Thomas Mann left Germany when Hitler came to power. He spent the Reich’s twelve years in exile, stripped of his citizenship, a proud enemy of the German state. Here’s a question: which was the greater patriot, Mann or Hitler? Hitler, after all, undid Versailles, created a Grossdeutschland, and reduced the heart of Europe to a slave market (and worse). Mann spent the war years under the palm trees of Southern California, while those back home spent those years under incessant Allied bombing.
And here’s the answer: which was right?
When Michael Moore tells audiences in Europe that Americans are stupid, is he unpatriotic? Don’t jump to anything. If Michael Moore, in his wisdom, has determined that Americans are not rocket scientists and brain surgeons, he should say so. Better that we were steered away from such endeavors as rocket science and brain surgery. But he said it in Europe. Yes, and now Europeans, knowing our incapacity, will know to make allowances. And besides, if he had said it here, he’d have to explain it 278,000,000 times. Is he unpatriotic?
Here’s the answer: It’s Michael Moore, and you’d be a fool to believe him.
In the weeks after 9/11, American flags were all over the place. Yet military enlistments did not go much beyond an uptick; certainly, military-age men out of uniform were nowhere handed the white feather. How much real patriotism there was is an open question; and how much there ought to have been is, some would add, subject to debate. And yet – patriotism, the word, if not the thing – has become quite a sore point in today’s politics. Whatever 9/11’s final legacy, it has given us two surprisingly durable catchphrases: “Don’t question my patriotism” (with variants, How dare you, etc.) and “Dissent Is Patriotic.”
There was a need. What might the word “patriotism” suggest? You come from somewhere. You haven’t moved away. Who, in some sense, isn’t a patriot? Who needs to insist on it? A flaunted patriotism is hard to distinguish from undesirable neighbors like chauvinism, jingoism, xenophobia. A too simple patriotism bespeaks some lack of a critical faculty. Better to be wised up.
But if patriotism may not be an unmixed good, to be perceived as lacking patriotism is clearly a thing to be avoided. The associations of the word “unpatriotic” are all bad: untrustworthy, ingrate, whoring after strange gods, pretentious, superior – and worse. “Don’t question my patriotism” doesn’t fully say, “I am a patriot.” Rather, it quietly acknowledges that my claims on patriotism probably don’t look all that solid, and it demands that I be spared all the negative associations of the word “unpatriotic” (associations which, to be fair, are not yet proved). The trouble, though, is that it is very rare that any political actor’s “patriotism” actually is “questioned”. Often some of the negatives associated with the lack of patriotism cling to a political actor. The demand, “Don’t question my patriotism” is a demand, in advance, for a clean bill of political health; and that demand can’t reasonably be made.
“Dissent Is Patriotic” is a larger muddle. Is dissent patriotic? Wouldn’t that depend on the particulars of the dissent? A difference of opinion does not constitute treason and so invite capital punishment; and nobody says it does. “Dissent” may take many forms, from wearing a “Dissent Is Patriotic” button to taking up arms for the Taliban. The button wearer may be crazy in love with America, or detest her heartily. Looking at a button, who can know? Even a Taliban foot soldier may profess his love for the U.S.: John Lindh said that he was fine with America, it was the Northern Alliance he couldn’t abide.
What is dissent in the first place? Russ Feingold, voting against the Iraq war is a dissenter. Barry Goldwater voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Jesse Helms voting against the King Holiday are – what exactly? “Dissent” is the minority viewpoint you approve of. Can it be justified? Justified! It’s dissent and must be embraced. Dissent is what heroes do and is above criticism. “Dissent Is Patriotic”, rightly understood, means, “My wholly admirable opinions are wholly admirable”. The logic is flawless, once the premise is granted – which the delusional are happy to do.
The great invokers of patriotism today will be found among the anti-war movement, and not among the Brent Scowcrofts or the Pat Buchanans. Today’s patriots are the progressives. And those patriots have raised the matter of American military casualties as a major – probably the major – argument against the Iraq war. Only look at Cindy Sheehan’s ongoing celebrity.
That American military casualties are a bad thing most people will agree, domestically. Those casualties, though, say very little about the merits of the war. If you think that the Allied bombing of German and Japanese cities during World War II was a great crime, it will not be because quite a few Allied planes were shot down: the deaths in the air were a tiny fraction of the deaths on the ground. But if you think the bombing was an essential part of the war effort, the dead aviators will be seen as the inevitable cost of victory. If you think that Sherman’s March was a great crime, Union casualties shouldn’t matter that much. If you believe that Sherman’s March was the thing that effectively ended chattel slavery in North America, you will look at the Union casualties and think that the Battle Hymn of the Republic was there made real.
There is a button that says, “Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam”, and it would make a nice three-hour final exam somewhere to list some of the many ways the statement is false. Truer is that Iraq protest is the degenerate offspring of Vietnam protest. Iraq must be Vietnam, even without similarities, because the response is identical. Iraq protest has looked back at Vietnam protest and learned (just the wrong things). Vietnam protest, against expectation, convinced only the convinced. As protests grew, support for the war grew. What finally turned the public against the war was an appreciation of the war’s costs – American military deaths, specifically – with no perceptible end in sight. Iraq protest (apart from its fringes) knew from day one to emphasize, before the fact, quagmire, and as the numbers started to come in, military casualties. There’s been no shortage of contrived atrocity stories, of course, but these are kept strictly apart from the telling of the deaths (falsely: the death toll – includes accidents, which are common in the military even in peacetime). Is Iraq worth it? Don’t ask. Just look at those numbers, approaching the highly significant 3,000, then passing it, and even worse – not going down.
How should deaths in war be seen, or to ask it another way, how much is too much? 3,000 is a key number. Opponents of the Afghan war were eager to inflate civilian casualties there – if you could get them to over 3,000, we were quits for 9/11. People talking up the complaints of the Arabs in Palestine often referred to the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, where somewhere between 400 and 800 were killed. The Arab side usually blew this up to 1,000–1,500. After 9/11, though, in one writer’s version this became 1,500 – 3,000. One incautious Bush critic expressed the hope that Katrina’s dead would hit the magic 3,000. Try another number. Before the first Gulf War, Saddam said that he wasn’t worried about the Americans – they weren’t tough enough to absorb 10,000 killed in a single battle. If he’s right, we’re in trouble. If he’s even perceived to be right – witness his failure to capitulate – twice! – or Usaama bin Laadin’s harping on the 18 dead at Mogadishu – we’re in trouble. Try another number. The number of those killed in Sudan alone at the hands of jihad/genocidal Arab racism is already well over 2,000,000, and given the Arab League, China, the E.U., the U.N., and the constraints on the current administration, it is likely to hit 3,000,000 before very long. How high will the numbers in the ongoing world war go? Even if the U.S. and Israel withdrew from the war (as if they could), it would go in Africa, in Russia, in the Indian subcontinent, in Western Europe, in Thailand, in the Philippines, hardly anywhere untouched. The dead now are at seven figures. While the dead are almost certain to go to eight figures, it is not unreasonable to hope that the final count will stop short of 100,000,000. Who knows? Even domestically, right after 9/11 most people felt sure that worse was on the way, cities very possibly disappearing, and millions of lives with them.
What if we tally only military deaths? When career soldiers look back at a military cemetery, they see not failure but glory. When they see columns of names on a war memorial, they don’t wonder how this could have happened. When military commanders sum up in their campaign memoirs, this sentence does not appear: “Thankfully, no-one was hurt.” Military personnel face death with eyes open. Firefighters are a useful comparison. Most of the anti-war claims about military deaths could be made with as much justice about firefighters killed on the job. Who wants to be the last man into a collapsing building? Why doesn’t the mayor send his children into the Fire Department? (So far, though, flames haven’t been called the Resistance.) Remember that the 343 firefighters killed at the Twin Towers outnumbered the fewer than 200 Americans killed in the whole run from Dohai to Saddam’s statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad, and remember too that those numbers don’t really say anything. And when the 3,000th American “combat” death is reported and the opinion pieces pour forth, brim full of mourning and indignation, remember that most of these pieces, awaiting only a date and a detail or two, are sitting on hard drives today.
For a preview of those pieces, you can look – actually we can look a lot of places, but we will be looking at E. L. Doctorow’s “An Essay on our President” (available at www.ocmus.net/artman/publish/printer_23788.shtml). American boys are dying, says Doctorow.
But this President doesn’t know what death is.
It seems unlikely. This denial of expertise, this business of “You don’t know what x is” is a commonplace. You may know what a whiffleball looks like, but unless you devote all your free time to the game, you don’t know whiffleball. Maybe not. But no-one is expert in death. The four-year-old who understands that the pet parakeet will chirp no more and the mortician know pretty equally how the thing works. What supports Doctorow’s implicit claim to know better than Bush what death is? Ed Doctorow is very much a New Yorker. George Bush, as Hans Koning has reminded us, is headed back to his farm in Texas when he leaves office. It is rare for a New Yorker to see anything bigger and deader in its natural state than a pigeon. Life on a farm is exposure to life cycles, very much including large, unmediated animal corpses. In New York, el dia de los muertos is the decor at a happy hour; in Texas it is living, public tradition. And where Texas’s foundational legend is a massacre, New York’s is a real estate transaction. Put another way, how would Doctorow know?
Well, he says. He offers three proofs.
First, there’s this:
On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival; the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
The first sentence is unexceptionable. The second is nonsense. The third sentence needs looking at. A “justifiable war” = “a war of not of choice but of necessity” = “a war of survival”, all the very opposites of the Iraq war. But our current war is a justifiable war, is a war not of choice but of necessity, is a war of survival. Could the U.S. have stayed out of World War II? An alternative-historian might say, Of course. We may say that we can’t know, because Roosevelt’s administration was not willing to stay out. For the U.S., World War II was a war of choice before it was a war of necessity. It was both, and the opposition is a false one; and the same is true for our war today. Doctorow’s equation, World War II/Iraq war is faulty, too. The Iraq war is a front in the unfortunately named Global War on Terror. Iraq was never to be the end of it. The proper comparison is WWII/GWOT – and the particular fronts should be compared: in the earlier war, Sicily, Crete, North Africa, the Philippines, Normandy, and today – so far – Afghanistan and Iraq. Landing an army on Omaha Beach is every bit as much a matter of “choice not necessity” as landing one at Um al-Qasr.
Eisenhower was pained, and Eisenhower prayed, says Doctorow, and he adds,
the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
Well, no. Eisenhower was quite aware of his responsibilities, but we may be sure that a couple of minutes after midnight on June 5, 1944, Eisenhower was never going to pick up the phone and say, “I’ve been thinking. Let’s just cancel.” Here’s what makes Doctorow’s invocation a cheap shot. Eisenshower felt it, and his posthumous papers prove it. George Bush’s posthumous papers say nothing, and therefore, we may confidently say that his pained thoughts, his prayers, are non-existent.
Second, Doctorow has caught George Bush smiling.
You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can’t seem to find.
He made a joke! Yet people have been known to mount the scaffold and make a joke just before they got it in the neck, knowing full well that they would not be there all week. Doctorow goes on:
He does not mourn… How can he mourn… So he can never mourn… And so he never drops to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children…
Article II of the United State Constitution says nothing about tears. If Doctorow had his way, foreign dignitaries would show up at a dimly lit White House only to be told, “Now is not a good time. Anyway, he’s not here.” It’s not Bush’s job to be Weeper-in-Chief. He may “joke with the press” – it almost is his job. If Mother Sheehan, like Niobe all tears, absolute moral authority, is accused of having the time of her life, Doctorow – and his audience – would consider the charge grossly unfair, a virtual blasphemy. Bush, who never claimed to be the emblem of Grief, becomess, for “joking,” for “strutting”, for “smiling”,
the [!] President who does not feel.
Third, Doctorow writes,
But, you study him; you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion, which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has not capacity for it.
A few years ago, Bush said that he looked into Vladimir Putin’s soul. That didn’t work out too well, and the statement was obviously ill-considered even as it was being made. E.L. Doctorow has not looked into George W. Bush’s soul. But he has seen him on tv.
To recap: Doctorow hasn’t read Bush’s archives; he’s aware that Bush smiles; he’s seen him on tv. What there is to know about George Bush’s interior life, E.L. Doctorow knows.
Doctorow’s little “Essay” fits in a surprising amount of empty talk and repetition. Its only interest is as specimen, not argument. Let’s do a little tour.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing.
It is impossible to gauge the ratio of dimness to slickness in such claims. One can mourn quietly, expressing nothing. One can express “regret”, or anything else ,without meaning a word of it. “Express” and “mourn” have no particular business being in the same sentence. And what does “regret” mean here? You regret the days of your youth, which can’t be called back – either because they were your best time, or because you did terrible things then. But the word regret is being used in two different senses. In Doctorow’s sentence, if mourning is regretting, it is not regretting as wishing undone; yet his sentence ends that way. Doctorow waves at actual people’s emotions and actions from a safe distance, and he ends with a demand for a confession.
The press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of coffins from Iraq.
Another rehashed complaint. The military is not hiding its casualties. Military funerals are very public, very formal occasions, and military cemeteries are scrupulously maintained places open to the public. Caskets in transit, no more than autopsy photos, are not there for public display. A feeling for ceremony distinguishes the military from a Wes Craven movie. Besides, why should the military help with the production of propaganda whose only aim is the defeat of the military’s mission?
He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knows, unsubstantiated by the facts.
It is a little challenging to write about the war because so many falsehoods can be trotted out so casually and piled up, as Doctorow does here. By “reason”, Doctorow means WMD. But there were always multiple reasons, and the unmourning, unfeeling, unmindful President and his administration always said so. By “unsubstantiated”, Doctorow presumably means that there were no WMDs. In fact, there were WMDs: chemical and biological, and a nuclear program. The previously existing WMDs are not now non-existent but unaccounted for. A quicker war on Saddam, bypassing the U.N. altogether, would have been far better. By “as he knew”, Doctorow means, of course that Bush lied! But if Bush knew, (Bush, who “hasn’t the mind for it”), he knew better than anyone else in the world, better than Saddam’s own generals.
He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war’s aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster.
What bungled plan? There was a tentative plan, that has adjusted to changing facts. George W. Bush, able dialectician that he is, has remained calm throughout. Doctorow complains of the “war’s aftermath”. In fact, the war is ongoing, like it or not, and even the Iraq stage of the war is not completed. Bush in his U.S.S. Lincoln speech announced – accurately – the end of major combat operations in Iraq. And Doctorow is happy to talk of the war’s aftermath to avoid talking about the brilliance of the military campaign from March 19 to April 9, 2003. The “his” in “his mission-accomplished” is also misleading. The banner was not put up by the White House. It was the troops reporting to their Commander-in-Chief. And let’s be clear on what “mission accomplished” means. Go back to Eisenhower and D-Day. On June 6, 1944, the Allied armies might have been repulsed, with mass casualties, the survivors barely making it back to England. Instead, when night fell, they held the beaches and had broken the German front line. They were nowhere near Paris, let alone the German border, and the war had almost a year to run. Still, their mission had been accomplished. Bush’s troops had every right to say the same thing. As for disaster, on May 21, 2006, Iraq, after three successful elections, formed a new government.
The president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much.
He knew that much. And Doctorow knows better. It would be difficult for Americans not to cheer. It’s apparently something they have no control over. And the difficulty is something Doctorow himself does not share.
The president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing – to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.
Surely, Doctorow’s “only one thing” is three things. Bush “took power” with the 2000 election. It was not a clean win, and he took office under a cloud. But so would Gore have, and the term “President-select” would have been thrown at him too. Bush “remains in power” because he won re-election. How that power is used is a big subject, but let’s zero in on the phrase “their friends”. Just who are these “friends”? This is how politics gets explained to a toddler. The President’s friends have a club called the Cabinet, and they all meet in the big white house. Who are Bush’s friends? If Tony Blair is one, Bush may well cost him his job. If Dick Cheney is one, Bush forced him to take a massive salary cut. Cheney also had to divest himself of Halliburton stock – and we all know that Iraq was invaded in order to enrich Halliburton. (Michael Moore, who has held on to his Halliburton stock, must therefore be Bush’s friend.) Who are Bush’s friends, if we exclude his political associates, who are not exactly friends? I can name one: Michael W. Smith, the CCM singer, whom his friends call W, and who, intriguingly, has dinner with the other W every week. So, the Bush administration is explained: six years and counting of favors for Michael W. Smith.
Bush “does not feel”, and Doctorow invokes not just those killed in Iraq, but the poor, the uninsured, the miners, bien d’autres. There’s something charming in the way Doctorow smuggles in domestic issues, piggybacked on the war dead. Especially nice is E.L. Doctorow writing these words – “the thirty five million of us who live in poverty.” E.L. Doctorow, in a government yard in-a Trenchtown.
But if these domestic issues are to be taken seriously – and the author of “An Essay on our President” expects to be taken seriously – shouldn’t they be, uh, argued? And it is not much of an argument to call the other side unfeeling.
But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he relieving the wealthiest one percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe fro the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the safety regulations for coal mines to save the coal miners’ jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class. And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy.
He will “dissemble feeling”, says Doctorow, dissembling English. And “he will say…that he is polluting the air we breathe”. He will say no such thing, and if he did, it wouldn’t be true: he can’t pollute the air. He “will say” all these things “in all sincerity”, even as he “dissembles” and “versifies” a “litany of lies”. Doctorow’s Bush is an utter simpleton and the most cunning of liars. No wonder Doctorow’s despondent.
But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneously aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over the world most of the time. But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype democracy was morphing into a rogue nation.
And at last, the big lie. It is canny of Doctorow to concede that “this war was not the only war”. He, of course, will not go on to admit that “The world says no to war” was a simple untruth. The world has never said no to war. At times, though, the very worst political instincts have held extraordinary sway over extraordinary numbers of people. The anti-war/pro-Saddam protests – February 15, 2003 was the big one (what the columnist David Warren called “Biblical depravity”) – are on record. Newspapers covered them, C-SPAN broadcast them, and at least one book on February 15 has been published. Will anybody be fooled by the claim that they represented a hurt love for America? Demonstrations in London were very much in the spirit of Harold Pinter, Robert Fisk, and the LRB editorial board. Those in Germany were in the spirit of the ‘80s peace movement, 1945’s losers feeling their oats. Those in Spain were in the spirit of the locals in Whit Stillman’s Barcelona. Those in France were in the spirit of the 60’s graffiti US = SS. Those in Arab capitals were the same old genocidal Arab racism. And here, there were lots of American flags, because, as we know Dissent Is Patriotic – and lots of those flags were altered in unflattering ways; but there were also lots of Iraqi and “Palestinian” flags too. There were lots of swastikas and stars of David and lots of caricatures of Ariel Sharon. At one demonstration (although not Feb. 15), a portrait of A.Q. Khan was prominently displayed on the podium. And while there were a few first-timers, the core demographic had been here before. The constant references to Vietnam were proof enough, along with the profusion of tangential foreign policy issues (Philippines, the Koreas), and the “Free, free Palestine” chanting. Doctorow calls it spontaneous. International ANSWER has organized the major demonstrations. Precisely because ANSWER’s auspices were so questionable, people who opposed the war and wanted Saddam to remain in power formed United for Peace and Justice, and later, Win Without War. Give these groups credit: ANSWER for having skills as organizers and UPJ and Win Without War for recognizing a problem and trying to work around it. Give Doctorow credit for – well no, he made it up
The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, not extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.
Doctorow goes out on a cartoonish note. He talks casually about the “future”. We are living in times that are, among other things, exhilarating. Old suppositions have blown away. Not many people today will imagine the future as a simple extension of the present. Doctorow’s future is easy – the way it used to be and then some. Doctorow refers to “the ideal of a concordance of civilizations.” Let’s look at a little recent history. A few years back, NASA launched the Columbia space shuttle . The vehicle exploded, and the crew, which included an Indian and an Israeli – concordance enough? -was killed. In Dar al-Islam, the explosion was cheered. Christians, Jews and Hindus had all been killed. After the Tsumani, the most effective bringer of relief was the US military, George Bush’s military. After Hurricane Katrina killed hundreds of Americans, black and white alike, it was celebrated in Dar al-Islam as a soldier of al-Lah. Bush visited India recently and agreed to provide nuclear material to that great nation. George Bush did not massacre civilians in Madrid, London, Bali, Beslan. A harmony among disparate “civilizations” is certainly conceivable. Just, the discordant voice is not George Bush’s. And savor the words: “he endorses the kind of tribal combat.” Bush has, in fact, devoted his presidency in large part to fostering national governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. And then we meet:
the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.
“No other means”? They never tried procreation? As far as extinction goes, Bush supporters have a clear demographic edge on Nation readers. And did Neanderthals really conceptualize pre-emptive war? Did they become extinct only after they abjured the Treaty of Westphalia? Doctorow should be more circumspect about the Neanderthals. What happened to the Geico pitchman could happen to him.
I
Opposition to the war is, in all but a few instances, a conviction of its immorality. The enemy is not an enemy, and all the wrong people are being killed. Most of America believes none of this. The palatable substitute for such deeply unpopular views is the fake pro-military stance. Mother Sheehan becomes the only woman with a child in the military. General Wesley Clark becomes the guy who was in uniform until just a few months ago. And, of course, John Kerry reports for duty. And global tests and a self-authenticating patriotism live at the same address. And the most ostentatiously democratic offer nothing better than condescension and subterfuge.
For some months, England stood alone against Hitler. Germany had absorbed one country after another. Most of Europe was lining up to allign itself with the Reich. Neutrals were neutral in a slanted way. Stalin remained an ally until the day Hitler invaded. The Arab masses were pretty solidly pro-Hitler. Japan was barely challenged in Asia. Fascism commanded the allegiance of many millions. England stood alone, but gathered into England were exiles from the rest of Europe, beginning with Germany itself. Many – think of Charles de Gaulle – were far from anglophile. This thing transcended England, or one particular patriotism, or protestations of patriotism. History so broke that the hopes of man – then as now – came to rest in one place, and the greatest political evil of the day, the enemies of man – then as now – were finally overcome.
From July, 2006