offered? Well, for the WWJD crowd currently haunting the corridors of U.S. power, this is that historic Fork-in-the-Road when alternative futures hang in the balance. One future envisions madness, chaos, and dread, as weapons of mass destruction proliferate and eventually get snatched up by “evildoers” who use them to, well, do evil. This is a future where, finally, we get hoisted on our own petard by the high-tech tools of death we created to protect us from ourselves. Irony? It‘s the “Out-With-a-Bang-Not-a-Whimper” scenario.

The other future—the one the Bush prayer circle is impatient to see realized—finds a spic-and-span world without war or fear, one big happy family of “good-doers” busy taking care of business. No more wars, rogue states, or $2-a-gallon ’GO‘-juice for the SUV, which, by the way, would then no longer be helping to fund terrorists. (For some reason, owning and driving an SUV helps to put shekels in Osama‘s dungarees. Damn those terrorists are inscrutable!)

Okay, so what alert status does this future ruled by forces of currency markets, capital markets, labor markets, government spending, tax policy, multinationals, in the name of the Almighty Dollar warrant? We‘ll have to leave the answer to that question to posterity. For now, pass the remote control and the Cheese Doodles and let‘s check out the war on the tube.