The War That Finished Off America’s Century
By Ian Bell
The Herald, UK
October 24th, 2006
Arrogance and stupidity. The former is “undue assumption of importance conceit, self-importance”, says Chambers. Stupid is “stupefied or stunned; senseless; insensible; deficient or dull in understanding; showing lack of reason or judgment; foolish; dull; boring” (Ditto).
Interesting language, you will allow. Brief, to the point and probably better than merely accurate, given the context. Yet we can be forgiven for thinking that the previously unknown, soon-to-be-invisible Mr Alberto Fernandez wishes this morning that he had spent more time with his dictionary and his thesaurus before chatting, presumably with someone’s approval, to Al Jazeera television.
To put it no higher, you do not further a career in the State Department, down in Washington’s Foggy Bottom, by composing the obituary for a presidency in public. Your superiors are liable to get the wrong idea. In the absurd language of the Beltway, Fernandez says now that his words were “seriously mis-spoken”. One guesses his bosses may have suggested a more succinct formulation.
Still, there we have it. How does one US government functionary define his country’s intervention in Iraq? Dumb and driven by hubris, that’s how. White House-watchers may tell you that this was merely State hitting back at Defence, or Condi’s mouthpiece biting a chunk from Rummy’s policy. It hardly matters. With President Bush confessing to a Vietnam parallel, with Britain’s government showing every sign of policy paralysis, we are where we are: defeat looms. What follows?
The gossip from Washington suggests that the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker, will zip the last body bag when it reports this winter. Students of family tragedy detect the hand of George Bush senior in a former employee’s efforts to slap down Bush junior. This is interesting, but not relevant. Instead, if the leaks from the commission are to be believed, even Republican America has begun to think the unthinkable: Iraq is a catastrophe. The time to cut and run is approaching.
If that is the case, the destruction of Britain’s global influence, commenced at Suez a neat half-century ago, will be complete. No-one trusts us. No-one values our independence of mind or spirit, such as it remains. We are no-one’s idea of honest brokers, and too puny militarily to replace even a decent police force in Basra or Helmand. Boys are dying needlessly for the sake of Tony Blair’s self-esteem. But I would say that, wouldn’t I?
If Fernandez is any sort of weather vane, or if Baker’s group demands a sharp change in US “tactics”, as most expect, something important has happened. Call it this: with Iraq, the last superpower has demonstrated its essential impotence. The American century has drawn to a close, finally. Yet very few people have begun even to imagine what might follow.
Forget Iraq and global terror, just for a second. Did you notice how Bush brought North Korea to heel? Were you impressed when he put Iran, nuclear ambitions and all, back in the box? Did you detect China’s respect for America’s status when the Korean peninsula became a troubling issue? Was that Vladimir Putin cocking a snook at the White House? Or was that Hizbollah laying down its rocket launchers in deference to American ideals?
Europe has no right, need or excuse to mock. America remains hugely powerful, with an enormous potential for good. The global economy depends still on the greenback and, more importantly, on the capacity of the US to swallow everyone’s debts. The point is no longer the comical verbal infelicities of the junior Bush, Donald Rumsfeld’s manifest incompetence, or the lies of a Prime Minister. We are entering the post-imperial phase. So what comes next?
Such sense as emerges from Washington these days betrays incomprehension. All those who were once gung-ho, wrapped in the flag with their metaphorical boots on foreign ground, cannot grasp how it came to this. America has all the firepower, all the technology and all the borrowed money anyone could desire: so what’s the problem? Yet America cannot, on the evidence, subdue one small country and a relatively minor insurgency. Whether it can then propose to quell low-intensity global terrorism thus becomes a key question for the Bush presidency, and for what remains of the American imperium.
I am no fan of empires. I lack the specific patriot gene. I know perfectly well, equally, that the econ-omy of the US did rather well from the humiliation of Vietnam, that it bounced back without breaking sweat, and that the decline of the west has been predicted rather too often. Some comparisons are interesting, nevertheless. Didn’t little Britain once keep order, if bloodily, all across Iraq?
America has the wrong kind of power, in abundance. If you cannot crush North Korea, the tin-pot of tin-pots, what can you crush, precisely? If you can dream of star wars and fail to cope with mere militia, what is the meaning of “arrogance”, exactly, never mind “stupidity”? Alberto Fernandez can regret his frankness while he contemplates a wrecked career. He can claim to have attempted honest debate. But we are invited to wonder at the failure of American confidence. Iraq, remember, was supposed to be easy.
In international affairs, a vacuum is abhorrent and ultimately intolerable. We can expect a Chinese 21st century, I suspect, and an Indian commercial hegemony at the margins. We can look forward to Europe’s brief resurgence, perhaps, in a kind of late cultural flowering. But if America’s incredible spending on defence cannot secure even the short-term interests of a single President, something historic has occurred. The guarantee that made the Cold War conceivable has been withdrawn. The consumerist maw that kept economies busy for 50 years becomes irrelevant.
All because of one President’s arrogance, and one dictator’s stupidity: simple, really. The point of Iraq, after all, was supposed to be democracy and the defeat of tyranny. These were America’s gifts to the world, vested in the legacy of the Second World War. That promise has not been kept. After Blair has departed, Britain will need to think again about necessities and loyalties.
Alberto Fernandez probably had no such thoughts in mind when he spoke too freely to Al Jazeera’s Arab audience. I suspect he intended to prove that humility survives within America’s body politic. If so, he underestimated both the inherent weakness of the republic and the determination of its enemies. I offer no comfort to the latter. I wonder, in fact, how those of us who have opposed the Washington neo-cons will feel if the US is enfeebled permanently. This was never supposed to be either/or.
History has little room for debating societies: they command no divisions. Imperial puissance fades, meanwhile, amid the usual arrogance and the standard stupidity. No-one can choose a world in their own image: that’s the fantasy. No force of arms can, meanwhile, ensure an empire’s survival. America’s decline begins to seem like a puerile kind of fable, one glutted with lies and bathos. Why is a Britain that knows better being dragged into the mess? Blair’s therapist might explain, one of these days.
The war has failed. The chickens are home, and roosting. We are witnessing a historic moment. As history tends to demand, however, innocents are perishing just to demonstrate the obvious.
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USTV Commentary: A Chinese 21st century is a decent guess, but by no means a lock. China needs imported oil as much as the U.S., and they need America buying their goods. Perhaps it will be an Iranian 21st century, if Iran gets the Iraqi oil, which is said to be most of what’s left. It that is the case, they’ll be raking in the cash. Maybe it’s a Russian 21st century, if Russia allies itself with Iran or conquers it (if the neo-con Bushevik regime doesn’t do it first). Maybe it’s nobody’s century, if fighting over the oil makes things so chaotic that nobody can really pump it out efficiently. We are all going to be out of it before long eventually anyway, so the sooner we think about moving towards a truly sustainable society the better.
