A
visitor warns of the dangers of "the logic of war."
We received
this note on 11/8/01, but it is being posted on 11/14/01.
The author,
Norman Watkins, is a member of Lake View Presbyterian Church,
Chicago.
September 11 and the Logic of War
September 11 marked the end of an era of unchallenged
US power which began with the final collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991. During this time the US lived under the illusion that it could
keep small wars small and in general could keep conflicts under control.
This illusion persisted because the US was both powerful and cautious,
withdrawing from ground wars when the going got tough (most notably in
Somalia when TV covered the death of a US soldier dragged through the
streets of the capital city). Perhaps the supreme example of this power
and caution was the four-day US ground invasion of Kuwait to end Iraqi
occupation. We will never know what horrors which we were saved from by
the hasty treaty signed by Norman Schwarzkopf in a tent in the desert.
During the intervening ten years a generation grew up
observing several small wars but without seeing the deeper truth about
war. War has its own logic of escalation and momentum which continues
much longer than anyone anticipated. This was certainly seen in 1970 and
1971 and 1972 when the US population was shellshocked by Vietnam but the
war ground on year after year. As casualties mounted and protests failed
to end the war there was an increasing gap between the young who were
dying from war and from despair, and the old who didn't care and
cynically voted to reelect Nixon.
Now, on September 11, in the space of just a few
minutes, war came home to Manhattan with an intensity that shattered
illusions. Things were clearly out of control. They have stayed that
way, thanks to the resilience of the Taliban under heavy bombing, thanks
to the US public sense of fragility, thanks to the anthrax scare.
After the shock of September 11 the stages of grief
have followed in usual succession: denial, followed by a furious
bargaining in which much has been sacrificed (including important parts
of the Bill of Rights) in a futile attempt to recover the sense that
things are under control, that we can restore security. Security is in
fact a sensation and not a reality, a sensation which can be had even in
wartime provided the war is far away and certain illusions are
maintained. These feelings of security marked the generational dividing
line late in the Vietnam war, when the young faced war and death up
close while the old slept under their illusions.
We have still not reached the stage of accepting our
losses from September 11 attacks, and even then we will have to wait a
long time to regain the old sense of security. That sense of security
rests on a web of illusions and a sensation that things are under
control, both of which take time to develop.
The war with its inevitable blunders has made the
administration more or less irrelevant to this process of national
healing (in contrast to the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, for
instance). The administration's blundering is clear to much of the rest
of the world which neither sells nor buys CNN's propagandistic war
coverage.
The blundering of the administration is due in part to
their own illusion that they could restore control by the old fashioned
means of limited airstrikes (or, that failing, the use of unlimited
airstrikes). Unfortunately those in power almost never abandon their
illusion of control, so several elections are usually necessary
before policy changes. Therefore we will be caught up in the cruel logic
of escalating war for a long time, longer than anyone realized, long
after a majority see its futility, long after we long for peace. War
keeps on teaching this hard lesson long after we understand it.
Norman Watkins
Chicago, Illinois
