Situation Normal - All Bushed Up

By: Peter Lee

The poll numbers are in, and they aren't good for the anti-war movement. Pro-war sentiment has strengthened since Bush's State of the Union address and Powell's dog and pony show at the U.N., and half of anti-war sentiment is described as weak and ready to change sides.

In particular, 57% of respondents are willing to have the U.S. go to war without U.N. approval, and with the support of "a few good allies", according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News tally. Apparently, the likes of the U.K., Australia, Spain, and Italy will be sufficient.

It would be easy to blame boobus Americanus for being so easily hoodwinked by Powell's smooth talk and Bush's bellicose crotch-grabbing, and wonder how the public can delude itself that a war that arouses such intense global opposition is a moral and strategic slam dunk.

But the American public, though woefully and willfully ignorant about boring polysci issues like war, peace, containment, deterrence, and that big Armageddon thing where the whole world goes boom, is reasonably adept at the science of semiotics. That is to say, they pick up the message Bush is sending, while not necessarily endorsing the truth or accuracy of the particular statements he is making.

The message: peace process fucked up, inspections fucked up, U.N. fucked up, NATO fucked up, relations with large parts of the world fucked up. And no question, it's all true!

The fact that all these were willfully, nay eagerly screwed up by the United States in its reckless and singleminded pursuit of a war in Iraq is beside the point. Bush has successfully destroyed, split, or compromised all the mechanisms available for making peace and foreclosed all the options except war. There is no turning back and there is no way out.

Let us also pause to acknowledge the artful mendacity of Colin Powell. Seeking to drive another crooked nail into Saddam's coffin, he pre-spun his exclusive advance copy of bin Laden's latest audiotape into evidence of collusion between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The media dutifully obliged with the appropriate headlines.

When the actual transcript appears, the fact that bin-Laden was actually excoriating Saddam's regime and calling on Iraqis to defend their homeland against an American assault will serve as an interesting sidebar in a FAIR retrospective of the lies that made the Iraq war possible.

Again, the American public, though incurious about the actual facts of the case, will draw a correct conclusion: efforts to limit al-Qaeda's activities and appeal in the Arab world are totally fucked up.

Nothing left to do but fire up the bombers and hope the war doesn't turn into a colossal fuck-up too.

Of course, Bush is trapped, too. It's unlikely that the rosiest scenario for getting the war going involved fatally polarizing the U.N. and NATO and the EU and having France, Russia, and China regard the U.S. as shit on ice. He's pushed Humpty Dumpty off the wall and he needs a victory parade in Baghdad so nobody will complain about the mess he left behind. Now he's simply got to grit his teeth, go for war, and hope that the military and the press deliver the cakewalk version of the invasion he's promised America.

And the American people, since war is the only way out, will simply hope it works out.

Iraq will not be the last victim of Bush's callous willingness to make an omelet with other people's eggs. The North Korean crisis - another catastrophe in the making courtesy of Bush's brinksmanship and his willful destruction of détente between the two Koreas - is headed for a train wreck, probably in the form of a naval embargo followed by a pre-emptive strike on Pyongyang's reactor.

Lest we forget, this is how domestic politics works under Bush as well. Once we march into Iraq, we're irrevocably committed to a national security state based on systematic confrontation and the wholesale manufacture of internal enemies, threats, and outrages that demand reprisal, repression, and the continued erosion of civil liberties.

At home Bush is abetted by the pathetic Congressional Democratic leadership, whose purpose in life appears to be to demonstrate that the so-called opposition is hopelessly corrupt, co-opted, and incompetent.

The same strategy is at work in Bush's efforts to undermine the fiscal health of the American government's non-military priorities through a reckless combination of tax cuts and overspending. In ten years, when disaster strikes Social Security and Medicare, the will and ability to save them will have been drained away by a decade of malign neglect by the Democratic and Republican leadership.

Schopenhauer preached creative destruction. So far, Bush has mastered only the "destruction" part, where the ability of the country to progress is undermined by a determined program of political and economic sabotage.

In some way, it's the perfect political machine, one that feeds on and creates pure hopelessness. If we are convinced the government is totally corrupt, overextended, underfunded, and unresponsive, we'll tune out. It's a prescription for passivity, not revolution. All that we can hope for is that the President's cronies don't trample on us too much in their headlong scramble to enrich themselves.

It's bad enough that Bush hopes he will leave America fiscally and morally bankrupt, with a security policy caught in a spiral of escalating aggression and peril. What's even worse is that he is creating an imperial state that rends the lives and aspirations of its enemies and its citizens with equal indifference.

And he is relying on the fact that a generation will grow up in this country knowing no other way than "Situation Normal - All Bushed Up" and imagining no other future.

On February 15, let's remember that we aren't just marching on behalf of peace. We're marching for our country - and its future.