The Link
Not-So-Intelligent Design
by Ross Levine
Well, the filibuster showdown at the Capitol corral is over for the time being, as if the Cuban missile meltdown itself had just been averted. Bill Frist and his ultra-conservatives have not quite succeeded with their putsch, and the Democrats are trying their best to put a positive spin on the fact that they have so little power. For those of us beyond the Beltway, life goes on, and we try to keep on guard, never knowing when a civil liberty or two may fall by the wayside. Shouldn't we be more afraid of the terrorists? Depends which terrorists we're talking about.
Enemy of the state. "Even the religious right knows that death is out
there, and allowed in certain circumstances. It's just, they want to
choose those circumstances."
In Kansas, meanwhile, they're still debating evolution, and the school board thinks that changing "Creationism" to "Intelligent Design" is a clever way to disguise their jihad against science. This is just another part of the Orwellian assault we've become so familiar with of late. We're not "privatizing" Social Security, we're "personalizing" it; it's not anti-gay, it's about the "sanctity of marriage"; it's not a war for control of Middle Eastern resources, but a multi-billion dollar, blood-soaked blitz for democracy.
Yes, I confess, I wake up to reports of improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers and feel "blah-ed" by it all, powerless to do anything about it except deliver an occasional rant to whomever might listen, and more often, ask myself in disbelief -- what were we thinking? In 20 or 30 more years, just as with Vietnam, the truths will surface like corpses up from the deep, but by then, the stench will be so faint only a few will even be able to smell it. That's how it goes -- we wake up to the lies and fall asleep to the truth. In the heat of the moment, we'll believe anything, but when all the hype and fervor fade away, and nothing is left but the bare and simple truth, it's so obvious and unadorned that there's no point even bothering with it anymore. Remember the first Gulf War? The Patriot missiles were described as the next best thing to gunpowder. Only later did we find out that they couldn't even hit a dirigible, let alone a speeding enemy warhead.
With "intelligence" like that, no wonder humankind has yet to take war off its "to do" list. If someone gives you a lamp with three wishes, eventually you'll rub it. If a government has an army, eventually it will use it. Only a single generation of generals at most can stand to be idle. Perhaps the war tales of the generals they took over from are enough to convince them that preparing for war makes more sense than actually waging it. But then a new crop of military leaders arises that hasn't heard these gruesome battle yarns, and begins to entertain fantasies about the glories of state-sanctioned murder. And that's when a new round of carnage is right around the corner.
The argument goes that we have armies because we must protect the things we cherish, that the world is a place where one cannot afford to be idealistic. True enough. Park your car on the street long enough and eventually someone will steal it. Nevertheless, this allows us to blame war on human nature and not the isms -- nationalism, patriotism, imperialism and the rest. But is this right?
It is blindingly clear that the Iraq war had nothing to do with self-preservation. Iraq was no Sudetenland, where democracy needed to make a stand to prevent the blitzkrieg to come. Then again, perhaps Iraq was a Sudetenland, except that we were acting the Reich's part, seeking to extend our influence, demonstrate our power, and warn the world that disobedience would not be tolerated. After all, it is America first. No matter what our leaders convince themselves of -- convince us of -- we can't hide from the fact that the present war in Iraq was an elective, not a requirement.
But then, all nations are built on blood, so why should ours be an exception? Why must we hold ourselves up to a higher standard? Why should we criticize America when the rest of the world is as corrupt a cesspool as there is? Certainly, compared to the rest of them, America is better. Isn't it?
Must we bring up the Native Americans? They stood in the way of our freedom, but those were the old days, when nobody believed that freedom was something everybody deserved. Once we found this out, it was too late -- the damage was done. The Indians were on reservations, the blacks in giant housing projects, the Mexican immigrants in the fields. But things are working themselves out -- minorities are voting Republican now. A few Indians are millionaires. Hispanics are ascending. Overtly racist statements, for the most part, are quickly punished, or at least apologized for. Now, when the President blusters on about freedom, he has a leg to stand on -- there is no better country in the world than America.
I certainly would like to believe that. While going about the day, inhabiting my minute speck of universe, it's nice to believe that no life on Earth could possibly be better. That no culture could have given me the education, awareness, prosperity and hope that this one has. Surely, God blesses America in a way that He doesn't Mozambique or Bolivia.
Wolf in sheepish clothing. "The whole theory of fighting there
so we don't have to fight here, of being on the offensive not
the defensive, is weak at best, immoral at worst. There is no
end to such a cycle, since all who do not explicitly share our
interests can be considered our enemies." (Photo: Reuters/World Bank)
Possibly. After all, they say there's no place like home. Certainly it's better to be here than over in Iraq with our soldiers, deployed in a hostile world. We want to believe, as our President tells us, that our men and women are roasting and exploding over there so that we don't have to over here. They are our antennae, thrust vulnerably forward, testing the safety of the outside world. We go about our daily lives, concerned with TV shows, workplace feuds and the like while they live in a world of geopolitics, developed and developing conflicts, and all the power struggles that these forces inevitably engender. We call it an insurgency in Iraq, but is that just more Orwellian wordplay? It makes it sound like a few roving bands of barbarians, and that if we just kill a few more, we will have destroyed them. But maybe it's not an insurgency but a hydra, ever replenishing its deadly heads. It certainly seems hydra-like, though every time one of our leaders or generals tells us that a turning point is near and improvement is just around the bend, we swallow it. That's why the leaders and generals have taken to saying how difficult the job is, and that it's going to take time, but that we're making progress -- vagueries, buzz words and phrases to hide the fact that there really is no end in sight. And there never was.
And should we care? 50,000 plus troops died in Vietnam, nearly 40,000 in Korea, we're not even up to 2,000 in Iraq. Plenty of wiggle room there. Plenty of opportunity to grow the body count.
But war is more than a body count, no? Although the methods and techniques have changed -- we're not in Iraq, after all, as Napoleons or Hitlers, hoping to annex it as the 51st state -- yet war is still a way for the powerful to remake the world. There really was nothing terribly innovative about the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz scheme. Many other empires have tried to spread their ideologies through war, but historically, the U.S., once it had achieved its manifest destiny of spreading its dominion between two oceans, became more of a policeman than a utopian. If Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were innovators (at least by American standards), it's because we had never been so blatant about our imperial intentions before. Talk about a lack of checks and balances -- without the Soviet Union, the United States is like the Republicans in Congress, taking aim for its own feet. And that's the danger -- that we've grown too powerful, or that we believe we're more powerful than we are. How hard is it for a mosquito to bite a giant? Not very. Look at Osama Bin Laden, and how our foreign policy has evolved since. Osama bit us -- hard - and so we've tried to smear ourselves with repellant, only there are so many places we can't seem to reach. And so we've taken to swatting at anything that moves, whether it's a mosquito or a wayward Cessna. The theory may be that if it waddles and quacks, it must be a duck, but that's not necessarily so. Not that Saddam Hussein was a swan by any stretch of imagination, but now that he's a bearded prisoner who's been seen by the world in his underwear, well, it seems that taking away his power has actually diminished our "mission accomplished." It feels like a T-Rex congratulating itself for having squashed a cockroach. It's a good thing that der Fuehrer iced himself in his bunker or we might have grown sorry for him, confined to his cell, his moustache unmanicured, his days spent painting scenes of Berchtesgaden from memory as he awaited execution. But then again, the entire world perceived that particular dictator as a threat. The dictator in question here seemed more threatening to our current President than anyone else. Is it possible that in a country like ours, with all its checks and balances and democratic ways, that one President's obsession can be transformed into a full-fledged war on foreign soil?
Apparently it is.
Or perhaps you subscribe to the theory that it's not about individual leaders, but that the forces present in the world dictate what policies these individual leaders may and will pursue. In that case, you perhaps see (beyond the rhetoric) that the present situation is little more than an expression of our thirst for oil. Condi Rice can talk all she wants about the "new" U.S. foreign policy, where undemocratic regimes are no longer tolerated, but it's just talk. Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia -- we cannot afford to be too pious when our gas tanks are running dry. Imagine -- millions of cars unable to function, with people having no way to get to the store -- our entire civilization would implode. So whether it's a cadre of ideologues, or a craving for energy, that drove us to Baghdad, we're there, our vulnerabilities exposed. Our military is simply another facet of our civilization -- it is not all powerful -- and its actions cannot make us invulnerable. The whole Bush theory of fighting there so we don't have to fight here, of being on the offensive not the defensive, is weak at best, immoral at worst. There is no end to such a cycle, since all who do not explicitly share our interests can be considered our enemies. It's a fascist approach because it supposes a type of perfection is possible -- that the world can be made "safe" for us, and that the way to achieve that is -- well, basically, to control that world. Democracy for all. One way to salvation. And if you can't get there on your own, we'll give you a push, but only if it's in our own interest to do so. If there's profit in it for us. And if so, then God -- our Best Friend -- will give us His nod of approval.
Building tomorrow's terrorists today. "Shouldn't we be more afraid
of the terrorists? Depends which terrorists we're talking about."
(Photo: AP/Nasser Nasser)
When we hear the term jihad -- "Holy War" -- we seldom think of ourselves. That's because we like to believe that God sees things exactly the way we do. He may be all knowing, but if He does see more than one side to an issue, that's His problem, not ours.
Case in point, if I may momentarily segue to stem cells. Religion has become just another avenue of ultra-conservative spin. Bush and his pious "pro-life" chorus can't stomach the idea of frozen embryos from fertility clinics being used in stem cell research. They don't want to see a world where it becomes acceptable to "destroy life."
Then why, may we ask, are they not denouncing the fertility clinics in the first place? By attempting to support the further creation of new life, these clinics are engendering a glut of "extra life," which must, in the end, be destroyed. Or perhaps not? Why aren't our sanctimoniously devout leaders advocating that every embryo created in every fertility clinic be grown to full human-hood? As long as we're going to be pro-life, why don't we do everything we can to create as much life as possible? Terri Schiavo, abortion, stem cell research -- let's deny death and hatch as many embryos as there are devout, God-fearing American women to carry them to term. Why are we letting a single embryo die? Isn't it immoral?
Well, even the religious right knows that death is out there, and allowed in certain circumstances. It's just, they want to choose those circumstances. Death is allowed in the war in Iraq, though without images of flag-draped caskets. It's allowed in the quest of infertile couples looking for a baby, but not in the quest of a scientist looking to alleviate human suffering. If it weren't so frightening, one might get the idea that some of our current political leaders are, yes, trying to play God. And if we continue to let them, how intelligent a design is that?
2 June 05
Ross M. Levine is an author, Marcel Proust marathoner and manatee-hugger who feels safer on the edge; i.e., in New York or California. He agrees with the King of Brobdingnag that we're "the most pernicious race of odious vermin to crawl the surface of the Earth." He thinks Americans have too much freedom -- fries, that is.