Posted January 29, 2003
Last year, when George W. Bush began rattling the ceremonial saber towards Iraq, his critics cried Empire
while his supporters said, in effect, tut-tut — 'tis no empire, get thee to a dictionary!
But as the war plans moved forward, and the case for war received further elaboration, more honest warmongers conceded the matter. Yes, what we seek is an empire — but not just any empire, it is a new empire, an empire for peace and justice, without traditional ties to colonies or narrow national interest. The new Pax Americana will be a just empire run by impartial men with disinterested judgment and . . .
It was hard not to laugh then: the naivety! Now, after George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, the laughter of the administration's critics increases, if with a note of bitterness.
Sure, it is still possible to laugh lightly at the president's gaffes: if anyone could use a dictionary, it is he. Look up the word conquest, Mr. President, and look up fumes, too.
But the laughter turns dark as we mark Bush's betrayal of the last dollop of his putative free-market and fiscal conservatism. His message on January 28 was spend, spend, spend. While America's economic life stagnates, Bush proudly emphasized the price tag of program after new program, but dared broach no talk of spending cuts. If you like government, and think that more and bigger is better than less and smaller, then Bush is your man. Empires abroad mean bigger government at home, as anyone with a lick of sense knows — after all, Imperial Rome was itself something of a welfare state, with its bread and its circuses — and perhaps we should thank Bush for proving this point yet again.
And as for the imperial expansion outwards, well, here the circus goes wild. First on Bush's foreign policy list was a proposal to spend billions to fight AIDS in Africa. After the speech I heard much comment on this, but no one dared question what AIDS in Africa had to do with the state of the American union. The New Empire means, apparently, a welfare state expanded not only for Americans, but for Africans, too.
The war itself, of course, took up the most important section of address. Though one could criticize it point by point, to unlock the nature of America's expanded mission we need focus on one statement only. Of Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction,
America's president said this:
Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks, to build and keep weapons of mass destruction -- but why? The only possible use he could have for those weapons is to dominate, intimidate, or attack.
It is upon this idea that the case for a pre-emptive war rests. And in saying this, the president lied.
The one indubitable thing I learned from the Republicans during the Cold War was that the primary purpose for holding nuclear weapons was not for active use but for threatening would-be attackers. That was the whole point of MAD: you attack us, we strike back with the Bomb, you return volley, and we are all dead; so you won't attack.
Just so with Saddam. He wants the biggest weapons so he can feel secure.
In stating otherwise, Bush prevaricates. And in so doing he undermines the newness
of his new imperial push. For if our empire is simply about establishing security and justice throughout the world, without special interest or slavery or expropriation or exploitation or the other vices of the empires of old, then why must this empire begin with a lie?
The answer is plain. This empire is neither as new nor as just as our leaders pretend.
For those few of us who still remember the ideal of a Republic, we can't but help but express some sadness between our laughs. On January 28, 2003, a man who calls himself a Republican presumed to lead America further down its long road to empire. The American Republic thus dies by another breath.
This breath, please remember, was spent not in our bitter laughter but in our leader's lie, and in the shouts of praise Congress and the American people gave to that lie.
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