14 February, 1998
Who is seeking war?
By Edward Said
IT does not take Aristotle's genius to acknowledge that the United States is in an ugly and unstable mood these days given the various allegations of sexual impropriety against the President, the continuing impasse with Iraq, the failure of Yasser Arafat's visit and Netanyahu's much-advertised and vocal alliance with the right-wing Christian movement led by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, both of whom are fanatical supporters of Israeli expansion.
When she appeared on national television a few days ago Hillary Clinton was right, I think, to blame a right-wing "conspiracy" for the huge media storm and the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky cases; as the century draws to a close it seems to me that the battle between what is called left and right in the US gets bloodier and more unyielding, with results for other parts of the world that are distinctly unpleasant. "Conspiracy" is a word I find difficult to utter when politics are concerned, particularly when it is used for so large a number of factors, but in the sense that "conspiracy" means a series of linked actions and intentions it is the correct one here.
What is at stake within the United States is whether a distinct liberalising trend present domestically since the Franklin Roosevelt presidency (ending in 1945) can continue or not. This trend instituted the by now crumbling, or at least seriously threatened social security system, the progressive income tax, free education, laws to protect workers and unions, and the system of welfare relief that on the one hand guaranteed minimum wages and employment and, on the other, took care of seriously disadvantaged or incapacitated sectors of the population.
During the Lyndon Johnson period the trend was intensified with the passage of the Civil Rights bill, the flowering of the women's movement, and the increase in social services, housing, affirmative action, etc. designated as being an integral part of the Great Society, as Johnson called it. With the advent of Ronald Reagan in l980 - Nixon and Ford made little difference in this arena - there began a slow erosion of the principle of social and economic equality and an attack on the idea of "big government" which was a euphemism for the control of capitalism. One of the many flaws of the Jimmy Carter presidency was his emphasis on reducing government spending, hence reducing social and economic control of the capitalist market.
Reagan instituted a full-scale assault on the notion that the state has a responsibility towards its citizens. He broke the trade unions, he reduced taxes to the advantage of corporations and the wealthy, he made a determined attack on the idea of welfare, social security and affirmative action (by which minorities were given preferential treatment in jobs, admissions to universities, and so on), and perhaps most important, he openly allied himself with the Christian conservatives who dominate the South and West (the sun belt, as it is called).
In foreign policy Reagan stood for an escalation of the cold war, vast increases in defense spending, and an unremitting attack on internationalism, cooperation with the United Nations, regional neighbourliness. Bush continued this direction, whose apex in foreign policy was reached during the Gulf War of l99l when American power was successfully projected across the whole world. Now the United States acts as the winner of the cold war and, as Madeline Albright never tires of informing us, the world's leader, whatever that may happen to mean.
As I have said in these articles, religion in the United States plays a much greater role than most foreigners are aware, making what has been called Islamic fundamentalism seem like a relatively mild affair. At least 200 million Americans are affiliated to one or another religious sect, the most numerous being ultra-conservative, anti-foreign, anti-abortion, anti-women, anti-labour, anti-welfare and anti-tax in their vague general beliefs. Their allies in the business and policy worlds are referred to as neo-conservatives, and include a fair number of former liberals who have turned from one god to another.
American politics are deeply contradictory of course, but anti-intellectualism - which was described forty years ago in a memorable book by the great historian Richard Hofstader - is the common strain. This includes a deep suspicion of anything that isn't simple, fundamental, traditional, down-to-earth and "American" in the ideological sense, and can be exploited easily by demagogues and cynical politicians of the right. The key word is "freedom", which includes the freedom to own and use firearms, the freedom to trade and use the marketplace without restraint even if it means serious injury to health and decency, the freedom above all to make America's will rule all over the earth.
Bill Clinton, clever politician that he is, has made use of these aspects of American political life, which always includes a good deal of hypocrisy and outright lying. The US, for example, openly proclaims the virtues of "free" trade and pushes the idea on poorer and weaker countries all over the world: abolish trade quotas, they are told, allow free enterprise to flourish, remove price support mechanisms for the poor. Yet in reality the US is viciously protectionist at home, and has been fighting trade wars with Japan and China precisely on those grounds, exactly the opposite of what it says should obtain for the world.
The US says it opposes weapons proliferation but sells more arms than any other country, has signed only the chemical weapons pact (and refuses to sign nuclear, biological and land mine non-proliferation treaties) and pretends to support the United Nations but has neither paid its share of dues nor abided by resolutions and conventions it has promised to uphold. The rationale behind all this is religion, that is, the unquestioned assumption of American exceptionalism, that this is a country uniquely blessed with a mission by God, and the rest of the world be damned. In a recent poll 86% of the American population claimed that God loved them.
And yet despite his scheduled, staged appearances in church carrying a bible, Clinton appears to many people on the right to be an irreligious scoundrel whose occasional attempts to uphold affirmative action, guarantee a minimum wage, remain pro-choice (i.e. pro-abortion) and generally refuse to cut taxes are cited as indications that he belongs to the far Left. The charge is particularly ugly when levelled at his wife, whose remarkable intelligence, political ruthlessness and tough personalty generate either great admiration or condemnation.
There is no doubt, however, that the investigations of the Clintons' slightly shady past financial dealings - surely no worse than that of Republican politicians like Senator D'Amato of New York or Jesse Helms of North Carolina - are part of a bigger plan to rid the country of anything liberal that remains from the Roosevelt and Johnson eras. And because the American media in the first and last place respond to commercial pressures, practically anything can now be said about Clinton: accusations of murder, drug-running, larceny, and of course fornication. The burning light of religious zeal that one can see in the eyes of powerful men like Falwell and Robertson is terrifying: one knows that these men and their easily manipulated followers can be driven to acts of the rashest indiscretion and even violence.
Netanyahu's conscious entry into this local battle was an extremely provocative and cynically daring move, and also a threat against Clinton's domestic power. In my view because he has been so terribly weakened by the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky scandals - neither of them with any real basis in legality but pursued by the passionately right-wing, anti-Clinton "independent" counsel Kenneth Starr - Clinton will do nothing at all in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, except appear to be involved. Yasser Arafat's hope that he could get something from his Washington trip was ill-considered and based on a pathetically insufficient knowledge of US politics.
Temperamentally and ideologically pro-Israel anyway, Clinton is not about to risk a full-scale battle with both the Christian and Jewish right-wing over a mere matter of Palestinian rights or even of simple human justice. But the real danger is that he will be advised by his counsellors, pollsters, and confidants to go to war against Iraq. The New York Times recently carried two editorial articles, one by former editor A.M. Rosenthal, a rabid Likud Zionist, and the other by two prominent young figures of the Republican Right-wing, William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Both articles urge Clinton not just to bomb Iraq but to remove Saddam, in effect to destroy Iraq totally by using the four heavy armoured divisions and two airborne divisions now in place in the Gulf to occupy the country after first having bombed it unmercifully.
There is no doubt that there now exists a massive convergence of ultra-conservative interests in the country to oppose what Clinton stands for and recklessly push him into the kind of war from which he will not easily be extricated. I do not doubt that Clinton himself may be thinking of a war as a way of diverting attention away from his domestic problems. But this crisis with Iraq has now lasted for four months without military action, and I think we must conclude that reluctance on the part of the United Nations, the Arab states, and the Europeans, plus the problem of what to do after an airstrike, have deterred Clinton from unilateral action.
There is also the problem - real or imagined - of what Saddam might do if indeed he possesses the weapons that Richard Butler claims he has been hiding. The risk of widening complications and uncontainable damage, both human and environmental, have so far held back Clinton's decisions, but I do think that there is mounting malicious and mischievous pressure on him from right-wing Christians and their right-wing Zionist allies to push him into a disastrous war not only with the aim of finishing off Iraq but also finishing him off. It is noteworthy how in the chorus of wardrums the most prominent are those of people very close to Israel, for whom Israel's interests may be more important than those of the US. I therefore conclude that for the time being so long as Clinton holds out there will be no war, but that there is inexorable pressure on him personally to make war the only option.
The most unfortunate thing is that there is no unified Arab position to stand against the US, and nor is there a mobilized constituency against a new Gulf war within the United States. The vacuum of power thus plays into the hands of people who are willing to risk enormous losses in order to safeguard the holy righteousness of their cause, and it is this constituency that Israel has decided so recklessly to exploit. For surely lurking beneath the chorus of attacks on Iraq there is the implicit message that the destruction of that country and of Clinton might be very good for Netanyahu's Israel.-Copyright Edward W. Said, 1998.