Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Gen. David Petraeus arrives for a meeting in the Hart Building with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, June 14, 2011, in Washington.
“Adding up the money spent on the War on Terror in 2001 is a sobering exercise,” but Adam Tooze gives it a shot. When we ask, as the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs does, “Who won the war on terror?” the obvious answer certainly is the ex-generals and admirals and other defense contractors who made millions off of it. The man who spun the “war” into the most gold is likely Stanley McChrystal, the loudmouth general who got fired over a Rolling Stone article. But before you start getting all critical, remember: “People have to feed their families” (Farah Stockman has more).
What’s one of the best ways to get these contracts, inquisitive generals and admirals who have yet to cash in want to know. Well, there’s always the “liberal media.” For instance, I read in The Washington Post that “[H.R.] McMaster appeared seven times on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News between Aug. 16 and Aug. 26, according to a new tally from the left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters for America. The same report found that retired general Barry McCaffrey, who in 2010 publicly opposed a proposed timeline for troop withdrawal [from Iraq] without disclosing a conflict of interest, made 13 appearances on MSNBC during that same time stretch. Retired Gen. David Petraeus, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2011 [and who was also fired for being a loudmouth, though just with his author/mistress] appeared six times across the big three cable news networks.”
What bothers me, aside from everything else, is the fact that the entire idea of a “war on terror,” which has invited countless abuses under its rubric, is intellectually incoherent. Terror is a tactic; it’s not a pretty one, but neither is bombing people from planes or killing them and their families with drones. When people are willing to both kill and die for a cause, whatever we may think of it, their calculation is one of costs and benefits: Is what we call “terrorism” (or even more incoherently, “state terrorism”) likely to help you achieve your goals or undermine them? From bin Laden’s perspective, the 9/11 attacks got him and many members of his family killed, but he clearly won his war with the United States and the West many times over. Had we been smarter about fighting our genuine enemies, instead of declaring “war” on terror, we would today be a far healthier, wealthier, and a more respected and beloved nation.
And before anyone gets on his, her, or their high horse, I can think of two societies whose origins rest in significant measure on the successful use of terrorism. One is the United States of America, or at least the American South. Here is a short account of the successful terrorist attacks carried out by the settlers of the Jamestown Colony in 1609–1614: “[S]paring neither infants nor the infirm,” the settlers “burned Powhatan villages, murdered native priests, assassinated chiefs, looted temples, conquered tribal territories, and starved a once-thriving population through harvest-time ‘feed fights.’” The second one is Israel. Bruce Hoffmann, author of Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917–1947, describes the conflict in pre-state Israel as “the first post–World War II ‘war of national liberation’ to clearly recognize the publicity value inherent in terrorism; the violence was often choreographed for an audience far beyond the immediate geographic locus of the terrorists’ struggle.” He credits its success with hastening the British government’s ultimate decision to end its mandate and withdraw its troops, thereby paving the way for the Zionist victory.
After 9/11, however, the power of the T-word was such that the “war” against it could justify almost anything. The Pew Research Center informs us that “Americans widely supported the use of military force to end Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq.” It reminds us that “most Americans thought—erroneously, as it turned out—there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. In October 2002, 66% said that Saddam helped the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” Pew does not mention that perhaps they got that idea from all the lies that were told to them to tie Iraq to the “global war on terror.” (Here is a talk I gave on this topic at a 2004 conference sponsored by the journal Social Research.)
George W. Bush came to the presidency speaking of the necessity for humility on the world stage. “If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us,” he said, but “if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.” But the post-9/11 version of George W. Bush embraced a more expansive definition of U.S. national security and empire than any previous president had. No longer would the U.S. “stand by while peril draws closer and closer.” Never again would we “permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” The United States was undertaking a crusade against “evil,” and other nations needed to decide whether they were “with us or against us.” Bush decided that America would now “take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge,” which is how we ended up in Iraq; a decision that Bush apparently made (we have just learned) as early as three days after the attacks. The reason, as Donald Rumsfeld explained, privately, on 9/11 itself, was “We need to bomb something else [other than Afghanistan] to prove that we are, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kinds of attacks.”
Looking back, we might actually consider ourselves lucky that we got stuck in Iraq, given how many wars the neocons whom Bush soon embraced had in mind. Among their nominations:
- Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Seth Lipsky, former editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, called for U.S. attacks “from Afghanistan to Iran to Iraq to Syria to the Palestinian Authority.”
- The New Republic editors demanded that the Bush administration “move ruthlessly to prevent Iran from acquiring the deadliest arsenal of all.”
- Weekly Standard editor William Kristol also hoped for an immediate “military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.”
- Charles Krauthammer argued in The Washington Post that after the U.S. was done with Afghanistan, Syria should be next, followed by Iran and Iraq.
- Norman Podhoretz, writing in Commentary, termed George W. Bush’s mission to be “to fight World War IV—the war against militant Islam.” Among his favored targets: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, as well as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority.
Let’s give the last word(s) on 9/11 to the great man (Bruce), appearing at the 9/11 20th anniversary ceremony in Lower Manhattan this past weekend: “May god bless our fallen brothers and sisters, and their families, their friends, and their loved ones.”
Odds and Ends
I wrote a pretty long review of Thomas Dyja’s book New York, New York, New York (which I heard Eric Adams tell David Remnick he was in the middle of reading) for Democracy. Part of the reason it’s long is that I also comment on Devon Gordon’s wonderful book on the Mets, So Many Ways to Lose. Read it while watching ESPN’s excellent new “30 for 30” miniseries about the ’86 Mets, Once Upon a Time in Queens. (Mike Tomasky gets credit for the excellent “Jungleland” hed.)
Life without live music is worth living, but only just barely. This past weekend, I saw a lovely show downstairs at Birdland by Nellie McKay, among the most eclectic musicians alive. Nellie is a terrific pianist, a pretty fair ukulele player, and writer of amazingly idiosyncratic lyrics, and also so far left politically that she berated herself onstage for failing to stick it to The Man and getting herself vaccinated. This was an admittedly confusing black mark on an otherwise delightful show that began with a straightforward rendition of “Red Rubber Ball” (co-written, unbeknownst to most, by Paul Simon) and closing (or almost closing) with a song about a young Black girl who wants to grow up to be both (a) a female Jeffrey Dahmer murdering people by way of drills to their skulls, but also (b) president of the United States. Here she is channeling Doris Day.
Here are a few post-9/11, post–Yom Kippur but not, alas, post-pandemic pick-me-ups for the weekend:
- Here’s Bonnie Raitt doing “Runaway,” the 1961 Del Shannon hit, on a 1977 Midnight Special.
- Here is a “Reach Out” contest between two great, great songs: Friend & Lover, “Reach Out of the Darkness” vs. The Four Tops, “Reach Out (I’ll Be There).”
- And Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell doing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
- Also, the late, great Mike Bloomfield with “Albert’s Shuffle.”
Also also, here’s a welcome new discovery for me, a whole Warren Zevon show at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic from 1982. If you’re too busy for the whole show, here Warren sings one of the few songs ever written about U.S. Middle East diplomacy, in honor of the now-forgotten “envoy” Philip Habib.
And here, finally, is a wonderfully written piece about the Dead archives by Max Abelson in n+1 with a bonus appearance from my high school math-nerd friend, now king of the internet, Brewster Kahle. This guy picked out what he thinks are five of the band’s best performances on video. I refuse to choose.
