4

The Nation.

April 7, 2003

COMMENT

TheNation.

American Tragedy

PUBLISHER AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Victor Navasky

EDITOR: Katrina vanden Heuvel
LITERARY EDITOR: Art Winslow
MANAGING EDITOR: Karen Rothmyer
SENIOR EDITORS: Richard Lingeman, Betsy Reed (on leave), Esther Kaplan (acting)
COPY CHIEF: Roane Carey
COPY EDITOR: Judith Long
COPY ASSOCIATE: Lisa Vandepaer
ASSISTANT COPY EDITOR/TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR: Amiri K. Barksdale
ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR: Peggy Suttle
ASSISTANT LITERARY EDITOR: Hillary Frey
INTERNS: Daniel Benaim, Jonah Engle, Erin Sabra Fuchs, Elinore Longobardi, Jonathan

Miller (Washington), Priyanka Motaparthy, Melanie Smith, Christopher Swetala,

Ari Z. Weisbard
WASHINGTON, DC: EDITOR: David Corn; CORRESPONDENT: John Nichols
NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: William Greider
COLUMNISTS: Eric Alterman, Alexander Cockburn, Naomi Klein, Katha Pollitt,

Patricia J. Williams
DEPARTMENTS: Architecture, Jane Holtz Kay; Art, Arthur C. Danto;
Corporations, Robert Sherrill; Defense, Michael T. Klare; Films, Stuart Klawans;
Legal Affairs, David Cole; Music, Edward W. Said, Gene Santoro; Peace and
Disarmament, Jonathan Schell; Poetry, Grace Schulman; United Nations, Ian Williams;
Deadline Poet, Calvin Trillin
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Lucia Annunziata, Kai Bird, George Black,
Robert L. Borosage, Stephen F. Cohen, Marc Cooper, Mike Davis, Slavenka Drakulic,
Robert Dreyfuss, Susan Faludi, Thomas Ferguson, Doug Henwood, Max Holland,
Molly Ivins, John Leonard, Michael Moore, Richard Pollak, Joel Rogers,
Kirkpatrick Sale, Robert Scheer, Herman Schwartz, Andrew L. Shapiro, Bruce Shapiro,
Ted Solotaroff, Edward Sorel, Gore Vidal, Jon Wiener, Amy Wilentz
BUREAUS: Budapest, Mikls Vmos; London, Maria Margaronis and
D.D. Guttenplan; Southern Africa, Mark Gevisser
EDITORIAL BOARD: Norman Birnbaum, Richard Falk, Frances FitzGerald,
Eric Foner, Philip Green, Lani Guinier, Tom Hayden, Randall Kennedy, Tony Kushner,
Elinor Langer, Deborah W. Meier, Toni Morrison, Richard Parker, Michael Pertschuk,
Elizabeth Pochoda, Neil Postman, Marcus G. Raskin, David Weir, Roger Wilkins
PRESIDENT: Teresa Stack
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, SPECIAL PROJECTS/WEBSITE: Peter Rothberg
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, DEVELOPMENT/ASSOCIATES: Peggy Randall
VICE PRESIDENT, ADVERTISING: Ellen Bollinger
ADVERTISING MANAGER, SMALL DISPLAY, EVENTS, CLASSIFIED: Michael Tierno
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR: Arthur Stupar
CIRCULATION MANAGER: Michelle OKeefe
ASSISTANT CIRCULATION MANAGER: Inga Knets
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR: Jane Sharples
TYPOGRAPHER/WEB PRODUCER: Sandy McCroskey
PRINT COORDINATOR: Timothy Don
NATION ASSOCIATES MANAGER: Peter Fifield
PUBLICITY/SYNDICATION DIRECTOR: Mike Webb
COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR: Imrana Sayed
DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY/WEB PUBLISHER: Scott Klein
CONTROLLER: Mary van Valkenburg
ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER AND OFFICE MANAGER: Mary Taylor Schilling
DATA ENTRY/MAIL COORDINATOR: John Holtz
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT: Kathleen Thomas
RECEPTIONIST/BUSINESS ASSISTANT: Larri Washington
AND LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: E-mail manuscripts to
submissions@thenation.com; e-mail letters to the editor (300-word limit) to letters@
thenation.com. E-mail is preferred, but submissions and letters may also be mailed to
The Nation, 33 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003. Not responsible for the return of unsolicited manuscripts unless accompanied by SASE. Letters are subject to editing for
reasons of space and clarity.

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS

The Nation (ISSN 0027-8378) is published weekly (except for the second week in January, and biweekly the fourth week of July through the third week of September) by The
Nation Company, L.P. 2003 in the U.S.A. by The Nation Company, L.P., 33 Irving Place,
New York, NY 10003. (212) 209-5400. Washington Bureau: Suite 308, 110 Maryland
Avenue N.E., Washington, DC 20002. (202) 546-2239. Periodicals postage paid at New
York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. International Telex: 667 155 NATION. Subscription orders, changes of address and all subscription inquiries: The Nation, PO Box
55149, Boulder, CO 80322-5149, or call 1-800-333-8536. When ordering a subscription, please allow 4-6 weeks for receipt of your first issue and for all subscription
transactions. Back issues $4 prepaid ($6 foreign) from: The Nation, 33 Irving Place, New
York, NY 10003. The Nation is available on microfilm from: University Microfilms, 300
North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Member, Audit Bureau of Circulations. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Nation, PO Box 55149, Boulder, CO 80322-5149.
This issue went to press on March 19. Printed in U.S.A. on recycled paper.
INTERNET: Selections from The Nation are available on Thursday by 12 midnight

Eastern Time, at www.thenation.com.

he decision to go to war to overthrow the government of Iraq

will bring unreckonable death and suffering to that country,
the surrounding region and, possibly, the United States. It also
marks a culmination in the rise within the United States of an
immense concentration of unaccountable power that poses
the greatest threat to the American constitutional system since the
Watergate crisis. This transformation, in turn, threatens to push
the world into a new era of rivalry, confrontation and war. The
location of the new power is of course the presidency (whose
Augustan proportions make the imperial presidency of the
cold war look like a mere practice run). Its sinews are the awesome might of the American military machine, which, since Congresss serial surrender of the constitutional power to declare war,
has passed wholly into the Presidents hands. Its main political
instrument is the Republican Party. Its financial wherewithal is
the corporate money that inundates the political realm. Its strategy
at home is restriction of civil liberties, deep secrecy, a makeover
in its image of the judiciary, subservience to corporate interests
across the board and transfer of personal wealth on a colossal
scale from the average person to its wealthy supporters. Its popular support stems from fear engendered by the attacks of September 11fear that has been manipulated to extend far beyond
its proper objects. Its overriding goal, barely concealed behind
the banner of the war on terrorism, is the accumulation of ever
more power, whose supreme expression is its naked ambition to
establish hegemony over the earth.
The steps in the rise of this power can be traced through international and domestic events. When the Soviet Union collapsed
and the cold war ended, the United States was left in a position of
global privilege, prestige and might that had no parallel in history.
The moment seemed a golden one for the American form of
government, liberal democracy. The American economic system
was equally admired. In the previous two decades, a long list of
nationsin southern Europe, in Latin America, in Asiahad
chosen both systems, largely of their own free will. Even more
astonishing, most of the peoples under the rule of the collapsed
Soviet foe were making the same choice. The Soviet system had
not only disintegrated; it had discredited itself. No rival was in
sight. There were good reasons, even if one did not suppose that
the end of history touted by Francis Fukuyama had arrived, for
hoping that these trends would continue. A basically consensual
rather than a coerced world seemed a real possibility.
Who could have guessed that barely a decade later the United
States, forsaking the very legal, democratic traditions that were its
most admired characteristics, would be going to war to impose its
will by force upon an alarmed, angry, frightened world united
against it? Its clear in retrospect that somewhere near the root of
the problem was the very existence of the unchallengeable American military machine. In part, the imbalance with other nations
was accidental. The machine had been built up in the name of
containing the considerable military forces of the Soviet Union.
When, against all expectation, the Soviet Union suddenly disappeared like a bad dream, the American giant found itself towering

April 7, 2003

The Nation.

COMMENT
alone over the world. America likes to see itself as a force for
good. Yet like all unchecked, unbalanced power, such might had,
as the founders of this country knew so well, the potential to corrupt its possessors. The decade that followed was a mixed picture
in which the raw arrogance of power was tempered by a lingering
respect for the opinions of other nations and a search for common
ground in the name of humanitarian objectives. In the first Gulf
War, the will and the muscle to go to war were mainly American,
but skillful diplomacy won the support or acquiescence of most
nations, and the causerepelling an act of aggressionwon
wide acceptance. In Kosovo, the United States acted without explicit United Nations agreement, angering many nations, yet the
action was taken in the name of NATO, not merely the United
States, and Serbian outrages on the ground helped create a climate
of support around the world. The turning point, of course, came
on September 11. Yet even then the United States gained considerable support for its first act of regime changeoverthrowing
the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which many understood
as a measure of self-defense in the aftermath of a horrifying
attack upon the United States. It was in the year that followed
that the ambiguities of the 1990s were resolved in favor of the
coherent, radical new policy of dominance asserted through the
unilateral, pre-emptive use of force to overthrow other governments. The more clearly the Administration stated this policy,
the more the world rebelled.
The path through domestic events to this same destination
arguably begins with the impeachment attempt against President
Bill Clinton, in which the Republican Party abused its majority
power in Congress to try to knock a President of the other party
out of the executive branch. The attempt failed, but the institutional siege on the presidency continued in the resolution of the
freakishly close vote in Florida in 2000. In a further abuse of government powerin this case the judicial branchthe President
was chosen by a vote not of the people of the United States but
of the Supreme Court. The message of Republicans at the time
in Congress and the Florida legislature was that if judges did not
produce the result they demanded, they would bring on a constitutional crisis in the House of Representatives. A new conception
of democracy was born: Freedom is your right to support what we
want. Otherwise, you are irrelevant. You can vote, but you do
not decide. Unilateralism was born in Florida.
The tragedy of America in the postcold war era is that we
have proved unequal to the responsibility that our own power
placed upon us. Some of us became intoxicated with it, imagining that we could rule the world. Others of usthe Democratic
Party, Congress, the judiciary, the news mediaabdicated our
obligation to challenge, to check and to oppose, letting the powerhungry have their way. The government of the United States went
into opposition against its own founding principles, leaving it to
the rest of the world to take up our cause. The French have been
better Americans than we have. Because the Constitution, though
battered, is still intact, we may still have time and opportunity to
recoup. But for now, we will have to pay the price of our weakness. The costs will be heavy, first of all for the people of Iraq
but also for others, including ourselves. The international order
on which the common welfare, including its ecological and

economic welfare, depends has sustained severe damage. The

fight for freedom abroad is crippling freedom at home. The war
to stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has
provoked that very proliferation in North Korea and Iran. More
ground has already been lost in the field of proliferation than can
be gained even by the most delirious victory in Baghdad. Former
friends of America have been turned into rivals or foes. The United
States may be about to win Iraq. It has already lost the world.
JONATHAN SCHELL
Jonathan Schell is the Nation Institutes Harold Willens Peace Fellow.

The Poodle That Barked

London
eorge Bush is supposed to be the cowboy, Tony Blair the sidekickor, in some versions, the presidential poodle. But as
the British prime minister walked to the despatch box on the
afternoon of March 18, he had the grim resolution of a man
strapping on his six-shooter. For the past several weeks Blair
had been taking his case to the opposition: facing a hostile studio
audience on the BBCs Newsnight program, even arguing with
skeptical twentysomethings on MTV. None of these encounters
went his way, and in every one of them the prime minister stressed
the crucial importance of the United Nations as the means for disarming Iraq. Yet Britains hopes of a second UN resolution
widely viewed as a political life raft for Blairhad smashed on
the rock of French opposition, and now the prime ministers worst
political nightmare had come to pass: He had to convince the
House of Commons that war without UN sanction was not only
inevitable but justified. Blairs response to this disaster was to raise
the stakes: Should the vote go against the governments motion
authorizing war and in favor of a rival proposal calling for the
weapons inspectors to be given more time, he told the Commons,
I will not be party to such a course.
By threatening to resign if he lost, Blair forced a badly divided Labour Party to choose between peace and power, and for all
but the most committed opponents of the war, the outcome was
preordained. That Blair felt compelled to issue such a threat is an
indication of just how unpopular this war is in Britainas is the
fact that 139 members of Blairs own party still voted against him.
Widely derided as being out of touch with the country, in fact
Blair showed an acute awareness of the oppositions weaknesses
and how best to exploit them. His constant references to French
intransigence were both a shrewd appeal to Britains oldest prejudice and a welcome distraction from Blairs friend in the White
House. When Clare Short, the overseas aid minister often described as the conscience of the Cabinet, threatened to resign if
Britain went to war without a second UN resolution, and even
described Blairs approach as recklessthe sort of remark that
would, in normal times, cost her jobBlair held his fire. And
though three other Cabinet ministers did resign, that news was
overshadowed by Shorts decision to back the warand keep her
job. Blairs management of expectations was flawless; the largest
revolt against a prime minister by his own party in more than