From the Alamo to Pearl Harbor, Americans have long favored the mobilizing defeat, the heinous ambush that gets our juices flowing and leads, in the end, to military triumph out there on the “frontier” where the barbarians threaten. The coming of the atomic bomb dismantled this part of an American triumphalist tradition. When the two superpowers faced off for war, as in the Cuban missile crisis, an “atomic Pearl Harbor” (as the phrase once went) lacked any triumphalist magic at all. No atomic ambush could rally Americans for such a war. The mobilizing last stand had been replaced by a demobilizing one. After this Alamo, there would be no Texas, after this Little Big Horn, no Montana, after this Pearl Harbor, no Hawaii, maybe no America, maybe no world. The Tonkin Gulf Incident certainly got a “resolution” for war out of Congress, but Johnson never dared mobilize Americans for “victory.” (Those who are interested in more on this subject, check out my own book, The End of Victory Culture.)
Now, in the post-post-Cold War world, where our terrorist enemies are not quite yet nuclear-armed, and our state enemies are not faintly superpowers, the Bush administration has been trying hard to rebuild an American victory culture on the basis of a mobilizing defeat — the infamous assaults of September 11th, 2001. These have been used as mobilizing defeats to rally the country to agendas Americans would never normally have supported. As Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost, A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, indicates in his piece below, which appeared in this Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle Insight section, we should be prepared for more such “mobilizing” moments — whether (you might say) they actually occur or not. Tom
War or Peace?
The U.S. is looking for an excuse to fight
By Adam Hochschild
San Francisco Chronicle
January 19, 2003As the American armada of ships, warplanes, tanks and other equipment pours into the region around Iraq, the only uncertainty about President Bush’s misguided and dangerous war seems to be just when it will start. But there’s something else we should watch for closely, for wars seldom start without one.
What will be the final pretext for opening fire? Most wars need such a fig leaf, and unpopular wars most of all. Seldom, if ever, has the United States prepared for war with so little support. The administration itself is divided. Major allies are balky. At home, there are peace marches but no war marches; abroad, opinion polls almost everywhere show angry, overwhelming opposition. All this makes President Bush, more than ever, need a plausible excuse to start his war.
What will that be?
San Francisco writer Adam Hochschild is the author of “King Leopold’s Ghost,” “Finding the Trapdoor” and other books
To read more Hochschild click here
As the American armada of ships, warplanes, tanks and other equipment pours into the region around Iraq, the only uncertainty about President Bush’s misguided and dangerous war seems to be just when it will start. But there’s something else we should watch for closely, for wars seldom start without one.
What will be the final pretext for opening fire? Most wars need such a fig leaf, and unpopular wars most of all. Seldom, if ever, has the United States prepared for war with so little support. The administration itself is divided. Major allies are balky. At home, there are peace marches but no war marches; abroad, opinion polls almost everywhere show angry, overwhelming opposition. All this makes President Bush, more than ever, need a plausible excuse to start his war.
What will that be?
San Francisco writer Adam Hochschild is the author of “King Leopold’s Ghost,” “Finding the Trapdoor” and other books