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2 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA US
captivated in the theater of
war By Ira Chernus
country - Republicans build
dramatic tension by raising a very different
question, which really does matter to a sizable
part of the US audience. Does the United States
have the "character" or the "stomach" - Dick
Cheney's favorite word - to keep on fighting evil
until something that can plausibly be called
"success" is conjured out of the dusty air of
Iraq?
Bush raised that question in the
opening words of his recent
address: "In the life of all
free nations, there come moments that decide the
direction of a country and reveal the character of
its people. We are now at such a moment." And he
offered the answer many want to hear - even if
not, at the moment, from him - in his closing
words: "Support our troops in a fight they can
win."
That has, of course, been the basic
plot of Bush's "war on terror". Since September
11, he and his speechwriters have been telling a
story whose hero is not, in fact, a president, or
a general, or any individual, but "America" - with
all the world, by rights, its stage.
In
Bush's story, as long as America is strutting
across that stage, playing the lead with a
commanding tone, fighting evil at every turn,
Americans can feel like winners and heroes. All of
this is supposed to be not an American ego trip,
but a classic test of character.
Only by
defeating evil enemies, in Bush's tale, can you
prove you have character. It's the old story of
victory culture, and millions of Americans still
believe in it.
Millions more wish they
could. If they are old enough, many remember a
time when they did - before Vietnam. Failure in
Vietnam cast into doubt all the old American
verities about heroism, character, and national
direction. It left many wondering whether the old
stories could ever be played out again on the
stage of American life - and feeling remarkably
good, after September 11, 2001, when victory in
war seemed once again to become the finale of the
national drama. The growing feeling since that
"Iraq" is Arabic for "Vietnam" has, of course,
been devastating to any sense of fated US triumph.
Yet millions of doubters must still yearn to
believe in an American story that ends with good
defeating evil on some planetary frontier.
Because the Iraqis have proved so
unwilling to play the role of defeated enemy in
the theater of battle - and the Iraqi situation
has grown so complex - the Bush administration has
been left with little choice but to blame all evil
on al-Qaeda, in Iraq and elsewhere. As a White
House official told a Washington Post reporter, at
least Americans "know what that means. The average
person doesn't understand why the Sunnis and
Shi'ites don't like each other. They don't know
where the Kurds live ... And al-Qaeda is something
they know. They're the enemy of the United
States." In such a script, our protectors are
"the troops", the ultimate symbol and proof of
America's character. The most powerful weapon of
war supporters has long been the question, raised
with appropriate self-righteousness: "Don't you
support our troops?" The politically correct
anti-war answer almost has to be: "Yes. That's why
I want to bring them home." As it happens, though,
such a response has had little effect because it
misses the point.
"Supporting our troops"
is not about helping individual soldiers to live
better lives or, for that matter, making their
lives safer. It's about supporting a morality play
in which the lead actor, "our troops", represents
all the virtues that so many Americans believe -
or wish they could believe - their country
possesses, giving them the privilege (and
obligation) of directing all that happens on the
world stage.
Bush put on yet another
performance of that morality play on September 13,
ending with the almost obligatory tragic message
from grieving parents: "We believe this is a war
of good and evil and we must win ... even if it
cost the life of our own son. Freedom is not
free." That sums up the essence of the drama.
Coming from people whose child is dead, it seems
like a show-stopper. What else can you say?
The Democrats read from a thin script
In response to Bush's Petraeus address,
the Democrats' answer man, Senator Jack Reed, did
not actually have much to say. He did make it
clear that when it comes to war and the military,
he's a lot more in touch with reality than the
president. "I was privileged to serve in the
United States Army for 12 years," Reed said
modestly. He might have added that he was a
graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point,
New York, and an officer in the famed 82nd
Airborne Division.
But like so many
Democrats, including legless former senator Max
Cleland and Vietnam veteran John Kerry, he found
himself mysteriously unable to turn his real-life
experience into an effective post-September 11
narrative. A powerful drama creates a world of its
own, one that can easily feel more real than
reality. Even after so many years of disaster and
so much repetition, against Bush's rich drama,
Reed could still offer only a thin script with
feeble characters, little if any plot, and no
sense of direction. Mostly he carped at the
commander-in-chief of what the Democrats
themselves acclaim to be the finest fighting force
in the world. So he left his party open to the
same criticism thrown at '60s radicals: "You only
know what you're against. You don't know what
you're for."
The Democrats' story does
embody positive values. It calls on Americans to
act in an old US tradition of pragmatism, where
the only question that matters is: "Is it
working?" If it's not working, you try something
else that might actually get the job done. But
Reed never even suggested what that something else
might be.
In a battle between stories,
it's often not enough to attack the incumbent's
ineptitude. As John F Kennedy, another Democrat
with a real-life war record, knew, you also have
to tell a satisfying tale about moving on to a new
frontier, where you can pass that test of
character and become a profile in courage. Heroism
makes for a more alluring story than timidity
every time.
So, even if the practical side
of Americanism screams out, "Leave the theater,
now!" there is still a powerful impulse to stay
glued to our seats until the bugles sound, the
cavalry charges, and our side wins the day.
The Democrats sense that. They sense as
well that opposition to the war is spread wide but
not necessarily deep; that public opinion might,
at least to some extent, still be turned by a
well-produced show - as the marginal poll gains of
President Bush among Republican audiences in the
past two months have indicated. The Democrats fear
that if they truly lead the way to the exits, they
might turn around one day to find fewer than half
the voters following. That's why so many of them -
and all too many Republicans as well - are afraid
to act on what they know is right.
The
show must go on The great debate about
Iraq is not, and never really was, about what the
US should do in Iraq. No matter how many Iraqis
have died or become refugees thanks to the Bush
intervention, they remain largely ignored bit
players in America's central drama, which is, and
always was, about what we will make of America.
Now, the outcome of that debate is coming more
clearly into view, and it's not a pretty picture.
The compromise the two parties are
hammering out on Iraq policy reflects a deeper
compromise the public seems to be groping toward
on national identity - between who they are in
reality (pragmatic, if sidelined, civilians who
know a war is badly lost and want to end it) and
who they are in their imaginations (heroic
soldiers proving their character in the theater of
war).
All theater, all storytelling, rests
on the power of illusion and the willing
suspension of disbelief. Bush and the Republicans
have repeatedly given millions of doubters a
chance to suspend their post-Vietnam disbelief in
traditional tales of American character; the
Democrats have given millions of doubters a chance
to suspend their disbelief that the will of the
people can make any difference whatsoever. The two
parties join together to give the whole nation a
chance to believe that a fierce debate still rages
about whether or not to end the war. That
political show we can expect to go on at least
until election day 2008.
And we can expect
both parties, and the media that keep the show
going, to abide by an unspoken agreement that one
kind of question will never be asked, because the
tension it raises might be unbearable: Is it moral
for US troops to occupy another country for years,
bomb its cities and villages, and kill untold
numbers of people halfway across the planet? If
the script ever makes room for that question,
we'll be able to watch - and participate in - a
far more profound debate about the war.
Ira Chernus, professor of
religious studies at the University of Colorado at
Boulder, is the author of Monsters to Destroy:
The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. He
can be contacted at chernus@colorado.edu.
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