The United States won the war against Saddam. Now America is struggling to pacify and stabilize Iraq in order to democratize and rebuild the country. The outcome here depends (in part) on the willingness of the American people to maintain an open-ended commitment to Iraq. It also depends on the continuing strength, stability and prosperity of America.
Under the current shopping mall regime, the strength and stability of the United States depends on financial prosperity. If anything should upset that prosperity, America's strength may not be maintainable. You would think that a country under threat would be called upon to make financial sacrifices; but as President Bush said in the weeks that followed 9/11, the best thing Americans can do is to go shopping. This is our gut "response" in the war on terror. We are not a nation under discipline. We do not act like we are at war. Authority is not what it once was. Fashion is on the throne. Owing to this dynamic a kind of rottenness has crept into American institutions. This rottenness might be characterized by bad manners and poor discipline. Some people say there is corruption at the top, and crime. Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset once wrote: "No, this is no crime, but something inferior to crime. It is, in a word, slovenliness, the lack of all decorum, of all self-respect, of all decency in the state's manner of performing its peculiarly delicate function." Ortega wrote that countries are like athletes. They are either in good shape or out of shape. "Briefly," he explained, "to be in good shape means never indulging in any dissipation whatever."
Is not today's America predicated on dissipation?
America is sliding deeper and deeper into a politically correct, scholastically indoctrinated, regulated, credentialed, homogenized and degenerate hole. If catastrophe does not interrupt this decline (as it surely will), then America shall become a land of subhuman semi-illiterates, utterly dependent on government, profoundly alienated from one another and entertained to the point of stupefaction.
America is not as sturdy as the Roman Empire. America is fragile, like a glass house. A handful of weapons can shatter that house (with all its seductive dissipations). And there isn't anything any of us can say or do that can alter the fact. All we can do is wave goodbye to a way of life that was never sustainable, that could never survive its own terrible inventions - television, the pill and the bomb. The last item, of course, does not leave the present organization of society much room to maneuver. The weapons of mass destruction must inevitably alter modern civilization to the point of transforming it into a different type of civilization, with a different path and a different spirit.
Last week Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI director held a press conference and announced that a terrorist attack is expected against the United States. Ashcroft said the attack would probably occur this summer or fall. Last week the United States began putting its carrier groups to sea and the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply in an unprecedented way. (Some have suggested that these moves anticipate a future crisis in the financial system, and this crisis might have a terrorist event as its trigger.)
It is one thing when the government talks about a threat. It is time to take serious notice when key institutions act in unusual ways. On Thursday the boss of the CIA, George Tenet, announced his resignation and gave a sentimental farewell speech. Tenet was a popular and respected Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). He was not under a cloud. He had the support of the president. He was liked on Capitol Hill. The reason for his departure was said to be "personal."
Admittedly, we don't know if today's unusual naval exercises, the expansion of the money supply or the resignation of the DCI have a common cause. This is purely speculation, but if the government believed that nuclear weapons were already on American soil, there would be no point in telling the public. Admission of a tangible nuclear threat would hurt the stock market, disrupt businesses, turn real estate prices upside down, cause shortages in grocery stores and absenteeism in the work place - with devastating economic results.
If terrorists have nuclear devices on American soil today, if the terrorists can successfully detonate such weapons, the government would be helpless to prevent panic. What could they do? Over the past five decades, American society has come to depend on a highly vulnerable infrastructure that depends, in turn, on freedom from fear. The power grid is vulnerable. The telecommunications system is vulnerable. Our computers are vulnerable. Our oil supply is vulnerable. Any successful attack against these vulnerabilities will mark a qualitative change in the system and its base requirement: freedom from fear.
In my book, Origins of the Fourth World War, in a chapter titled "Fiendish Logic," I said that American society is based on economic logic. Consequently, we have no sheltering system for the population. Our defenses against biological and chemical weapons are negligible. Hospitals in this country are already overstretched. "We are without bomb shelters," I wrote. "We refuse to make adequate preparations, to accept a military draft, to require greater economic sacrifices from our citizens." Our values determine our choices. We value wealth and freedom more than we value national security. Therefore, our security is predicated on the requirements of absolute freedom of movement and individual liberty. "The economy is viewed as the basis of national security," I explained. "We expect Mammon, at whose temple we worship, to marshal our military forces. But Mammon is not a god of war. He is a corrupter who confiscates the concrete of the nation and diverts it from fallout shelters to freeways. At every turn he cries butter and not guns."
While it is true that a large economy means a larger portion to spend on weapons, the society's vulnerabilities will not be protected for psychological reasons. The national psychology - especially at the elite level - is addicted to the concept of "soft power." In America we believe that "money is power." But other societies do not believe this. The founder of communist China said, "Power flows out of the barrel of a gun." A system based on money is vulnerable to guns and bombs. This vulnerability is now exacerbated by the fragility of infrastructure, the dependency on foreign oil and the potency of nuclear explosives.
Is the dollar mightier than the gun? Is it stronger than the hydrogen bomb?
We might say that money brought nuclear weapons into existence. But the bomb can turn around and devour its parent. The bomb can destroy the money system, opening the way to an entirely different type of system. In other words, the bomb is - in its very nature - a revolutionary instrument. And revolutionaries of every kind recognize the bomb as their solution. As presidential candidate John Kerry pointed out in his Memorial Day speech, "Osama bin Laden has called obtaining a weapon of mass destruction a sacred duty."
