Gopnik on total war
February 11, 2007, 9:17 pm
Posted by John McGreevy
Adam Gopnik in the current New Yorker has a thoughtful piece
on a new book by historian David Bell on the Napoleonic wars.
He concludes:
One of the things that will surely strike future historians about our era is the odd placidity of American cultural life at the time of a wildly unpopular war—the unexcited alternation of American death and “American Idol,” so different from the eruptions that attended Vietnam—that is a result of our not having to go there if we don’t have to. This is not exactly comforting. All wars are total to the people they kill.
Is this war really “wildly” unpopular? If it were so, we’d have more, and more massive, protests than we do. My sense is that most opposition to the war isn’t about any anguish about the carnage being wrought on Iraqis. It’s about our failure to win. That’s very different in quality from opposition based on principle, or on any empathy with the misery our country has inflicted. If we were winning, I really doubt that most Americans would care.
I’ve been reading Chalmers Johnson’s new book, Nemesis, the third of his “Blowback” trilogy. (The first was Blowbck and the second was The Sorrows of Empire.) Johnson hits the nail on the head: the US, he writes, is “a consumerist Sparta.” There’s absolutely no contradiction between militarism — our unprecedented reverence for military people and values — and commodity fetishism. There’s even a clear economic connection. As he demonstrates, our economy needs high levels of military spending to keep it humming. (Note the outrage when Rumsfeld attempted to close several bases not long ago.)
The love affair between bellicosity and avarice isn’t new. In Book II chapter 20 of the City of God, Augustine noted the same alignment among the Romans. “So long as it lasts,” he imagines the Romans saying, “so long as it enjoys material prosperity, and the glory of victorious war, why should we worry?” While the war in Iraq clearly isn’t going “victoriously,” no one here is going to suffer, save the loved ones of those sacrificed to George Bush’s vanity.
I think there is a great deal of anger at George Bush but it arises from several sources. Some have been angry since the war began because they thought it was unjustified. Others thought it was justified, or that at least it was initially accomplished a desirable goal. It has now become clear to almost everyone who is paying attention that the original “justification” was based on false intelligence and that after an initial miltary success, the occupation has been handled with extraordinary and persistent incompetence leading to the loss of many lives with no end in sight. I would not describe the situation as “placid”. Rather I suggest there is massive disgust, which for those who once had illusions is compounded by disillusionment, and above all endless frustration. If there is placidity it is only to be found among the utterly thoughtless, who are perhaps more numerous than one would like to think .
It is true that have been few violent demonstrations. Instead voters have turned to the Democrats. It remains to be seen what they will make of the opportunity. We can only hope that the inevitably precocious race toward election 2008 will not turn out to be a political version of American Idol.
Anti-war demonstrations against the Vietnam war came to a virtual halt when the draft lottery was instituted. Those not in danger of being drafted were not to be seen in protest land.
This is the main reason the protests are not as numerous or as vehement. This war is personal to very few Americans.
Generally if it is not personal people do not get involved. All the football players who have foundations to treat certain diseases got into it when their sons or daughters got afflicted. Mothers Against Drunk Driving are mostly mothers who lost their children to drunkard crashes. Etc., etc., etc.
Pax Christi & co are the true Christians who demonstrate how to love their neighbor even if s/he is not from the same family.