President Bush said yesterday that he senses a “Third Awakening” of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation’s struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as “a confrontation between good and evil.”
Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln’s strongest supporters were religious people “who saw life in terms of good and evil” and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.
“A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me,” Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. “There was a stark change between the culture of the ’50s and the ’60s — boom — and I think there’s change happening here,” he added. “It seems to me that there’s a Third Awakening.”
I love this. He and his administation want to try people for treason for leaking to the papers about his illegal spying on US citizens and then he blurts out some babble that validates every stupid thing bin Laden preaches to his deluded followers. He might as well just call it a Christian Crusade and get it over with. He just framed his War On Terror in religious terms, which is very, very dumb.
Perhaps everyone has forgotten, what with all the idiotic hyperbole about “The Ideological Struggle of the 21st century” but al Qaeda framed this jihad from the very beginning as being a religous war against the “Jews and Crusaders.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’s very smart for the president of the United States to keep helping him make that case. It’s the basis for bin Laden’s demagogic appeal.
Meanwhile, Bush goes on and on about how we can’t leave Iraq because bin Laden will think we’re chicken and … I don’t know … be “emboldened.” This is based upon bin Laden trash talk, which really seems to make these wingnuts so mad they just lose their wits:
“We are sending signals today that no matter how much you provoke us, no matter how viciously you describe things in public, no matter how many things you’re doing with missiles and nuclear weapons, the most you’ll get out of us is talk,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said.
Viciously describing things in public will not stand! For a superpower, we sure are easily provoked by religious fanatics calling us chicken if we leave Iraq or fail to respond militarily to some Iranian nutcases ramblings.
Meanwhile the president of the United States is holding court with a bunch of his sycophants characterizing the U.S. as being in the midst of a Christian crusade. Oy.
Why is it they do absolutely everything bass-askwards? It’s a bad idea to base US policy on trash talk. We should not be making national security decisions on whether bin Laden will “think” we are weak. We are the United States of America and we are too big and powerful to be playing games like this.
On the other hand, it makes no sense to provide bin Laden and his ilk with ready made recruiting tools and propaganda for no good reason either. It is irresponsible for Bush to be characterizing this “war” in religious terms when it isn’t true, it’s purely for his own political purposes and it gives the terrorists ammunition.
The administration and its allies succumb to bin Laden’s taunts when it comes to important matters of policy and then turn around and overtly help bin Laden recruit terrorists with ridiculous rhetoric about Great Awakenings and the war on terror. (Meanwhile, he’s got his inane undersecretary of state for public diplomacy running around the mid-east talking about her experiences being a suburban soccer mom.)
If you didn’t know better, you’d think that Osama bin Laden had George W. Bush wrapped around his little finger.
*** Following up on tristero’s posts below about Bush’s potential use of tactical nuclear weapons — a fear that I share, since, for all the reasons tristero outlines, it’s hard to see how the GOP’s fear mongering can lead to anything else — I recall a post I wrote some months back on the subject of taboo’s. It ended with this quote from Gene Lyons:
Once again Bush has denied hostile intent, just as he did for many months after secretly ordering the Pentagon to draft detailed war plans against Iraq. Writing in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh suggests that all systems are go at the White House, including possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. He hints that the neo-conservative ideologues around Dick Cheney have deluded themselves that bombing Iran would lead to internal rebellion and the overthrow of the nation’s Islamic regime.
Yeah, sure it would. Ever noticed how much the neo-cons’ ignorance of basic human psychology rivals only Osama bin Laden’s ?
Let’s go back to more innocent times. When I first heard of the New Product (the unilateral, unprovoked invasion and conquest of Iraq), which was nearly nine months before its official release in September ’02, I thought Bush was bluffing. I thought this was just a way to put pressure on Saddam. But by the early summer of ’02, it was quite clear that if this was a bluff, it was one helluva realistic one. Perhaps folks don’t remember, but I distinctly recall that the Bush administratin declared around July that their lawyers had determined Bush had all the authority he needed to order a pre-emptive unilateral strike. He did not have to get permission from Congress, he did not have to go back to the UN. He could just do it. And they were quite sincere-sounding: Bush planned to assert his authority even if it caused a constitutional crisis. The congressional resolutions in the fall were a meaningless rubber stamp; Bush had simply permitted Congress-critters to save face by pretending to decide. By then, it was a fait accompli, and everyone but the American public knew it.
But even that fall, as I was thinking, “He really is gonna do it, he means it, he doesn’t care what anyone says” I held out some hope that this was just one helluva bluff, to bring the inspectors back and so humiliate Saddam he would fall from power and be destroyed. But in late winter, I heard rumors that hospital ships had moved near Iraq. Bush was not bluffing, he was actually going to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 because…well, because he could. It is still the only reason that makes sense. Because he could.
During this time, many folks thought Bush was playing one helluva sophisticated game of chicken. Nope. He wanted war, he wanted bang-bang. And that is exactly what he got.
As for Iran, let me explain: YOU may think it’s highly unlikely – the famous 1% probability, as a commenter mentioned – that Bush won’t use nukes and is setting us up for conventional warfare. That is because you are sane and sensible. But the Bush administration thinks it’s very likely. Hersh is alarmingly clear that there was close to a mutiny at the highest levels of the military recently until the nuclear option was taken off the table vis a vis Iran. Now, do you think it’s still off the table? Don’t be naive. Remember TIA and how it was scuttled? But what’s all this brouhaha I hear about mass data mining of information the Bush administration has no business looking at whatsoever?
Folks, many people have made the mistake of misunderestimating Bush again and again. He can’t be that stupid. He can’t be that vindictive or violent. He can’t be that immature. He can’t be that incapable of remorse or that messianic and delusionally religious.
It’s time to face the fact that Bush is all these things and many more. He has been consistent from the earliest days of his regime – consistently incompetent, delusional, and violent. He does not bluff. He does exactly what he wants to do. And there is nothing he wants more right now than to use nukes on Iran. It’s not merely because he’s a kid with a cool popgun, but one shouldn’t misunderestimate his impulsiveness and immaturity. It’s also because he, and the other rightwing lunatics genuinely believe that since 1945, liberals have severely crippled America by making such a big deal out of nukes. By all means, check out Curtis Lemay’s “America is in Danger” for an historical example (late 60’s) of this delusion. How are we crippled? Well, according to them, by refusing to use nukes, America fights bloody prolonged conflicts that are difficult to conclude with decisive victories.
Bush and his pals wants to save America from liberals that will once again deny America a critical victory, crucial to its safety and security. Bush wants to break the nuclear taboo.
How to stop him? First of all, don’t be fooled or gulled into thinking he’s not serious. He, and they, are very serious indeed. So raise a stink. If we out the nuke strategy prematurely and fuck up its marketing, it may backfire, as a lucky jumping of the gun in Pennsylvania derailed “intelligent design” creationism, which while still around shows some hopeful signs of dying – oh sure, they’ll be back, they’ll always be back, but they gotta craft an entirely new strategy now. In any event, getting the nukes off the table will be much harder.
Secondly, for heavens sake, vote, and vote responsibly. Do not vote for Republicans – as Atrios and others have said, there are no good Republicans: they will do Bush’s bidding if they get in, every last one of them. And remember before you cast that vote for the Ralph Nader clone who says all the right things about class revolution and impeaching the entire judiciary along with the executive, that in the close races between Republicans and Democrats, that righteous sounding reincarnation of Eugene Debs very well may be accepting cash from Republicans intent on splitting the ticket. Vote for the 3rd party candidate if you want to – hell, I’m not a Democrat but an independent, I have no loyalty to the Democratic Party per se – but be responsible, fer crissakes. If there’s even a chance of a Florida 2000 again, do you want to vote for a Nader and get another Bush? I don’t think so (and no, I’m not entirely blaming Nader for the 2000 debacle, but he’s not entirely innocent either).
It looks very likely that the Democrats will get at least one of the houses away from the Republicans. If so, that may be enough to put a stop to Bush’s (nuclear or non-nuclear) invasion of Iran, but it will be very, very hard. With a Republican lock on the government, it will be impossible. Iran will almost surely be invaded and if so, I firmly believe that the chance Bush will use nukes is very high. How high? I don’t know, but hovering too close to the 50-50 mark for comfort. It’s is much higher than 1%. It’s somewhere in the two digits.
Okay, enough, I’ve done my posts on this issue for quite a while. Frankly, it is exhausting to play nuclear Cassandra and terribly painful to watch the same patterns of denial and disbelief play themselves out again. But I also understand how it must sound to the unconvinced among you. It sounds like I’ve gone overboard, succumbed to the delusional paranoia I’m warning you against. I am quite aware that it really is hard to keep in the forefront of one’s mind that Bush and Co. really are nuts enough to use nukes in Iran. And Christ, I hope I’m crazy. But I look back at what he’s done over the past five years – one utter catastrophe after another, the unspeakable, pointless violence – and I am very alarmed.
Just do me a favor, okay?
When Bush is out of office, in January 2009, and the nukes haven’t fallen (and btw, everyone sane and knowledgeable agrees that none are coming our way from Iran by then) let’s laugh together at tristero’s ridiculous terror over the essentially harmless, befuddled fake cowboy George W. Bush was. But until then, please humor me and treat Bush as a very serious…concern… and work to put as many legislative and legal restraints on his wanton presidency as we can this fall.
At the very least, consider the possibility that he really is not bluffing and intends, no matter what, to deploy nuclear weapons, and what that would mean.
Hey! Remember Andy Card back in 2002, about selling the country on the idea of invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?
From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.
A line that ranks as one of the ugliest lines ever in American politics. I wonder how the mothers of all those Americans who died in Iraq since Card said this feel about having their children’s sacrifice characterized as a new product. I wonder what the mothers of all those Iraqis who died – their deaths being in fact one of the main ingredients of the new product – would feel about Card if they were told about what he said.
But I digress. Because we now have a NEW new product for the fall of 2006. And it’s being marketed the most effective way possible, word of fucking mouth;
On the September 12 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck said that “[t]he Middle East is being overrun by 10th-century barbarians” and “[i]f they take over … we’re going to have to nuke the whole place.”
CNN, ladies, gentlemen, and Republicans. This was said on the Communist News Network, not Fox. Not the Washington Times.
The world will not tolerate the use of nuclear weapons by George W. Bush (or anyone else for that matter, but it’s Bush who is wagging the nuclear cock most often these days, and yes, Beck is reading from a White House script). The consequences for this country will not be nuclear retaliation, of course, not in the short term at least. There are plenty of other ways to attack America. And if Bush does drop even one itty bitty “tactical” nuke, this country will be at war. For real. Not with some neocon delusion, but with nearly everyone on the planet. Trust me on this: it won’t be pretty.
Adults are needed to tell Bush and Rove to zip it. Fast. They are in way over their heads. The White House isn’t a frat house and nuclear saber-rattling is no joke. This is one New Product that should be pulled from the market before it’s ever released.
“Poor George. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
by digby
It is probably inappropriate to bring this up on the sad occasion of her death, but the passing of Governor Ann Richards tonight brings to mind one of the most despicable political campaigns in American politics. I have a feeling that Governor Richards would understand, though — she didn’t seem to care too much for stiff propriety — and it may be just the right moment to remind every Democrat running for office right now to watch his or her back.
The Bush family hated her for saying that “poor George” line at the 1988 convention. When Junior ran against her for governor, Karl Rove got their revenge for them.
Ann Richards was a socially progressive and inclusive governor of Texas, appointing a few gays and lesbians to state boards and commissions. In 1994, Rove pinpointed this as an issue certain to help George W. Bush win election in a conservative state. Of course, Rove was not about to let his candidate broach the subject himself. Instead, he worked through Republican operatives in East Texas. Rumors soon began to circulate through coffee shops and agricultural co-ops that implied Gov. Richards, an unmarried woman, might be a lesbian. Without identifying the topic, she acknowledged she was being hurt. “You know what it’s about,” she told reporters, dismissively, after being asked about the rumors. “And I’m not talking about it.”
But Republican state Sen. Bill Ratliff from East Texas, who was also Bush’s regional coordinator for that part of the state, was quoted in newspapers as criticizing Richards for “appointing avowed homosexual activists” to state jobs. The rumors were then given a form of legitimacy and widely reported. Then just as he did with Kerry and the Swift Boat controversy, Rove had Bush step forward as a voice of understanding and reason. “The senator doesn’t speak for me,” Bush told reporters. “I don’t know anything about what he’s talking about. I’m trying to run an issues-oriented campaign.”
Governor Richards would undoubtedly join us in hoping that it won’t be too many more years before that particular “smear” will no longer be a smear at all but just a natural description of a person that carries no value judgment one way or the other.
She lost that election, of course, but she carried on with style, panache and great wit. She was a great lady and one of my favorite Texans. RIP.
Riffing off Atrios, I’d like to take a stab at answering Kevin Drum’s question. Briefly, neocons like Kristol and others are calling for more troops, but there ain’t any, cause they’re really lowering standards to get more folks enlisted , so Kevin asks:
If we need more troops to win, but there aren’t any more troops to be had, then what?
And the answer, as far as Kristol, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration are concerned is obvious:
What do you think all those “tactical” nukes are for, anyway?
Nukes replace troops. Not to mention that Bush et al are jonesing to drop the first Big Ones since Dubya Dubya Two. For one thing, they don’t want Kim Jong Il, let alone other losers like India or Pakistan to have any fun before they do.
If that sounds gruesomely cynical, that’s because it is. And I hope to hell that is all it is. But I’m afraid it’s also an accurate description of the Bush administration’s thinking.
Folks, let’s remember this: The next time you vote for president that guy or gal is gonna have his hand on The Button. You think Frist or Jeb Bush is mature enough to control themselves? Or Rice? Or McCain? Let’s get real here. Say what you want, Kerry could. Clark could. Gore could. As Clinton could, and did.
Voting for president is serious bizness, people. You don’t vote for a moron like Bush if you’re serious. Ever.
This article by Walter Pincus in the Wapo indicates that the white house is coordinating with the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee by providing them with selective, unclassified talking points for them to use. This is not surprising, of course, since they have treated the NSA spying as a political campaign and the Eunuch Caucus members on the committee have dutifully followed in lock-step.
The talking points are the usual drivel, but I especially like this one:
“Current law is not agile enough to handle the threat posed by sophisticated international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda”
Wow. Those terrorists sure are frightening. Here’s what we learned just this week in the Washington Post about the “sophisticated” methods of al Qaeda:
Faced with the most sophisticated technology in the world, bin Laden has gone decidedly low-tech. His 23 video or audiotapes in the last five years are thought to have been hand-carried to news outlets or nearby mail drops by a series of couriers who know nothing about the contents of their deliveries or the real identity of the sender, a simple method used by spies and drug traffickers for centuries.
“They are really good at operational security,” said Ben Venzke, chief executive officer of IntelCenter, a private company that analyzes terrorist information and has obtained, analyzed and published all bin Laden’s communiques. “They are very good at having enough cut-outs” to move videos into circulation without detection. “It’s some of the simplest things to do.”
It seems obvious to me that what they really want to do is spy on law abiding American muslims and political opponents and that is wrong on both practical and moral grounds. Radicalizing the first group is the Republicans’ most dangerous and stupid desire, but they seem intent upon doing it. It almost seems as if they are jealous of the Europeans who actually have a home grown threat while we don’t.
Profiling, warrantless spying, conflating their religion with fascism — all this seems designed to make American muslims feel as if they are being blamed for Islamic terrorism. If they persist in doing this kind of thing they will likely succeed in turning some of those Americans into extremists too. But then, Republicans are desperate to make this threat greater than it already is in order to justify their overblown hysteria; if they have to actually create homegrown terrorists themselves, they will.
As for spying on political opponents, well — that’s just a Republican traditional value. And we know how they love traditional values.
Update: For another example of not-so-latent wingnut muslim bigotry, read this. (via)
I don’t know what it means, but every time I play Tucker Carlson’s “Dancing With The Stars” Youtube, it crashes my browser at the end. Not that it matters because I’m unable to see through the tears of laughter anyway.
Update: On the other hand, this snotty little bitch isn’t so funny when he’s not making a fool of himself on the dance floor. Get a load of this lovely little exchange:
CARLSON: Now clearly, we all agree that there is — there are things to be afraid of. We disagree about what they may be. Here’s one I think we can all agree is, frankly, a terrifying prospect. It comes from our old pal Pat Buchanan [MSNBC political analyst and former presidential candidate]. He says this about Al Gore. He proclaims that if the former vice president ran for the Democratic nomination right now, Pat Buchanan predicts, he would beat Hillary Clinton to win the nomination. Now whatever you think of Pat’s politics, he’s a pretty, I think, smart prognosticator. The idea of Al Gore, I think both of you — Mark, we’ll start with you — you agree even the Democrats don’t want that.
WILLIAMS: You know, if he does, I mean, from Pat Buchanan’s lips to God’s ear because that would be the Talk Show Host Employment Act of 2008. You know, Rush Limbaugh and I and guys like me are lighting candles every Sunday praying for just such an event. You know, the Hildebeast is just an amoral politician. Al Gore is nuts. I mean I’ve met the guy. I’ve talked with the guy. I stood 10 feet from him at a MoveOn.Org thing I crashed in D.C., watching him bellow and sweat like a racehorse on — you know, has been drugged out or something. He wasn’t, but he looked like a racehorse, his nostrils flaring. The guy’s nuts, and he’s angry. He was up there talking about how President Bush is agitating for the assassination of judges, and then he said, “If the Supreme Court doesn’t get its act together, people just may rise up against them.” I mean, the guy’s out of his mind. It would be very entertaining. I think the Hildebeast would take him down. I just wish the Republicans had somebody other than, like, [Sen.] George Allen [VA], who’s a great guy, but I wish we had a little more to choose from on the Republican side.
CARLSON: Alex Bennett, what do you think? And be honest, here. I know we’re on television, but tell the truth. The idea of Al Gore getting the nomination again, you don’t welcome that. You’re not a masochist, are you?
BENNETT: I absolutely am a masochist. If I were really a masochist, I’d want Hillary to run.
“Conservatives” Will Benefit If Democrats Win The House
by tristero
Yes, and I hope they keep benefitting by losing the Senate. It builds character, trust me. In fact, “conservatives” will surely benefit from, I dunno, 100 years or so of losing. That’s a bare minimum, if you want my considered opinion, before the benefits of losing will kick in.
Dig what Ponnuru, the author of the thoughtful, learned, and ever so civil, “The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts and the Disregard for Human Life” is saying and see if you don’t agree.
He’s saying that congressional Republicans are hopelessly corrupt. In the spirit of comity I’m sure he will appreciate, I’d like to state categorically that I completely agree with him. He’s also saying that Republicans aren’t conservative enough. Now about that, Mr. Ponnuru, and with all due respect, your dishonest rhetorical scam exposes you as a thoroughly reprehensible conniving sleazebag.
Colin Powell is a conservative, Mr. Ponnuru. Christie Whitman is a conservative. Joe Lieberman is a conservative. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Tom Coburn, and their ilk are NOT conservatives. They are rightwing extremists. In the sixties, I would have called them Birchers, not having the knowledge of the far right back then to distinguish amongst different flavors of rightwing lunacy.*
Conservatives don’t look at videos of a brain-dead woman twitching and drooling, declare her conscious and then pass a law that eviscerates a 200 plus year old history of jurisprudence in order to deny her a dignified death. And conservatives don’t call out state agents, as Jeb Bush did, to to kidnap the woman from her bed in defiance of federal and state laws, not to mention reality-based common-sense. Conservatives don’t stand for “unitary executive” or have any interest at all in restricting science, let alone teaching our children lies about science. And conservatives don’t neglect to protect their country’s shores, or lead their country’s soldiers into war based on a cynical marketing campaign of lies and distortions.
I don’t like conservatives like Powell, Mr. Ponnuru. I don’t like them one bit. They are biased against working people and favor solutions that benefit managment, and that’s a gross understatement. Their international diplomacy is dangerously shallow because they hold to a foolishly narcissistic exceptionalism that holds American values as the standard by which to measure the rest of the world. Historically, and today, conservatives minimize or ignore potentially serious problems (eg global climate change) until they are so serious that it is nearly impossible to do much good about them. And they are so adverse to government solutions – unless it props up monopolies and other practices benefitting business management – that they fail to understand that failure-of-government-to-act is quite often the problem.
No, conservatives aren’t terribly competent or effective politicians. But they aren’t raving mad like you and your pals.
Note to commenters: Yes, I entertained the thought that it might be useful to encourage Republicans to adopt Ponnuru’s arguments and get in even closer touch with their inner stormtrooper (or Salem judge). The arguments in favor of doing so being:
1. The sooner They take over completely, the sooner The People will realize the depths of their oppression and revolt.
2. If the American people see the full face of Ponnuru’s pals’ radicalism, they will be so nauseated, they won’t elect another Republican for X years.
But then I thought better about it. Why? Because I’m a liberal, that’s why. And liberals hate radical solutions and revolutions, especially if they increase suffering. And liberals don’t believe anyone who tells them that short-term suffering caused by increased oppression will lead to long-term benefits for the people suffering the most. It never has. It never will.
*The Birchers can be recognized because they not only have screwy ideas and a screwy metaphysics but their metaphysics is utterly paranoid, rather than almost entirely so. Clear? For example:
Cheney thinks the world is out to shoot him in the face at any moment and so feels he must shoot first. A Bircher thinks the world’s been plotting to shoot him in the face ever since the Templars were formed. And so feels he must shoot first.
Or something like that. I’m sure you folks can come up with far more precise analogies. And far funnier, so have at it, make it so, make it work, whatever.
The president seemed a little confused last night. For the last two weeks he’s been evoking images of WWII, talking about islamic fascists and the like. Last night he seemed to be adding the Cold War into the mix. Apparently, he wants people to believe that al Qaeda is more threatening than the Nazis and the communists combined:
The war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century and the calling of our generation.
Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War.
And then:
Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?
[…]
Across the broader Middle East, the extremists are fighting to prevent such a future. Yet America has confronted evil before, and we have defeated it; sometimes at the cost of thousands of good men in a single battle.
When Franklin Roosevelt vowed to defeat two enemies across two oceans, he could not have foreseen D-Day and Iwo Jima, but he would not have been surprised at the outcome.
When Harry Truman promised American support for free peoples resisting Soviet aggression, he could not have foreseen the rise of the Berlin Wall, but he would not have been surprised to see it brought down.
This is actually about something more than his War On Terror. Bush is speaking to a deep yearning among some Americans that was apparent before 9/11. Chris Hayes has a wonderful new piece this week in “In These Times” that explains:
On September 11, 2001, George W. Bush wrote the following impression in his diary: “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.” He wasn’t alone in this assessment. In the days after the attacks, editorialists, pundits and citizens reached with impressive unanimity for this single historical precedent. The Sept. 12 New York Times alone contained 13 articles mentioning Pearl Harbor.
Five years after 9/11 we are still living with the legacy of this hastily drawn analogy. Whatever the natural similarities between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, the association of the two has led us to convert—first in rhetoric, later in fact—a battle against a small band of clever, murderous fundamentalists into a worldwide war of epic scale.
[…]
How did we get here?
The best place to look for the answer is not in the days after the attacks, but in the years before. Examining the cultural mood of the late ’90s allows us to separate the natural reaction to a national trauma from any underlying predispositions. During that period, the country was in the grip of a strange, prolonged obsession with World War II and the generation that had fought it.
The pining for the glory days of the Good War has now been largely forgotten, but to sift through the cultural detritus of that era is to discover a deep longing for the kind of epic struggle the War on Terror would later provide. The standard view of 9/11 is that it “changed everything.” But in its rhetoric and symbolism, the WWII nostalgia laid the conceptual groundwork for what was to come—the strange brew of nationalism, militarism and maudlin sentimentality that constitutes post-9/11 culture.
To fully understand what has gone wrong since 9/11, it is necessary to rewind the tape to that moment just before.
I don’t think younger people can understand the depth of the generation gap between the baby boomers and their parents, the Greatest Generation. It was a chasm and it turned families inside out for many years. But by the 90’s our parents were starting to get very old and for many of us, the fetishizing of the Greatest Generation was a form of generational rapprochement.
For conservative baby boomers, however, it had much more resonance. Vietnam was their war, of course, the most lethal, meaningful hot war of the Cold War, but they had largely avoided it like most of their age group, even as they extolled the warrior virtues and supported the policy. (This led to cognitive dissonance that never left them.) They also sat out or opposed the successful, defining social movements of their generation — civil rights and women’s rights — and were looking back at a life made up of nothing more than petty culture war resentment. By the time they came into power even the Cold War was over — resolved by the last presidents of the Greatest Generation. It looked as if the conservative baby boomers were going to be left without any meaningful legacy at all. You could feel their emptiness.
Karl Rove and other rightwing operatives saw a way to feed that gaping void with WWII kitch while furthering their long standing narrative. As Hayes also makes clear in his article, the entire Greatest Generation campaign was partially designed to further the conservative culture war by evoking that epic generation gap and portraying the WWII parents as the proper role models.
He writes:
Even before 9/11, Karl Rove understood this all too well. In his essay “Operation Enduring Analogy: World War II, the War on Terror and the Uses of Historical Memory,” David Hoogland Noon, a history professor at the University of Alaska, Southeast, writes that even in his first campaign George W. Bush “consistently referenced World War II not simply to justify his own policy aims, but more importantly as a cultural project as well as an ongoing gesture of self-making,” positioning himself as “an heir to the reputed greatest generation of American leaders.”
“In the world of our fathers, we have seen how America should conduct itself,” Bush said in a 1999 speech at the Citadel. Now, the moment had come “to show that a new generation can renew America’s purpose.” Throughout both his campaigns, Bush would go out of his way to criticize the dominant ethos of “If it feels good, do it,” instead calling for a “culture in which each of us understands we’re responsible for the decisions we make.”
Bush’s allusions to the Greatest Generation were so persistent that the press came to see him—a Boomer child of privilege known for his youthful carousing—as a kind of throwback. Reporting on Bush’s first inaugural address, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas wrote that “Bush wants the White House to recover some of its dignity, to rise above baby-boomer self-indulgence and aspire to the order and self-discipline prized by the Greatest Generation.”
Yes, the press veritably quivered with excitement that the “grown-ups” were back in charge. The aburdity of it all was staggering, of course — the boomer man-child who never had a real job and drank himself into oblivion until he was 40 representing the Greatest Generation — but there it was. When 9/11 hit shortly after he took office it was a seamless transition. (They even put him in a flightsuit and tried to pass him off as a heroic WWII pilot.) This yearning for “grown-ups” to take charge is a conservative boomer psychological condition. They and the political class are the only ones who are still fixated on the 1960’s; the rest of us moved on sometime back.
One big problem for the Republicans is that a majority in this country now are too young to give a damn about any of this. Rove might be able to tap in to the yearning of middle aged rightwingers to be involved in an epic struggle that competes with their parents’ greater accomplishments, but the young conservatives who are required to sustain this endless war don’t have the same psychic needs. They didn’t grow up in the shadow of a generation who fought and won two existential battles; their boomer parents either failed to rise to the occasion (in opposition or battle) when they had the chance or rejected the whole war fetish all together. These young conservatives’idea of glory is winning a fast paced video game. If 9/11 had even had a modicum of the same sense of threat as Pearl Harbor, we would have seen a similar rush on the recruiting centers and we didn’t. In fact, the strongest youthful supporters of the war, the College Republicans, commonly say things like this:
“The people opposed to the war aren’t putting their asses on the line,” Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn’t he putting his ass on the line? “I’m not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country,” he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, “and I wasn’t going to pass that up.”
That’s quite a stirring call to arms isn’t it?
This rhetoric of epic struggle that rivals WWII and The Cold War serves the simple political purpose of rallying the conservative base so that the Republicans can maintain power. It is guided by the deep psychological need for conservative baby boomers to find some meaning in their pathetic lives and a cynical attempt to co-opt some sunny, simple vision of the Greatest Generation — who would be the last people to claim the depression and the wars of their lifetimes were either sunny or simple. The younger conservative generation sees it as a cynical political game, which it is.
The entire campaign is built on a Disneyfied version of WWII and boomer childhood nightmare cartoons of The Cold War. They trying to squeeze all the boogeymen of the 20th century into Osama bin Laden’s turban in the hope that they can cop a little bit of that Hollywood heroism themselves. (After all, their hero Ronald Reagan didn’t actually fight in any real war either — he just remembered the movies he was in and thought he had.) It is deeply, deeply unserious.
I had to laugh last night when I heard George W. Bush say this:
Osama bin Laden calls this fight “The Third World War,” and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America’s defeat and disgrace forever.
Well, he’s not the only one who calls it that, is he?
Mr Bush told the CNBC television network the revolt of passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on September 11, 2001, was the “first counter-attack to World War III”.
He said he agreed with the description by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month the act was “our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war – World War III”.
Mr Bush said: “I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.
It would appear that bin Laden and Bush have a meeting of the minds on this. They and their followers apparently need to see this as a “world war” but I think it would be very, very unwise to allow them to have their way. These things have a tendency to get out of hand.