The Long View: Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism
This 2004 book review by John J. Reilly slipped through the cracks. It is an interesting combination of what now seems like insane warmongering about Iraq, but was in fact totally normal at the time across almost all sectors of America, and this little gem of foreign policy:
One of the items in the book that antedate 911 describes a visit to UN-administered Kosovo, which O'Rourke sees as a test case for the new doctrine of waiting six months after a campaign of atrocity really gets started and then bombing the country next door. He finds merit in the UN's policy of trying to turn ethnic rivalry into building-management complaints. However, what the Balkans really needs is lots of barbed wire to keep the ethnic groups from murdering each other. Multiculturalism makes it hard to say this tactfully.
Peace Kills:
America's Fun New Imperialism
By P. J. O'Rourke
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004
224 Pages, US$23.00
ISBN 0-87113-919-7
Well, here's an example of bad timing for you.
After the first Gulf War, P. J. O'Rourke published “Give War a Chance,” a largely celebratory anthology that made good use of O'Rourke's signature mix of acid wit, statistics, and denunciations of the French. In the immediate aftermath of what President Bush calls “major military operations” in Iraq in the spring of 2003, no doubt another such anthology seemed just the ticket. As this review is being written a bit over a year later, it seems to me that the reasons for going to war in Iraq have grown no less; certainly we have learned nothing that mitigates the genocidal nature of the previous regime. A fair assessment would still come to the conclusion that peace in 2003 would have killed far more people in the long run than the war and the subsequent insurgency. However, unlike America's wars of the '80s and '90s, the war in Iraq has turned out to be a long struggle against a ruthless and persistent foe. It is essential that we win this war, but it is no fun at all.
Fortunately, O'Rourke is no fool. Despite the flippant title, there is substance in this book's humor. It used to be that O'Rourke could visit Horrible Places and file despatches that spiked accounts of chaos and pathos with information about the local prices of recreational drugs. On 911, Washington and New York became Horrible Places (he was in Washington at the time). Even if he were not a suburban father these days, he would have nothing to tell us now about the price of drugs. That is not to say his old skills have deserted him. He can still look at the placards of the ANSWER organization at a demonstration and immediately coin a counter-acronym: “Quotidian Undergraduates Eagerly Supporting Terrorist Internment On Neptune.” And he has not let up on the French.
Foreign policy presents real philosophical problems. O'Rourke is one of the few commentators who will admit that the deepest problem is why theory, and even luck, make such little difference:
“We saw the results of Clinton's emotional, ad hoc, higgledy-piggledy foreign policy. It led to strained relations with Russia and China, increased violence in the Middle East, continued fighting in Africa and Asia, and Serbs killing Albanians. Then we saw the results of Bush's tough, calculated, focused foreign policy---strained relations with Russia and China, increased violence in the Middle East, continued fighting in Africa and Asia, and Albanians killing Serbs. Between the first year of the Clinton administration and the first year of the Bush administration, we went from attack on the World Trade Towers to World Trade Towers Attack.”
One of the items in the book that antedate 911 describes a visit to UN-administered Kosovo, which O'Rourke sees as a test case for the new doctrine of waiting six months after a campaign of atrocity really gets started and then bombing the country next door. He finds merit in the UN's policy of trying to turn ethnic rivalry into building-management complaints. However, what the Balkans really needs is lots of barbed wire to keep the ethnic groups from murdering each other. Multiculturalism makes it hard to say this tactfully.
Nowhere does O'Rourke suggest that the 2003 Iraq War was other than a good thing. In fact, he suggests that President Bush might have justified the war more plausibly by simply saying this about Saddam Hussein:
“'Here's a man who's been murdering everyone he could get his hands on for twenty-five years. We don't need a reason. We're going to do to Iraq's dictator what Hollywood does to its has-beens at the Academy Awards Ceremony. We're giving Saddam Hussein a Lifetime Achievement Award.'”
O'Rourke was in Iraq in March and April of 2003, and already he was asking: “Why is Iraq so easy to harm and so hard to help?” His account of an attempt to distribute food in the not-very-desperate southern town of Safwan may tell us quite a lot about Iraqi political culture:
“Al-Kandari [of the Red Crescent Society] had persuaded the Iraqis to form ranks. They looked patient and grateful, the way we privately imagine the recipients of food donations looking when we're writing checks to charities. Then the trailer was opened and everything went to hell.
“Al-Kandari marched through the donnybrook and slammed the trailer doors shut. He harangued the Iraqis. They lined up again. The trailer was opened, and everything went to hell....
“I stared at the rampage for an hour. Now and then I'd be noticed on the trailer roof. Whenever I caught someone's eye, I was greeted with a big, happy smile. The Iraqis were having fun.”
The final piece in the book was occasioned by a visit to Iwo Jima that O'Rourke made in July of 2003. That was the site of a battle from February 19 to March 26 of 1945, when 20,000 Japanese soldiers and 6,821 Americans were killed. Having just come from a low-casualty 21st century war, O'Rourke marvels that advanced people could have fought a war like World War II. The combatants were not even strangers. O'Rourke mentions one Japanese officer who had competed successfully in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, and who knew Spencer Tracey. Iwo Jima was not quite the last major battle of World War II, but it was important to ending the war in the Pacific. By that token, maybe it was also important to ending something even bigger:
“Since then military hordes swarming in all-out attack and military masses falling in last-ditch defense have been rare. When they happened, evolutionary throw-backs were involved---Kim Il Sung, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein...We're coming to the end of the long, dark modern age. Slaughters of unnumbered human beings continue, but not among people who knew Spencer Tracey. Warfare persists, but the scale of battle is returning to something that Hector and Ajax would recognize...Maybe everybody's death will matter.”
Since those words were written, the number of Coalition deaths in Iraq has doubled and tripled. Still, O'Rourke's point stands. In civilized countries, mass casualties are now more to be feared by civilians than by the military. Refusing to go to war may now mean the greater loss of life.
Copyright © 2008 by John J. Reilly
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