Who Rules in Washington?

by

Lev Raphael

The latest deadline for our troops leaving Afghanistan is 2014, but not so long ago it was 2011. Do you ever get the feeling that we might never leave? And worse, that something fundamental has changed in the U.S. that will keep us there and send us into other countries we can’t imagine? That we’ve entered an Orwellian state of permanent war?

Then you should be reading Andrew Bacevich, a consistent critic of American militarism, who like Chalmers Johnson, exposes how we have become a militarized state with a vast empire around the world, one that is destroying our economy and democracy.

Bacevich’s latest book Washington Rules is a cogent, passionate, highly specific look at the ways in which the new militaristic core of the country doesn’t seem to change no matter who the president is. The military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us about fifty years ago is even more entrenched and has like The Borg subsumed the media, lobbyists, and the political establishment.

Bacevich’s book reads like a thriller, and I interviewed Bacevich recently about the vexed state of our Republic.

LR: In this book and in your previous books you call the U.S. an empire. Do you find that that’s a term some reviewers and readers object to, or simply can’t accept?

AB: The references to an American empire stick in the craw of some. But the term is both apt and useful—its use illustrates how far we have departed from the foreign policy traditions of the Founders.

LR: Washington Rules rightfully devotes a lot of time to Senator Fulbright inveighing against American expansionism and militarism, but that was decades ago. Is there any politician today who speaks with his eloquence and urgency?

AB: Arguably, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are today’s equivalents of Fulbright. The difference, of course, is that Fulbright’s critique of policy was granted a serious hearing where as the mainstream media today treat Paul and Kucinich as oddballs.

LR: The country’s cars, trucks and SUVs are covered with “Support the Troops” bumper stickers, yet we don’t give our veterans enough good psychiatric and medical care, and we sent them to war in Iraq under-protected. How is that possible?

AB: We sent them to war in places like Iraq with inadequate protective gear because Washington assumed that tanks and fighter-bombers would produce a quick, decisive victory. The reality of the war we actually got caught both military and civilian leaders completely by surprise. We’ve been scrambling to catch-up ever since.

The prominently displayed “Support the Troops” stickers don't symbolize meaningful support; they signify a popular endorsement of a civil-military compact in which the burden of service and sacrifice falls on 0.5% of the population while the other 99.5% carries on as if war did not exist.

LR: You made a fascinating point that the end of the draft disconnected the American people from the military and put them outside our scrutiny. Would anything short of a new draft restore that connection?

AB: One other option: fund wars on a pay-as-you-go basis, rather than passing on the costs to future generation. Higher taxes or reduced entitlements would get Americans off the sidelines and into the game.

LR: We’ve gone from shock and awe in Iraq to winning hearts and minds, but how can we do that without an army filled with speakers of Arabic? Why isn’t there more attention paid to this gap, and how can the military justify letting any Arabic translators go (because of DADT)?

AB: My sense is that there is—however belatedly—attention being given to this problem. As a practical matter, Arabic is not an easy language to learn and we Americans are notoriously bad at learning any language other than our own. Expectations that the world should learn to speak English remain widespread.

LR: Our establishment is suffused with talk of diffuse new threats to our security, and we constantly hear about far-fetched threats like Venezuela, North Korea. What is your assessment of our current dangers? What about Iran?

AB: Admiral Mullen, the JCS chairman, recently cited debt as the greatest threat to our security. He put his finger on a very important point. It’s time to get our own house in order. We need to learn to live within our means. We need to bring means and ends into alignment. That implies retrenchment. Nine years into the so-called global war on terror, it’s beginning to dawn on more and more people that violent anti-Western jihadism poses a threat that falls well short of being existential. Fareed Zakaria is only the latest to climb onto this bandwagon.

On Iran: their perception that the U.S. poses a threat to their security is entirely rational. I don’t know if they are trying to build a nuclear weapon. If they are, I would favor a strategy of deterrence over one of preventive war. We’ve tried preventive war in Iraq. It really doesn’t work.

LR: Though the two wars are unpopular, we’ve massively tuned them out. What would it take for Americans to pay attention again?

AB: Americans won’t pay attention until they have a skin in the game.

LR: Connected to that question: Why don’t Americans realize how heavy our footprint is in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia?

AB: Americans have been conditioned to accept a massive overseas military presence as part of the natural state of things. As a consequence, they are disinclined to ask questions about costs and consequences.

LR: The war is technically “over” in Iraq, but we have 50,000 troops there, and an array of bases that have cost billions. Do you see us ever pulling out?

AB: This remains to be seen. The status of forces agreement negotiated with Iraq says we will pull out completely. We will soon see a very interesting debate in Washington about whether or not the United States will honor the terms of that agreement.

LR: You explain how the Democrats were reluctant to explore the root causes of what happened in Vietnam as opposed to discussing questions of tactics, and we see the same failure of nerve, or maybe willful ignorance about the Iraq War. Do you think Congress will ever take the lead in opening up the can of worms, or will it just rubber stamp the consensus?

AB: Not a chance.

LR: Is it more important for the World Court in The Hague or for Americans to investigate the use of torture in the Bush administration?

AB: It would be far preferable for us to undertake such an investigation, assuming that we could do so in an even-handed, non-partisan way. That’s a huge assumption, of course. For the most part, Americans don’t take the World Court seriously.

LR: What do you make of presidents using troops as background for their speeches and the way in which the president has morphed from Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces to Commander-in-Chief of the nation?

AB: I despise it. Using the troops as props is contemptible. You’ll note that this has now become a practice employed by both parties.

LR: The forces in American government and culture transforming us into a military empire are so strong, it’s easy reading to feel  somewhat overwhelmed. What exactly can citizens do to try to reverse the decline of our Republic, or is it too late?

AB: Re-read Eisenhower's Farewell Address and recognize the imperative of acting on it.

LR: What do you make of Ariana Huffington’s analysis in Third World America that we have become like many Latin American oligarchies with a huge gap between rich and poor and politics corrupted and stymied by money?

AB: The disparity between rich and poor is greater today than it was in the age of the Robber Barons. It says a lot about our politics that this fact possesses just about zero salience in Washington. 

Books mentioned in this column:
Washington Rules by Andrew Bacevich (Metropolitan Books, 2011)
Third World America by Ariana Huffington (Crown, 2010)

Lev Raphael grew up in New York but got over it and has lived half his life in Michigan where he found his partner of twenty-four years, and a certain small fame. He escaped academia in 1988 to write full-time and has never looked back. The author of nineteen books in many genres, and hundreds of reviews, stories and articles, he’s seen his work discussed in journals, books, conference papers, and assigned in college and university classrooms. Which means he’s become homework. Who knew? Lev’s books have been translated into close to a dozen languages, some of which he can’t identify, and he’s done hundreds of readings and talks across the U.S. and Canada, and in France, England, Scotland, Austria, Germany and Israel. His memoir My Germany was published in April 2009 by the University of Wisconsin Press. You can learn more about Lev and his work on his website. Lev has reviewed for the Washington Post, Boston Review, NPR, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Jerusalem Report and the Detroit Free Press where he had a mystery column for almost a decade. He also hosted his own public radio book show where he interviewed Salman Rushdie, Erica Jong, and Julian Barnes among many other authors. Whatever the genre, he's always looked for books with a memorable voice and a compelling story to tell. Contact Lev.