Americans' Response to War in Iraq Will Define 21st Century
By Michael Owen
Opinions Editor
It is likely that when we return to Pomona in January, the U.S. will be at war with Iraq. Around the time classes begin, the Republican-controlled 108th Congress will go into session. In the worst case, Democrats' fears of a rubber-stamp Congress will come true, allowing President Bush and the conservative interests he has pursued to continue in their exclusion and even destruction of years of progress, particularly in the areas of environmental protection and national fiscal solvency. In a slightly better case, liberals will be concerned enough about, say, the world's existence, to launch a violent insurgency and do what they've been trying to since the 1970s (i.e., progress beyond the 1970s), stymied by the interests of the sort of people who inexplicably believe it is unproblematic that environmental policy is taking a step backward. Or several steps. Or possibly just decades.
The good news is that, for all their tacit acceptance of many of the Bush Administration's thoughtless, shortsighted and even regressive policies, the American people (specifically, the ones who live in the United States) have not given in entirely. There are encouraging signs that the judiciary, whatever casualties it might suffer in the next two years of said rubber-stamp Congress rubber-stamping judicial nominations, for the moment at least has not entirely surrendered to the administrative agenda (aside, of course, from installing the country's first un-elected president, which happened just prior to the agenda's becoming Administrative). Recent victories, however, have been small, and the diminishing momentum is unlikely to pick up under the judiciary's oversight by its fellow branches, current political alignments being what they are.
None of this is particularly heart-warming. Most of us would rather not return home from finals week to watch war unfold on the world stage (quite literally, as pretty much everyone but the most optimistic war supporters at least considers it a substantial possibility that the war will not conveniently limit itself to Iraq, whose government has memorably demonstrated its willingness to carry out various forms of aggression against those of its neighbors who happen to be allies of the United States, a willingness unlikely to diminish in the face of a virtually assured U.S. invasion). But it looks as though we may do exactly that. The Administration, reacting to the Clintonian transgressions of considering public opinion and foreign relations in its policy decisions, has shown that it is quite willing, politically, to go it alone. And if they are criticized for doing so, one might cynically speculate that such criticism is not deterrent when a majority of Americans inexplicably approve of the President. That this approval coincides with none of Bush's policies, that Bush himself gained an apparent democratic mandate only upon the first attack on American soil in six decades, is perhaps counterweighed from the Bush-camp viewpoint by such wild successes as the recent election. That the recent election was wildly successful for Republicans in large part precisely because said President, with said absence of freestanding popular support for his policies and said war-time approval rating, campaigned aggressively against even those Democrats who had been his political allies-that the election, in summary, still says nothing about the underlying sentiments of an American public independent of its reaction to the tragedy of September 11th, is obviously of no concern to the Administration. True to form, it is spending as much of its ill-gotten political capital as necessary to accomplish the agenda that will result most favorably for the interests it has unapologetically dedicated itself to. True to form, it has chosen a war that has the incidental benefit of providing another resource that those of the Bush mentality will profit from until it is gone, by which time they will be as well. And true to form, the Administration is disregarding the voices of the opposition, because it can. For now.
The next month and a half is likely to be pivotal in shaping the global character of the twenty-first century. Should pending war become actual war, the United States will face questions about itself that are emerging into the mainstream for the first time. It has for a while now been a certain brand of conspiracy-theorist's opinion that the United States is interested in Iraq with the view in mind of installing a government favorable to U.S. economic benefit. Unfortunately, that view may become sufficiently reflective of reality to be irrepressible outside its fringe roots. Bush has carried the political gain of September 11 to unimaginable lengths. The domestic policy damage he is doing now will take many times a single administration to fix. But that damage, however severe, is domestic, and there is reason to hope that the nation is resilient enough internally to rebuild; the looming question, one that will have far more long-term impact on the U.S. and the world at large, is where the United States goes in a world that has begun to define itself in terms of the United States. In Afghanistan, a major oil pipeline that was planned in some form since the mid-1990s is under construction, made possible by the favorable ministrations of a friendly government-a government, like so many other things in the modern world, manufactured overseas for the United States.
|
