Letter from Woodstock

 

Tribune, London

                                        

 

George has a vision

John Mason

March 1, 2003

Woodstock, New York

 

 

               

 

               

The White House rationale for our Iraq invasion shifts from day to day, but the troop transports roll on anyway. Driving down the New York Thruway, I passed a mile long convoy of military trucks filled with reservists who had just been called up. The rear of the school bus in which they were traveling was plastered over with hand-lettered signs. “Go New York 113^th! Kick his ass!” one read. “ Good Luck 113^th! Come home soon!,” read another. “Not in your lifetime or mine,” I thought to myself as I passed them by. The war that’s coming is like a tear in our world that keeps on growing, ripping away the surface routines of everyday life to reveal the military colossus that was lurking just beneath. This time our “Jolly Green Giant” has definitely slipped his leash.

                Last week our President had a vision about the Mid East that he finally choose to share with the rest of the world.  Our planned invasion of Iraq, it would seem, isn’t entirely about eliminating “weapons of mass destruction,” or even rescuing the oppressed Iraqis from an evil tyrant. It’s about bringing democracy to an entire region and Islam into the modern world. This is a “ a bold and daring project” to reshape the map of the Middle East by the application of brute force - as though western armies haven’t already tried that in 1918, 1956, and 1967.

Radiating the sublime self-certainty that can only come from the place where evangelical faith meets worldly inexperience, our President committed us to making over not just one Arab dictatorship but all of them at once. No second Security Council resolution on Iraq will be required then, because military force is not seen as a “last resort.” Rather it’s the preferred means for administering shock therapy to the Mid East with the aim of breaking the morale of Islamic fundamentalism by demonstrating once and for all that it can never win against the West. Left unsaid is the hope that a clear military victory over Saddam will also lift the cloud of “uncertainty” that has hung over Wall Street since 09/11. Here the bet is that victory on the battlefield will trigger a market rally, and give the Republicans their first electoral majority in a presidential election since 1988.

The audience at the American Enterprise Institute was understandably thrilled because his speech meant that the neo-con, “Perle School” had finally won its battle with Powell’s “realist” wing for the President’s heart and mind.  So the importance of this speech was as much about where it was said as what was said. The AEI is the Washington think tank that housed most of the strategic thinkers - Perle, Donnelly, Muravchik, and others - who now lead the charge for war, during their years of exile under Clinton. Home base for the “Project for a New American Century,” whose authors dominate decision-making at the Bush Pentagon, this group has been instrumental in aligning the administration’s Mid East policy with that of Ariel Sharon’s Likud.  Sharon’s Israel has now emerged as this Administration’s most important strategic partner in the region and in many respects its most important ally in the world. A trusted warrior in the battle against Islamic “terrorism”, Israel also provides the model for the “maximum security state” at home that inspires much of our current anti-terrorism legislation. In short it seems that Israel has as much influence as Tony Blair or any other European leader on how this administration views the world.

The AEI speech was meant to show that “Bush really does lead,” but his high-risk venture was too rich in “crackpot realism“ for my blood. It told me that this President who is said to “walk and talk with Jesus,” really has the soul of a riverboat gambler who’s willing to “bet the farm” on a toss of a coin. And the stakes in question are not only the lives of your troops and ours – but the integrity of international law and the UN.

Our media has had too many “Churchillian moments” of late. For instance, Mr. Blair lecturing us that the decision to invade Iraq or not brings back the same issue of appeasement that our grandfathers faced in 1938. Frankly too much of what we hear smacks more of Churchill the Colonial Secretary than the embattled wartime leader, but I’ll offer up a Churchill moment of my own anyway.

Stopping by the Woodstock Library the other day, I glanced at the cornerstone laid down in 1937. The dedication read: “This stone from Blenhiem palace is given in kindred spirit and peaceful association. Woodstock England.” Kindred spirit and a peaceful association are about the most we can hope for from the “special relationship” between our two countries. But the men and women who built it would have been shocked to learn that it had become the foundation for the preemptive invasion of another nation. Increasingly this war looks like a criminal enterprise. We should remember that we condemned men at Nuremberg for less.