A history of our future
It is a testament to the insidious if unwitting bias of U.S. media that its accounts of the war in Iraq tell an almost unrecognizably different story from those of international media outlets. Here we read accounts of “minor setbacks” and the occasional potential “change of plans.” On the whole it seems everything is going well for us, though, right? Bombs are falling. The promise of victory lights up the skies over Baghdad.
In the UK, the evening news tells tales of the grossly underestimated resolve and resourcefulness of the enemy, of coalition soldiers’ increasing inability to distinguish civilians from enemy combatants, of new and frightening rules of engagement that threaten to undermine the meticulous military planning that our forces carried across oceans and deserts to unfold.
Surely no one doubts that other news conduits hold biases all their own. But if the accounts on the BBC don’t have an eerily familiar ring to them, you need to open a history book.
I would argue that a bane of the American existence has been our stubborn obstinacy in the face of our history – a refusal to learn from our own mistakes. This isn’t the first time the public has heard news that the war is going to take just a little longer than expected, and it’s certainly not the first time our ambitions of foreign regime change have been put to the test.
Then again, maybe the administration deserves a little more credit for study of the past. After all, it was Donald Rumsfeld who, upon assuming his current office, made it one of his first priorities to assemble a commission for the explicit purpose of historical research. That’s right, our friend Don put together a think tank to assess the strategies of conquerors of the likes of Ghenghis Khan and Alexander the Great to ascertain just how they went about assembling and maintaining their monolithic empires.
Evidently he discovered that step number one is to start invading other countries.
As our country and our culture teeter on the brink of a 21st century “friendly” fascism, those of us who know our history can’t help but feel a little queasy when radio stations start banning (Elvis help us) the Dixie Chicks of all people.
The civil liberties that distinguished the United States as a bulwark of freedom and democracy unparalleled in the world before are being stripped away, slowly and systematically, by rising paranoia and quietly bubbling nationalism.
The footage of wounded children in Iraqi clinics, the victims of stray missiles and errant gunfire, is chilling to say the least. But perhaps even more distressing are the vengeful vows of the parents who sit at their infants’ bedsides, seeing nothing in the eyes of their dying children but stars and stripes.
The doctrine of reform in the Middle East that Fuhrer . . . er . . . Mr. Bush envisions doesn’t end at Iraq’s borders. And it doesn’t cease when the war there is won. Through his brilliant and unapologetic defiance of all things sane and logical, our fearless leader has signed our country up for decades of warfare that will cost us billions of dollars and untold numbers of lives. Luckily for him there’s no intelligence requirement for becoming leader of the free (I use the term delicately) world.
Yet his strategy is flawlessly self-perpetuating, as our violent meddling is guaranteed to spawn generations of fanatics whose terrorist alliances will make Osama look like a saint.
One hopes that such sinister predictions won’t come to fruition. But even a rudimentary grasp of the ebb and flow of the tide of history leaves little room for optimism for the fate of our nation.
What Rumsfeld apparently missed in his concentrated historical survey is that no system based on far-flung aggression and tenacious exertion of will can last for long.
Provided books haven’t been banned outright by the time our grandchildren are being educated on the history of their forebears, they might read about us in a volume entitled “The United States: What Went Wrong?” A sordid tale of good old-fashioned lack of foresight and distaste for hindsight will likely unfold.
My favorite thing about the future, though, is that it hasn’t happened yet. If we pull our heads out of the Middle Eastern sand soon, we might yet be able to provide a lesson to future generations on how to turn it all around. The window of opportunity closes a little further with every bomb that falls.
