OPINION:

Selling the Fear

What happened to the glorious post-Cold-War future we were envisioning?

The truth is, America has no "enemies" but those we make ourselves. A little recent history is in order. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire, it looked like giant arms budgets, nuclear standoffs, and cruel proxy wars would be things of the past. We would now turn to quality-of-life issues like education, ameliorating poverty, breakthroughs in medicine and health care services, and dealing with pollution and global warming. We had the visions of Hubble and the promise of space exploration, the birth of the Web, and dreams of tele-operation and virtual reality, and a dizzying acceleration in scientific advances that would bring us magical gadgets and startling discoveries.

So our old buddy Saddam, fresh from warring on Iran with our help, was lured into an invasion of neighboring Kuwait. Now Saddam was a new Hitler, his armies were ferocious and threatened even our ally and principal oil-source, Saudi Arabia... or so we told them, and we got those bases we wanted there, in the Holy Land of Islam, and we rolled back the dictator with little loss of life or treasure on our side. Success—the New World Order was now clear and confirmed, and along the way, America massively expanded its military presence in the region. Everyone was happy.

Except Osama bin Laden, who had petitioned the Saudi King to allow him to lead his warriors (fresh from victory over the Soviet Empire in Afghanistan) to drive the godless aggressor Saddam from Kuwait. The King went with the Americans instead. Bin Laden considered the monarchy a colluder from that point on, and the removal of the American military bases in Iraq would later become his principal demand as he turned his guns on America.

And there was a faction of the ruling regime in Washington that was unhappy, too. The 'realists' who held sway through Bush the First called them 'the crazies'. These were the men who later in the decade signed on to the "Project for the New American Century," now known as the "neo-cons," who entered en masse the administration of George W. Bush. These men had been discredited in the eighties for hyping an imminent Soviet threat; since the CIA found their allegations doubtful, they ran an alternative "intelligence" assessment called "Plan B" to push their war-mongering fantasies and claims that Gorbachev was tricking us with his end-of-the-Cold-War talk, and was actually preparing a surprise attack; this nonsense continued right up until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The neo-cons did not like the Bush Sr. New World Order. They thought that since America was now unrivaled in its military might, it should take the opportunity to... well, rule the world. They wanted Bush Sr. to go all the way to Baghdad, depose Saddam, and take over Iraq as an object lesson to anyone who dared oppose us, and as a base from which to better impose our will on the region. During the Clinton interlude, these men plotted in the comfort of various right-wing think-tanks, notably the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute; their mouthpieces in the mainstream press, Safire, Kristol, Perle, Krauthammer, Will, et a.l, continued to press their talking points, and in 2001 they came to power under Mr. Cheney and the ignorant and pliant Bush Jr.

This background helps us understand why, after the attacks of 911, the Taliban's offer to turn over Bin Laden to a third country for trial was spurned in favor of military action. We didn't ever get Bin Laden, of course, but we did get Afghanistan and the oil pipelines from the trans-Caucasus region the neo-cons and their oil-industry allies wanted. And we showed the world; we kicked butt.

It helps explain why, rather than treating Al Quaeda as a criminal enterprise best destroyed by determined intelligence and police work, they declared a 'War": a "War on Terror." It helps explain why, when Saddam gave free rein to the weapons inspectors in 2002, turned over a mountain of documents as demanded, and even offered through a back-channel to retire and go into exile, we insisted on invading Iraq, destroying the Iraqi state, and occupying that country, thus enormously boosting the appeal of Bin Ladenism and anti-American attitudes in general. We had a chance to solve the problem multilaterally and the neocons preferred to wage a war of conquest. We had a chance to play a crucial part in the more gradual emergence of good governance in that already secular state, thus developing a bulwark against the kind of Islamic extremism which underlay Al Quaeda. But no, they wanted to use the war machine, to have an "enemy," to show the world that messing with America was suicidal. That was more important than being smart about solving whatever problems there were.

In spite of the utter disaster this mindset has wrought in Iraq, their efforts continue in the same vein today—now with Iran. Mr. Cheney and his ilk have been threatening Iran with a nuclear attack for over a year now. We have in fact three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf as I write this, and while massive domestic and international resistance seems to have temporarily postponed an assault, the danger is still very much there. Now we find out that the Iranians had made a concerted effort in 2002 to offer a grand bargain of peaceful resolution of disputes with the U.S., only to be spurned, once again, by Cheney and his war-mongering cohort.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this essay, with Brian Williams' question to the Democratic candidates. "Who are the three worst enemies of America?" (The rest of his questions, if you read the transcript, were just as tendentious.) Williams works for NBC, and NBC is owned by General Electric, a top defense contractor and founding member of the military/industrial complex. Yes, the very ones who need "enemies" to prosper.

Brian Williams: "Senator Gravel, same question: Other than Iraq, the three most important enemies to the United States?"

Senator Gravel: "We have no important enemies. What we need to do is to begin to deal with the rest of the world as equals. And we don't do that. We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together. Who are we afraid of? Who are you afraid of, Brian? I'm not. And Iraq has never been a threat to us. We invaded them. I mean, it is unbelievable. The military/industrial complex not only controls our government, lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture."

• Iranian offer
• Eisenhower "military industrial complex"
• NBC parent GE, defense contractor
• Transcript, Democratic Debate