The existence of God
"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"
October 17, 2004 article by Ron Suskind in the New York Times Magazine
Two years ago we might well have viewed the US more as omnipotent than as a mere superpower. Amid the sense of political chaos that gripped the globe after 9/11 the aggressively imperialist American government appeared to be setting the world agenda alone; showing its obsequious allies vague indifference and the disobedient no mercy. But that was before Iraq. Now a picture is emerging of a hyperpower damaged by neo-conservative over-ambition. Perhaps grasping too greedily at the opportunities of the post-Cold War era it has, far from “creating new realities”, begun to discover the cold reality of its own limitations.
The US official quoted by the NYT above was describing not the actions of a state but of a God, or an agent of God. For now I’ll leave a more focussed discussion on the interplay of political realities and religious dogmas to others, confining this post to a quick glance at some of the challenges facing the US Government’s apparent view of itself as an agent of divine providence.
The first is in Iraq, where the US remains frustrated by the ever-growing insurgency. At the indispensable TomDispatch website, Michael Schwartz describes a military superpower failing to understand the nature of its enemy, and failing to win the war as a result. Schwartz says that the US fundamentally misunderstands the resistance as having a top-down power structure, with a Saddamist/Al Qaeda axis at its head, whereas in fact these are lesser elements in a broad and fragmented religious/nationalist uprising with no clearly hierarchical command and control structure. His view is that the US military is not designed to fight such an enemy, is pathologically incapable of adapting itself, and that the result is a self-perpetuating cycle of violence.
“The American military simply lacks the tools it needs to fight the guerrillas………In response, military leaders ….continue to develop theories about how to win the war "with the army they have." This backward logic leads inevitably to imagining an enemy that might be far more susceptible to defeat with the tools at hand; that is, an opponent with long supply lines (from Syria, for example) and a command-and-control leadership (Zarqawi and his Saddamist allies, for example) capable of being "decapitated." This portrait of the enemy then justifies a military strategy that seeks, above all, to kill or capture the theorized leaders. Such tactics almost always fail (even when leaders are captured); and in the process of failing, only alienates further the Iraqi population, producing an ever larger, more resourceful enemy.”
(Incidentally, my view was always that the US deliberately misrepresented the nature of its enemy for PR reasons; not that there was any genuine misunderstanding of the rebellion’s true nature. Either way, the US counter-insurgency strategy is plainly a dismal failure)
Moving on from the military aspect, Jonathan Schell, again at Tomdispatch, discusses the economic and diplomatic weaknesses that the rivals of US power are beginning to exploit.
“[The US] military has been stretched to the breaking point by the occupation of a single weak country, Iraq. Its economy is held hostage by Himalayas of external debt, much of it in the hands of a strategic rival, China, holder of nearly $200 billion in Treasury bills. Its domestic debt, caused in part by the war expenditures, also towers to the skies.”
“In history, the rise of imperial pretenders has usually led to military alliances against them. Such was the case, for instance, when a previous imperial republic, Napoleon's France, conquered most of Europe but then was defeated by an oddly assorted alliance of Britain, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Such is not the case today. Europe seems determined to bypass rather than fight the American challenge. And power? The American kind is poor in "future goods." There is rivalry in the air, but it no longer takes a martial form. Instead, Europe seems bent for now on building itself up economically and knitting itself together politically -- readying, it appears, another kind of power, based more on cooperation, both within its own borders and with the world, and less on military force”
Tony Blair recently described attempts to create any alternative centres of power to Washington as “dangerous”, even “pathetic”. But in choosing to side with the hard-right US Government instead of a Social Democrat Europe over the last few years he is increasingly looking like a leader who backed the wrong horse, in geopolitical as well as the more obvious moral terms.
However, signs of chinks appearing in the armour, and the obvious but sadly necessary point that the US government is not God’s agent, do not detract from the reality of how dangerous a force it remains in the international arena. The most clear and current manifestation of this malign influence is in Lebanon and Syria. In Asia Times Online B Raman, a retired senior official of the Indian government, warns that “The ultimate outcome of the ill-advised psychological warfare (psywar) [the US] has mounted against Syria by exploiting the recent assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, is likely to be the revival and the exacerbation of the inter-religious, inter-sectarian and inter-ethnic tensions that kept Lebanon bleeding for more than 15 years and brought into vogue suicide terrorism by jihadi elements and the culture of martyrdom through the car bomb.” He says that the anti-Syrian protest in Beirut is not unambiguously representative of majority Lebanese opinion and “has been only partly spontaneous. Any trained intelligence analyst could see it is partly orchestrated. Whether one likes it or not, there is considerable sympathy for Syria and Iran in the Muslim community of Lebanon. The way the US and other Western countries are trying to exploit the assassination of Hariri is likely to drive once again a wedge between the Islamist and the pro-Western elements, leading to a recrudescence of the suicide-terrorism and car-bomb culture of which Lebanese society has been ridding itself in recent years.”
This afternoon Lebanese groups led by Hizb Allah brought massive demonstrations into the streets of Beirut to protest western interference in the country’s politics; dwarfing the previous anti-Syrian demos. Suddenly the rosy image so prevalent in western media of the US encouraging democracy to spontaneously flourish begins to transform into one of a fragile society falling back into sectarianism under the pressure of external forces. At this point one might also take note of the Iranian alliances with both Hizb Allah and Syria and see a Middle East not quite ready to be swept into history at the behest of the neo-cons.
Far from creating a new world order to suit its interests, uninhibited by corporeal constraints, the US is finding that its designs can be frustrated, its remit circumvented, even its armies brought to a standstill. Attempting to impose its divine will it instead encounters reality-based situations that provide depressing reminders of its mere mortality. As a consequence both of these still-relevant realities and of the consequential US failings, significant political space still exists and can be created around the hyperpower; a reality we should study judiciously.
October 17, 2004 article by Ron Suskind in the New York Times Magazine
Two years ago we might well have viewed the US more as omnipotent than as a mere superpower. Amid the sense of political chaos that gripped the globe after 9/11 the aggressively imperialist American government appeared to be setting the world agenda alone; showing its obsequious allies vague indifference and the disobedient no mercy. But that was before Iraq. Now a picture is emerging of a hyperpower damaged by neo-conservative over-ambition. Perhaps grasping too greedily at the opportunities of the post-Cold War era it has, far from “creating new realities”, begun to discover the cold reality of its own limitations.
The US official quoted by the NYT above was describing not the actions of a state but of a God, or an agent of God. For now I’ll leave a more focussed discussion on the interplay of political realities and religious dogmas to others, confining this post to a quick glance at some of the challenges facing the US Government’s apparent view of itself as an agent of divine providence.
The first is in Iraq, where the US remains frustrated by the ever-growing insurgency. At the indispensable TomDispatch website, Michael Schwartz describes a military superpower failing to understand the nature of its enemy, and failing to win the war as a result. Schwartz says that the US fundamentally misunderstands the resistance as having a top-down power structure, with a Saddamist/Al Qaeda axis at its head, whereas in fact these are lesser elements in a broad and fragmented religious/nationalist uprising with no clearly hierarchical command and control structure. His view is that the US military is not designed to fight such an enemy, is pathologically incapable of adapting itself, and that the result is a self-perpetuating cycle of violence.
“The American military simply lacks the tools it needs to fight the guerrillas………In response, military leaders ….continue to develop theories about how to win the war "with the army they have." This backward logic leads inevitably to imagining an enemy that might be far more susceptible to defeat with the tools at hand; that is, an opponent with long supply lines (from Syria, for example) and a command-and-control leadership (Zarqawi and his Saddamist allies, for example) capable of being "decapitated." This portrait of the enemy then justifies a military strategy that seeks, above all, to kill or capture the theorized leaders. Such tactics almost always fail (even when leaders are captured); and in the process of failing, only alienates further the Iraqi population, producing an ever larger, more resourceful enemy.”
(Incidentally, my view was always that the US deliberately misrepresented the nature of its enemy for PR reasons; not that there was any genuine misunderstanding of the rebellion’s true nature. Either way, the US counter-insurgency strategy is plainly a dismal failure)
Moving on from the military aspect, Jonathan Schell, again at Tomdispatch, discusses the economic and diplomatic weaknesses that the rivals of US power are beginning to exploit.
“[The US] military has been stretched to the breaking point by the occupation of a single weak country, Iraq. Its economy is held hostage by Himalayas of external debt, much of it in the hands of a strategic rival, China, holder of nearly $200 billion in Treasury bills. Its domestic debt, caused in part by the war expenditures, also towers to the skies.”
“In history, the rise of imperial pretenders has usually led to military alliances against them. Such was the case, for instance, when a previous imperial republic, Napoleon's France, conquered most of Europe but then was defeated by an oddly assorted alliance of Britain, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Such is not the case today. Europe seems determined to bypass rather than fight the American challenge. And power? The American kind is poor in "future goods." There is rivalry in the air, but it no longer takes a martial form. Instead, Europe seems bent for now on building itself up economically and knitting itself together politically -- readying, it appears, another kind of power, based more on cooperation, both within its own borders and with the world, and less on military force”
Tony Blair recently described attempts to create any alternative centres of power to Washington as “dangerous”, even “pathetic”. But in choosing to side with the hard-right US Government instead of a Social Democrat Europe over the last few years he is increasingly looking like a leader who backed the wrong horse, in geopolitical as well as the more obvious moral terms.
However, signs of chinks appearing in the armour, and the obvious but sadly necessary point that the US government is not God’s agent, do not detract from the reality of how dangerous a force it remains in the international arena. The most clear and current manifestation of this malign influence is in Lebanon and Syria. In Asia Times Online B Raman, a retired senior official of the Indian government, warns that “The ultimate outcome of the ill-advised psychological warfare (psywar) [the US] has mounted against Syria by exploiting the recent assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, is likely to be the revival and the exacerbation of the inter-religious, inter-sectarian and inter-ethnic tensions that kept Lebanon bleeding for more than 15 years and brought into vogue suicide terrorism by jihadi elements and the culture of martyrdom through the car bomb.” He says that the anti-Syrian protest in Beirut is not unambiguously representative of majority Lebanese opinion and “has been only partly spontaneous. Any trained intelligence analyst could see it is partly orchestrated. Whether one likes it or not, there is considerable sympathy for Syria and Iran in the Muslim community of Lebanon. The way the US and other Western countries are trying to exploit the assassination of Hariri is likely to drive once again a wedge between the Islamist and the pro-Western elements, leading to a recrudescence of the suicide-terrorism and car-bomb culture of which Lebanese society has been ridding itself in recent years.”
This afternoon Lebanese groups led by Hizb Allah brought massive demonstrations into the streets of Beirut to protest western interference in the country’s politics; dwarfing the previous anti-Syrian demos. Suddenly the rosy image so prevalent in western media of the US encouraging democracy to spontaneously flourish begins to transform into one of a fragile society falling back into sectarianism under the pressure of external forces. At this point one might also take note of the Iranian alliances with both Hizb Allah and Syria and see a Middle East not quite ready to be swept into history at the behest of the neo-cons.
Far from creating a new world order to suit its interests, uninhibited by corporeal constraints, the US is finding that its designs can be frustrated, its remit circumvented, even its armies brought to a standstill. Attempting to impose its divine will it instead encounters reality-based situations that provide depressing reminders of its mere mortality. As a consequence both of these still-relevant realities and of the consequential US failings, significant political space still exists and can be created around the hyperpower; a reality we should study judiciously.
posted by David Wearing at 8:44 PM
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