2/24/03

WORLD EMPIRE: THE SUBTEXT OF WAR WITH IRAQ

By Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer, the American novelist and essayist, has just published his latest book, ''The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing.'' His comments are adapted from remarks on Feb. 22 to a small gathering of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, of which Global Viewpoint editor Nathan Gardels is a founding member.


There is a subtext to what the ''Bushites'' are doing as they prepare for war in Iraq. My hypothesis is that President Bush and many conservatives have come to the conclusion that the only way they can save America and get it off its present down slope is to become a regime with a greater military presence and drive toward empire. My fear is that we might lose our democracy in the process.

By down slope I'm referring not only to the corporate scandals, the church scandals and the FBI scandals. The country has gone kind of crazy in the Bushites' eyes. Also, kids can't read anymore. Especially for conservatives, the culture has become too sexual.

Iraq is the excuse for moving in this direction. War with Iraq, as they originally conceived it, would be a quick, dramatic step that would enable them to control the Near East as a powerful base -- not least because of the oil there as well as the water supplies from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers -- to build a world empire.

They also expect to bring democracy to the region and believe that in itself will help to diminish terrorism. But I expect the opposite will happen: Terrorists are not impressed by democracy. They loathe it. They are fundamentalists of the most basic kind. The more successful democracy is in the Near East (not likely in my view), the more terrorism it will generate. It will only make the terrorists more desperate to defeat it.

The only outstanding obstacle to the drive toward empire in the Bushite minds is China. Indeed, one of the great fears in the Bush administration about America's down slope is that the ''stem studies'' such as science, technology and engineering are all faring poorly in our universities. The number of American PhDs is going down and down. But the number of Asians obtaining doctorates in those same stem studies is increasing at a great rate.

Looking 20 years ahead, the administration perceives that there will come a time when China will have technology superior to ours. When that time comes, America might well say to China that ''we can work together,'' we will be as the Romans to you Greeks. You will be our extraordinary, well-cultivated slaves. But don't try to dominate us. That would be your disaster. This is the scenario that some of the brightest neo-conservatives are thinking about. (I use Rome as a metaphor, because metaphors are usually much closer to the truth than facts.)

What has happened, of course, is that the Bushites have run into much more opposition than they thought they would from other countries and among the home population. It may well end up that we won't have a war, but a new strategy to contain Iraq and wear Saddam down. If that occurs, Bush is in terrible trouble.

My guess, though, is that, like it or not or want it or not, we are going to go to war because that is the only solution Bush and his people can see.

The dire prospect that opens, therefore, is that America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have more and more importance in our lives. It will be an ever greater and greater overlay on the American system. And before it is all over democracy, noble and delicate as it is, may give way. My long experience with human nature -- I'm 80 years old now -- suggests that it is possible that fascism, not democracy, is the natural state.

Indeed, democracy is the special condition -- a condition we will be called upon to defend in the coming years. That will be enormously difficult because the combination of the corporation, the military and the complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator sports has set up a pre-Fascist atmosphere in America already.


SIDEBAR

BUSH VS. DEMOCRACY

Stealing Florida during the last presidential election was a perfect example of what the Bushites are capable of. It is vile to steal a national election if people believe in democracy. It is the one no-no in a democracy. You don't steal elections. Once you steal elections, ipso facto, you don't have democracy.

The people who were running the Bush campaign and recount in Florida had a wonderful gene stream in them from all those lawyers and bankers during the last 125 years who were perfectly able to go to church on Sunday and foreclose on a widow on Monday. They had an early version of Teflon on their souls when it came to being greedy. They could do anything. That gene stream was transmitted beautifully by people like (former Secretary of State) James Baker in stealing Florida.


(c) 2003, Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities/Global Viewpoint. Distributed by Tribune Media Services International.
For immediate release (Distributed 2/24/03)