George W. Bush, Intifadeh, and the War on Terrorism. (04/03/2002)
The US has never been more in need of a consistent, coherent foreign policy, and probably never less in possession of one, than it is now. While it is always difficult, even dangerous, to offer criticism of one's government during times of war, especially in the political climate that exists today in this country, the need to do so has never been greater. This is true for a number of reasons. In the aftermath of the terror that September 11th created in this country, George W. Bush appeared on the stage of that smoke and rubble dressed in a medieval costume fashioned from the clanking armor of a holy Christian knight with the promise that he would lead us to victory in a "crusade" against the evildoers, and the Evil they represent, with all the energy and force that a truly righteous Christian general commands. He has generated a widespread belief in the existence of an "axis of evil" (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea), along with a number of other supporting characters (Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, etc.), that he intends to dismantle with whatever military force is necessary to accomplish the eradication of the terrorism he believes exists in those mostly Islamic places. The problem with this approach to the world stage where Bush is pretending to practice his state-craft is that the issues at stake do not turn on an axis between Good and Evil anymore now than they did during the Middle Ages when Bush's policies against terrorism seem to have come into ideological existence.
To say his approach to the problem is medieval only means to imply that he has persistently followed the dictates that have characterized Christian and Islamic relationships that were current and articulated during the Middle Ages and has mostly and generally failed to escape from the stereotypical attitudes that were prevalent prior to the final Christian crusade against the expansion of the Ottoman empire into Eastern Europe at the end of the 14th Century. That particular encounter between Christian knights and Turkish warriors occurred at Nicopolis in 1396. A unified Christian army, unified because it was composed of soldiers from both sides of the Great Schism in the Western Catholic church that divided Europe at the time, with antagonistic Popes in both Avignon and Rome, was conducted into battle by an inexperienced leader, John of Nevers, who apparently had not learned the lessons of Crecy and Poitiers earlier in the century. England had defeated the French army twice, both times while severely outnumbered, by deploying archers in well-fortified positions against the mounted and heavily armored knights of the French armies. The armor-piercing arrows of the English longbows cut down the French knights well before they were able to engage their enemies and the English won overwhelming victories both times, capturing the French king himself in 1356 at Poitiers. The same thing happened at Nicopolis when Turkish archers virtually annihilated the European army during the battle. This event was significant historically because it was the last time a European army challenged the expansion of the Ottoman empire into eastern Europe.
Geoffrey Chaucer, who lost several friends and acquaintances in the battle, may have included a reference to the events at Nicopolis in the context of the story he assigned to the Man of Law in his Canterbury Tales. The heroine of that tale was promised in marriage by her father, the Emperor of Rome, to the Sultan of Syria. The Christian-Muslim marriage was arranged on condition that the Sultan, and all his baronage, first renounce Islam and convert to Christianity. After the Sultan agreed to the terms, his mother objected to the proposed abandonment of her faith and plotted to murder everyone who converted to Christianity at the marriage feast. The Man of Law, just after the speech made by the Sultan's mother outlining her plan to kill her son, and everyone who supported his decision, engages his audience, the members of Chaucer's pilgrimage, with an aside addressed directly to them (and us), in which he characterizes her as consummate Evil, even as a feminine version of Satan. To say that the Man of Law's diatribe is directed as much toward women in general, a fact made clear by his language, as it is toward the infidel (Muslims in general), is only to acknowledge the fact that both classes of people were often subjected to stereotypical condemnation by Christians at the time. Chaucer's version of anti-Islamic diatribe is only typical of the age, especially in light of the events that unfolded at Nicopolis:
"O Sowdanesse, roote of iniquitee!
Virago, thou Semyrame the secounde!
O serpent under femynynytee,
Lik to the serpent depe in helle ybounde!
O feyned womman, al that may confounde
Vertu and innocence, thurgh thy malice,
Is bred in thee, as nest of every vice!" (II.358-364)
The fact that the Sultan's mother "is bred" to a "malice" that destroys all "vertu and innocence," and clearly so since she executes her plan against the Christian converts after the marriage feast, reduces her to a depth of depravity only matched by the condition achieved by the "serpent depe in helle ybounde," only matched by Satan himself, which is to say that she has fallen to a level quite beyond redemption. To make the essential point again: while typical of the age, this diatribe against Islamic people characterizes them, even in the guise of a supposed femininity, and growing out of the disaster at Nicopolis, which was a Crusade sanctioned by two Popes, as an evil so pervasive and so virulent in their anti-Christian vice that only the strictest kind of Christian justice can be applied to them. Chaucer reports the nature of that justice later (II.953-966) when the Man of Law informs us that the Emperor of Rome, after receiving news of the slaughter of Christians in Syria, sends an army there "to taken heigh vengeance" on the Syrians where the Christians "brennen, sleen, and brynge hem to meschance/ Ful many a day" (II.963-965).
What we see here is an all too typical Christian response to Islam that might well be 600 years old, that might be expressed in a linguistic idiom more suitable to the general anti-feminist ideology of the 14th Century than it is to our own age, but a response, nevertheless, that cannot be said to differ much at all from the position George W. Bush has taken and expressed in his policy decisions in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks against the US on September 11th. The fact that Chaucer's story is only a fiction, even one that might have been inspired for inclusion in Canterbury by the events of the failed Crusade at Nicopolis, does not lessen the reality that the sentiments it engages and expresses, especially toward Islamic people and traditional Christian responses to them, have not changed in any significant sense from then to now. That Bush also seems unable or unwilling to fashion a coherent policy with regard to the escalating cycle of violence in the Middle East, accepting Ariel Sharon's invasion of the Palestinian West Bank as a necessary action against terrorism, while asserting Palestine's right to sovereignty as a State, and authorizing the US ambassador to the UN to vote against the Israeli incursion, suggests, at best, that he is totally conflicted by his Christian heritage and cannot decide what course he should follow, or, at worst, has made the decision to send double messages that support and condemn both side simultaneously in the hopeless belief that he can build an alliance among Islamic states for his war against Iraq without actually damaging Israel's chances of survival as a Jewish state. At the same time, this "strategy" holds out the promise that Bush can collect political capital from both sides of the struggle though a "plausible deniability" that he ever took one side against the other, since he is taking both sides now against the future of there ever being a lasting peace in the region. In the short term, say between now and the mid-term Congressional elections in November, this project will probably be successful. In the longer frame of his own war against terrorism, however, the only coalition he is likely to build is the one willing to fly commercial airliners into American skyscrapers.
While this view of Bush's motives is horribly cynical, at best, and very hopefully ridiculous, on the other hand, I cannot shake it completely out of my mind because of the things I have heard him say, and seen him do, over the course of the past year and a quarter, since the Supreme Court decided he should be President while Al Gore grew a beard. The man most determined to be President, again, is the one who did not win that right in the first place but ended up being in the White House anyway. Bush did not win the popular vote. He probably lost Florida as well as the recount there has suggested. How determined would that make him to legitimize his claim to office the second time around? Seems to me he would be willing to do anything, risk anything, including the future security of this country against terrorist attacks, to secure that goal. Marwan Barghouti, who runs Arafat's Fatah organization in the West Bank and may be responsible for 70% of the attacks against Israel in the latest intifadeh (Time, 04/08/2002, 32), has said that "This aggression [Arafat's captivity in Ramallah] is by an American decision, and American weapons. America is now the one providing cover for terrorism and supporting terrorism" (in James Bennet, "Big Raid May Be Near After Suicide Bombing Kills 14," NY Times, 04/01/2002). Whether Barghouti's perception is valid or not is essentially irrelevant, even one he may not believe himself, since its purpose is not to preserve truth but to incite Islamic terrorists against the US and those countries, especially Israel, that it supports. Bush's tendency to condemn Palestinian terrorists while turning a blind eye to Sharon's campaign in the West Bank, however, does make Barghouti's argument seem plausible to anyone who wants to believe the worst about America's intentions in the region. Since terrorists are recruited from that area of the world, where 77% of the people believe our actions in Afghanistan are unjustifiable, Bush's Middle East policy is only fueling Islamic hatred against this country. While he might have righteous indignation on his side for the events that occurred on September 11th, casting his response to them in the black/white terminology of a Christian condemnation of Satan and Evil only plays to the religious passions that already underlie the conflict between Arabs (Muslim and Christian) and Israelis (Jewish).
A second significant issue that arises in this same context is Homeland Security. Bush has promised Americans that security at our airports will be vastly improved as a result of his determination to prevent terrorists from gaining access to commercial airliners. In that effort so far, he has made flying much more time-consuming, much less convenient, and at times incredibly frustrating. He did this mostly by imposing restrictions on the way Americans customarily live their lives. He has restricted freedom and privacy. Most people, myself included, do not really object to the imposition of federal police and military agents (National Guard troops) between my desire or need to fly and the realization of that hope, especially if those impediments, such as they are, prevent my death from terrorism on the way from here to there. The problem with the Bush plan is that Tom Ridge, who was appointed to administer the Office of Homeland Security, and hence controls the federal budget dedicated to its activities, has recently refused to testify before Congress about any aspect of the Administration's program. This was clearly Bush's intention from the beginning and explains why he created an Office of Homeland Security instead of a Cabinet level post to handle that aspect of his war against terrorism. Ridge did not need to be confirmed by the Senate. He was simply appointed by Bush. No oversight there. The budget dedicated to security from that Office is derived from other departmental (Cabinet level) appropriations and is not voted out of any oversight committee of the Congress. No oversight there either. In effect, then, Tom Ridge is not required to submit a plan to anyone, does not need to justify any expense, is not required to establish any expectation against which success or failure can be judged, and can spend as much or as little of the allocated money on anything he wants. I heard somewhere that Ridge got 38 billion dollars to run his Office. I don't know if that is true. I certainly don't know how much or how little of it he has spent. I don't know what he bought with the money he did spend. Without Congressional oversight, no one else knows either and no one can even ask.
This bothers me because two days ago (April 2, 2002), at the local airport, an individual visiting here from India worked his way through airport security, and even got on the plane, carrying eight knives and two pairs of scissors in his briefcase. He got it through the x-ray machine first. No one noticed the knives. At a "random" search at the boarding gate, not really "random," of course, because he was racially profiled as "Middle Eastern," the searcher discovered and confiscated six knives and two pairs of scissors. The man was then allowed to board the plane. During a subsequent search of his briefcase after he boarded, the other two knives were discovered. At that point, every plane on the concourse was evacuated, the Indian man was arrested, and the people flying that day got to be re-screened for the next three hours before their flights were allowed to depart. No one knows yet whether the man with the knives was, or is, a terrorist; no one knows if he intended to harm anyone. His problem seems to be that he does not read or speak English well enough to know that carrying knives onto a plane is illegal. The only thing that worked here was racial profiling. My question is simple: does Tom Ridge need 38 billion dollars to put the time-honored American tradition of judging people by the color of their skin in place at our nation's airports?
Bush makes promises, makes both foreign and domestic policy decisions, that typically inspire activities meant to change the situation abroad and improve it at home but, after even minimal analysis, including but not limited to the effect those policies produce in the real world, one cannot avoid seeing that his foreign initiatives only make matters worse and his domestic actions, apart from making his governance more and more secretive, less and less accessible, have no significant effect whatsoever. In an opinion poll released by CBS today, in response to the question of whether or not the US has any role to play in solving the crisis in the Middle East, 44% of those questioned say Yes, while 46% say No. With 10% not able, or willing, to respond, Bush has managed to create a statistical "dead-heat" in the opinions Americans have about the significance of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis and any potential diplomatic or military role we should play in trying to resolve it. That result is to be expected, of course, since the President's leadership on the issue has shifted back and forth from one side to the other, even on a day-to-day basis, from the beginning to the inevitable end (whatever that might be) of the intifadeh. If full-scale war breaks out between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and it is more and more difficult to see how one does not already exist as such, Bush's war against terrorism, if he really means to have one, will effectively cease to exist because it cannot be prosecuted without cooperation from Islamic states, none of which will take our side if Israel defeats Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt in another all-out war.