All This Useless Power
mohammad
One day, sometime during my junior or senior year in high school, I
noticed a book on display at the checkout desk of my high school's
library, a collection of Paul Harvey radio commentaries. Despite
growing up on Army bases and in Southern California suburbs (or perhaps
because of that), I'd never heard of the man, and I wondered aloud who
he was.
"Him? The sun rises and sets on that man in the Midwest," replied the
head librarian, the mother of an acquaintance and classmate of mine.
That was 20 years ago. Since then, I've traveled a little around the
country - including the Midwest - on my own and listened to a few
Paul Harvey commentaries. To me, he is an emissary from a strange and
foreign land, a patriotic, God-fearing and hard-working America of
simple, kind, tough, fair and generous people I have never really known
and have never lived with, an America that is as beyond my experience
as Saudi Arabia is probably beyond Paul Harvey's.
His voice is compelling, melodious and assuring, the kind of man who
could lull a lamb to sleep with beautiful words just before he draws
the knife across its throat. Not that Harvey would ever do such a
thing. It would stain his nice, clean shirt.
But he does think about these things. About the knife, that is, the
shape and texture of its handle, how it would feel with his fingers
curled around it, and where the veins and arteries are in the neck of
the beast he is killing.
Most recently, in late June, Harvey mused about the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The transcript of his comments, a small portion of a much
longer commentary, are available here. But don't just read them, listen
to what he says, to how he says it, to the tone of his voice and the
meter of his words:
Following New York, Sept. 11, Winston Churchill was not here to
remind us that we didn't come this far because we're made of sugar
candy.
So, following the New York disaster, we mustered our humanity.
We gave old pals a pass, even though men and money from Saudi
Arabia were largely responsible for the devastation of New York and
Pennsylvania and our Pentagon.
We called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism and we sent
men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons
in our silos.
Even now we're standing there dying, daring to do nothing
decisive, because we've declared ourselves to be better than our
terrorist enemies - more moral, more civilized.
Our image is at stake, we insist.
But we didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy.
He goes on to say how our ancestors seized this land through genocide
and biological warfare and became wealthy, in part, because of slave
labor. And then laments that we are growing soft, and will soon be
"dominated by the lean, hungry and up and coming who are not made of
sugar candy."
The words themselves are a horrifying, if somewhat honest, assessment.
I will not focus, as some have, on his willingness to justify mass
murder and enslavement. That is history, and it is, to a degree, the
history of all human societies. It is the stuff of human history and
will be as long as men and women inhabit the Earth.
That's why I asked you to listen to what he said, and not merely read
it. His voice is angry, it is studded with sincere and honest
disbelief, and behind his implication that the United States needs to
unleash its nuclear arsenal against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a
question, a question I believe a lot of Americans are asking:
"With all this power at our disposal, with all our missiles and planes,
why are people still resisting us? Why aren't we winning? Why haven't
we already won?"
Harvey's words and tone are not the words of someone confident of
victory. They are the words of someone who fears defeat.
The power of which Harvey speaks - the missiles secured snugly in
America's heartland and cradled in submarines that skulk the world's
oceans - is effectively useless now. That power's only real strength
is to deter attack from similarly armed governments. The power of the
hydrogen bomb lies not in its kaboom, but in its evil and silent grin.
That is, its job is to menace. Once codes are sent and keys are turned,
sending those missiles skyward, they have failed.
They may work, technically. But their real job was to ensure they were
never used.
However, the United States does not face a similarly armed government
in al Qaeda or among the insurgents in Iraq. In the former, we face
ideological and religious revolutionaries whose ardor will only be
extinguished by failure, and since all ideological revolutions
eventually fail, that will come soon enough. In the latter, we confront
nationalists fighting for home, family and, (for some) the restoration
of privilege. Simple things, things we would fight for if a Chinese or
Arab army occupied our land.
In the end, in the world we live in now, a world where genocide has
become an unacceptable "policy option," anyone who fights hard enough
and long enough for their home and family usually wins.
Even America's Army, Navy and Air Force have become useless
instruments. Our soldiers can occupy, our planes can bomb relentlessly
and with precision, our ships can patrol the seas, but who fears us
now? Five years ago, when the glow of the War to Liberate Kuwait and
air offensive against Yugoslavia still made American arms appear
invincible, perhaps the governments and peoples of the world trembled
at the thought of the United States military. But today, when a few
thousand insurgents can tie down, tire and incapacitate that Army, what
is there to left to fear? Some governments may still quake at the
thought of air strikes and the destruction of government "capital" and
"investments" they would bring. But a people determined to resist us
can look at Iraq and take heart - yes, we can be beaten. It's not all
that hard.
Harvey is right to fear defeat. In many ways, we have already lost.
When our whole approach to fighting "terror" is to inflict pain on
people until they behave they way we want, what do we do when they can
take all the pain we have to give? How much more pain are we willing
- or able - to inflict until we realize the pointlessness of it
all? Or until conscience confronts us?
And how many hydrogen bombs are we willing to use? One? Two? A dozen? A
hundred? And if people still resist, or are driven to resist, what
then? Shall we destroy the entire world?
We have unleashed our power upon the world only to discover that it is
terribly finite, a great deal more limited than we hoped and imagined.
Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on bombs, tanks, planes,
soldiers, and every passing day we are less and less able to bend the
world to our will.
A whole arsenal of useless power.
No, we are not made of "sugar candy." That our ancestors triumphed over
terrible adversity (and yes, they murdered and enslaved too) and that
each of us, as individuals, live with hope in the face of the clear and
often random cruelty of life are testament to that. But in his anger,
Paul Harvey and those who agree with him should remember that neither
are we made of air-hardened steel, and were we to resort to mass murder
in our fight against "terror," we would be faced with the very real
power of conscience that Cardinal Ratzinger wrote so movingly about
before he became Pope Benedict XVI:
Where conscience prevails there is a barrier against the domination
of human orders and human whim, something sacred that must remain
inviolable and that in an ultimate sovereignty evades control not only
by oneself but by every external agency. Only the absoluteness of
conscience is the complete antithesis to tyranny; only the recognition
of its inviolability protects human beings from each other and from
themselves; only its rule guarantees freedom.
Unlike armies, navies and treasuries, conscience is real power because
it works from the inside to bend men and women to its will. It doesn't
succeed often, but that it succeeds at all is enough to inspire faith
and hope. Even the Islamic Revolutionaries of al Qaeda, murderous and
self-righteous in their rage, must face conscience; that is why there
are so few of them. It is also important to remember that conscience is
not just a child born of our "liberal" and "enlightened" age; it has
confronted men of all faiths in all ages.
And will do so as long as men - whoever they are - struggle to
dominate other men.
July 7, 2005
Charles H. Featherstone is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist
specializing in energy, the Middle East, and Islam. He lives with his
wife Jennifer in Alexandria, Virginia.
URL:http://www.lewrockwell.com/featherstone/featherstone31.html