The Bipartisan War Machine
By Hunt Tooley
[Posted September 17, 2003]
The
desperately sad situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the dramatic
contrast between the promises and the realities of war, have brought
into sharp relief the moral and practical calamity of US foreign
policy. But while it is tempting to fix blame on only the current
managers who occupy the White House, we must also consider the larger
picture.
The neoconservative clique and their partners have deepened the
commitment to American empire, but Republicans hold no monopoly on
building empire in the recent history of our country.
The Bill Clinton regime, now seemingly forgotten except as a kind
of Camelot II by the American Left, featured most of the same patterns
of imperial conquest and domestic repression, though all of this
was marked by Clinton's inimitable style. A different cast
of characters achieved the same result with the same methods for
the same ends.
For example, the bombing of Serbians to spread democracy, though
dwarfed by the latter attack, was in principle little different from
the conquest of Iraq. It is vital to remember that the bombing of
at least something or someone in Iraq went on practically every day
for all the years between the Gulf wars, as did the murderous embargo.
Most of this destruction belonged to Clinton.
Indeed, even now much of the bold Democratic (that is to say, social
democratic) opposition to the war in Iraq comes from folks who were
happy enough to see the war happen, though earlier this year some
of those war supporters did add the reservation that our slaughter
of Iraqis would be better if we did it in unison with the United
Nations.
The hard, antiwar left, was no part of this, but note well that
most of the leading Washington Democratic politicos and pundits now
coming out as opponents of the Occupation supported both the Serbian
war and the war on Iraq.
The greater pattern runs like this, and in some measure it is derived
from a system of empire and "democracy" reaching back to
the Great Crusade of 1861-1865. We invade some country with some
laudable Jacobin slogan on our lips: "make the world safe
for democracy," "the four freedoms," "winning
the hearts and minds," etc. We demonize the ruler of said country,
making him into the "face of evil," so that those in our
land who can't quite grasp the meaning of a "crusade for humanity" can
latch onto the more prosaic goal of killing a really bad guy. (This
is easy enough, since most leaders of modern countries have plenty
of skeletons in their closets)
At the end of the victorious crusade, we "reconstruct" the
country, with price tags rising war-by-war. Part of this money goes
to enhance the power and size of the military establishment policing
the occupation. Part of it goes toward rooting out and expropriating
certain chosen, and wealthy, intractable ruling elites and setting
up deserving new elites who will be friendly. Part funds the physical
reconstruction of the damage done during the war (most of which we
did ourselves--some of it at least, gratuitous).
This last part is critical, since it is done by awarding "contracts" to
American or other firms to do the work. Most of the contracts are
awarded far in advance, and those businesses which receive the contracts
will always be among the deserving companies that supported the war
in any case. Note well that the United States of America then pays
for or organizes the funds for reconstruction of the defeated country.
These funds are always based on money taxed or otherwise extracted
(through inflation, confiscation, etc.) from private citizens and
then handed over to selected firms who support the current administration.
The continuities of this pattern through the alternative Democratic
and Republican administrations are absolute, but the alternation
provides much scope for Democratic and Republican pundits to be alternately
warlike crusaders and rational peace-lovers, depending on how their
partisan loyalties match with current political culpability.
All throughout the Clinton years, the Republicans were developing
strong anti-empire and even antiwar tendencies. They decried nation
building and took steps toward seeing the war machine as an integral
part of the problem of big government. During the presidential campaign,
Bush tapped into this sense by decrying "national building" and
calling for a "humble" foreign policy.
The critique of Clinton's foreign policy didn't stop there. Some
on the right began delving into the interest-group analysis along
the lines of the old left. A case in point is an important Newsmax
story by Carl Limbacher and Caron Grich from 1999, entitled " The
Caspian Connection ." The story contextualizes the Serbian war
by showing the geographic and geopolitical connections of the Balkans
and Caspian oil. It is still important to read.
And yet, in the end, it didn't stick. Newsmax.com is a "conservative" news
source which follows a kind of Rush-Limbaugh trajectory in equating
conservatism with whatever the Republican National Committee is cooking
up at the moment.
Now that the Bush administration has, seemingly for very different
reasons, chosen to invade and occupy two countries which bracket
the crucial oil-bearing region, Newsmax.com only runs oil-related
stories which bolster the pro-war line, emphasizing competition with
the Russians, the need for a "stable" supply of oil, etc.
See for example the article from year ago on the Pipeline.
Paleoconservatives and libertarians know this already: though the
alternating regimes look different, they tend to follow a series
of intertwined policies. Empire is so useful, in both domestic and
foreign policy, that no modern administration would be able to resist,
even if it wanted to. In fact, since the "teams" are built
in advance for precisely this kind of game, there is no way that
any new administration would want to.
The Bush White House displays more decorum than the lubricious establishment
of la Boca Grande (to borrow from Westbrook Pegler) and the Big Jerk,
but its goals and accomplishments are in their essence the same,
and its success rate is actually a good deal better. The Dick Cheney
strategy differs little from the Madeleine Albright strategy, though
each is pleased to point to the failures and missteps of the other.
And the results will be the same: bigger, more intrusive government
at home; a world of perpetual war for perpetual peace abroad. The
job of a serious believer in liberty is to learn to distinguish between
a politically driven attack and a fundamental critique, avoiding
the former and focusing as much energy as possible on the latter.
Hunt Tooley teaches history at Austin College. He is the author
of "The Hindenburg Program of 1916: A Central Experiment in
Wartime Planning". htooley@austincollege.edu
