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Today's
Stories
October
25 / 26, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
Saul Landau
Contradictions: Pumping Empire and Losing Job Muscles
Phillip Cryan
The War on Human Rights in Colombia
Kurt Nimmo
Cuba and the "Necessary Viciousness" of the Bushites
Nelson P. Valdes
Traveling to Cuba: Where There's a Will, There's a Way
Lisa Viscidi
The Guatemalan Elections: Fraud, Intimidation and Indifference
Maria Trigona and Fabian
Pierucci
Allende Lives
Larry
Tuttle
States of Corruption
William A. Cook
Failing America
Brian
Cloughley
US Economic Space and New Zealand
Adrian Zupp
What Would Buddha Do? Why Won't the Dalai Lama Pick a Fight?
Merlin
Chowkwanyun
The Strange and Tragic Case of Sherman Marlin Austin
Ben Tripp
Screw You Right Back: CIA FU!
Lee Ballinger
Grits Ain't Groceries
Mickey Z.
Not All Italians Love Columbus
Bruce
Jackson
On Charles Burnett's "Warming By the Devil's Fire"
William Benzon
The Door is Open: Scorsese's Blues, 2
Adam Engel
The Eyes of Lora Shelley
Walt Brasch
Facing a McBlimp Attack
Poets'
Basement
Mickey Z, Albert, Kearney
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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October
25, 2003
Plotting Pre-emptive
Strikes
"The
Readiness is All"
By JAMES BUNN
As a teacher of literature I am struck by the
dearth of literary, historical or philosophical works that celebrate
or even sanction pre-emptive strikes. Most great plots in history
are scripted in moral favor of the people who have resisted invading
or occupying forces. I recall Leonidas, the leader of ten thousand
Spartans, who withstood King Xerxes' hundreds of thousands of
invading Persians at the narrow pass at Thermopylae. Or I remember
Michelangelo's statue of young David with his slingshot, waiting
easy in his naked silence and ready to hurl a stone from his
slingshot at the heavily armed giant, the braggart Goliath. Both
of those figures, one Greek and the other Judaic, feature fighters
central to the tradition of Western civics, who are poised in
potential energy, ready to fight, but awaiting the right timing.
They are icons of readiness. They await with certainty the exact
time for action.
Hamlet's dilemma, however, is just the
opposite of those two heroes. For Hamlet cannot seem to find
the right time to act. He vacillates indecisively, even when
faced with fairly clear evidence that his uncle had murdered
his father. Yet he later says, at a crucial moment in his tragic
plot, "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come,
it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness
is all." The historian and civil libertarian, Bernard DeVoto,
thought the last phrase to be the "greatest statement in
English." Later, in his most sublime tragedy, Shakespeare
has King Lear say poignantly, "Ripeness is all." In
Shakespeare's plays there is something of fatefulness in seeking
the mature time in which to act.
I recall, furthermore, the statue of
the Minute Man, lightly armed like David, ready to withstand
the first shots of the invading Redcoats at Concord Bridge. Does
pre-emptive action, in itself, violate the principle of guarded
readiness that symbolizes the Concord statue of American liberty?
Do Americans act out of character when we are told by our leaders
that we must invade before violence is expected to be taken against
us? Do unto others before they do unto you? Not just the timing
of a violent action is the issue. Not simply action, but right
action, seems the stake. When you act, where you act, and above
all, whether you act, all seem tied up in the justice of a violent
action.
Why do most pre-emptive strikes violate
one's moral sense? An act of pre-emption interrupts the expected
sequence of events by turning the tables. It is like the unfairness
of jumping in at the head of long a line of patiently waiting
ticket buyers. A pre-emptive strike first depends for its legitimacy
on quickly passing time, on seizing the day, the same sense of
 urgency as a news show that pre-empts
the normal schedule in favor of breaking news. Pre-emptive strikes
and breaking news seem to go together. But the planners' judgment
had better be extremely important if it is to violate one's habitual
sense of the normal order of things. We hate to be interrupted,
especially if we have been waiting patiently for the outcome
of an action.
This kind of pre-emption bears on the
conduct of life, one's own as well as the conduct of our leaders.
Was theirs a right action or was it immoral, or was it something
in between? Did they manipulate evidence or did they use the
preponderance of data available to them at the time? How were
they inclined to act? What should we learn from the pre-emptive
action taken against Iraq? What are the ethics of pre-emptive
strikes? What issues surround the timing, the right time, for
taking action? What was the larger end or purpose, both the apparent
end and the real reason only gradually revealed? How was the
plan for pre-emptive strikes plotted or scripted? What were the
reasons given for taking action now? What were the descriptions
of the sorts of things that might happen if we were not to take
action? What outcomes seemed probable, and what seemed necessary?
These questions will certainly be debated in coming months and
years. As a teacher I am convinced that education may be devoted
to many disciplines, but above all it should prepare us to act
rightly for our futures. Readiness is all.
One of the purposes of literature, in
theory, is to enlighten a future. Indeed the oldest form of interpretation
was divination. One hoped to interpret the design of things.
Cicero said in his essay on divination, "Thus, in the beginning
the world was so made that certain signs come before certain
events." Shelley said cryptically in his "Defence of
Poetry": " Poets are the heirophants of an unapprehended
inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity
casts upon the present." The European social philosophy
called phenomenology lays out a "horizon of expectation"
as the basis for hermeneutics, the study of interpretation as
intentionality. Interpretation is a projection forward, said
Martin Heidegger. As he asserted in Being and Time, "the
basic tense of existentialism is the future." Ernst Bloch
taught that art and literature latently exhibit what he called
an "anticipatory illumination" (Vor-schein, "to
shine before"). Karl Popper, the philosopher who featured
the social science of unexpected consequences, spoke of a "searchlight"
metaphor for the very act of knowing. To know is to conjecture
forward, to project a light in a dark direction
Some works of literature are specifically
designed to warn against what might happen in the near future.
For instance, Margaret Atwood's recent sci-fi novel Oryx and
Crake warns against bioengineering and global plagues wrought
by mad scientists. In Aristotle's "Poetics" there is
a remarkable definition of literature as being a kind of hypothetical
action that bears on future acts: "the poet's function is
to describe, not the thing that has happened, but the kind of
thing that might happen, for example, what is possible as being
probable or necessary." Perhaps most importantly, Aristotle
describes a kind of recognition that forestalls, at the last
moment, a violent act about to happen that would lead to tragic
consequences. His word for that kind of forestalling action that
avoids a violent pitfall is anagnorisis. Pre-emptive strikes
assume a certain kind of interpretation of facts and events that
depends upon a point of view of story telling that lays out future
events as a kind of projection forward into a future that is
not hypothetical but that is fixed like fate. But good writers
script whole sequences of expectations that turn out to be surprises.
Then as possibilities are modified by actualities, the projections
forward are corrected by retractions backward.
Take the example of Frankenstein. Like
Atwood, Mary Shelley was worried about contemporary experiments
in the artificial creation of life, such as those of Galvani
and Erasmus Darwin. The mad scientist, Victor Frankenstein, has
succeeded in creating life, but in fleeing from his monster and
by avoiding his own responsibility as creator, he has created
a serial killer. Nevertheless, having heard the monster's moving
narrative, Victor agrees to construct a female companion. As
he assembles the female being, he frets that the female has not
been party to their social contract: that the pair of beings
will leave Europe and hide out in the wilds of America. He fantasizes
that the female and her future progeny might not consider themselves
bound to the original agreement. This question of binding future
generations by a dated social contract is Tom Paine's main argument
in The Rights of Man, that future generations are not bound for
eternity by their progenitors' written laws. So Victor passionately
dismembers the female monster. Is his interpretation an anagnorisis
that avoids a future threat of violence? Or is it a pre-emptive
violence that forestalls a peaceful future? Was it an action
that had come to maturity, or was it premature? Mary Shelley
leaves the issue up in the air.
Was the Bush team's interpretation an
act of prudence that forestalled the imminent action of Saddam
Hussein's use of weapons of mass destruction? Or was it instead
a premature violence that forestalled the gradualism of the United
Nations' deferential restraint? Now the country is in a period
of interpreting backward, of second guessing, and taking stock.
It is not yet clear whether we are concluding a tragedy, where
there will only be dead bodies all over the stage of events;
or whether we can imagine a reconciling comedy, where all the
participants can gather in the end at some kind of reconciling
feast.
What we do know now and always is that
any decision to act is based upon imperfect evidence. To choose
is to select among alternative possibilities. Were the evidence
overwhelming, no choice as such would be necessary or indeed
possible. The decision would be self evident. Before the invasion
the Bush administration overwhelmed us with evidence of nuclear
weapons of mass destruction and the insidious technology of bio-
warfare in the semblance of our own anthrax fears. It seemed
as if we had no choice but to strike then. The weapons issues
were coupled with the overwhelming prognostications of imminent
attacks on American people, like those that happened on 9/11.
All members of the administration spoke as with one voice of
warning. Now the retractions and extenuations are taking place,
and the moral of the narrative shifts with the latest disclosures.
Now the script is changing. Now the argument is that Saddam had
killed overwhelming numbers of his own people over the years.
Was he not an imminent killer preparing to massacre Americans?
If not, what right does an American president have to pre-empt
the role of the United Nations in handling these kinds of massive
but vague perils?
Did the Bush administration conflate
technological readiness to pull the trigger with moral readiness?
David stands ready to hurl his stone. The Minuteman leans into
action, ready to fire in a minute. But the projection of a moral
choice about the future should not be confused with the technical
projection of a Minuteman missile. The aircraft carriers that
converged in battle groups from around the global oceans, the
long-range bombers re-positioned on perimeter bases, the missiles
programmed, all those silent men and women, were mobilized into
an enormous potential energy, all leaning into action. The confluence
of energies and forces all seemed so overwhelming as inevitable
movements that moral choices between alternatives were lost in
the univocal argument of a world power, its finger already tightening
on the trigger. Did the overwhelming technological readiness
make the moral reason seem self evident in the mind of the Bush
team? The readiness is all mobilization?
In Greek tragedies the voice of the chorus
provides running commentary on the plot. The chorus asks questions
and makes assumptions during the action that are sometimes stupid,
sometimes insightful, and sometimes wrong. The chorus admits
to being puzzled by the actions of their leaders. Did the univocal
voice of the administration script a fiction for our consumption?
Was the plot a piece of noble propaganda? If the script was a
fiction, it was not good literature, nor was it good ethics.
For though literature may warn about the possibility of a coming
event, it doesn't preach a single course of action as solution.
Literature works by indirections, expectations and surprises,
oppositions, and multiple voices. Hence Hamlet's indecision;
the choice is agonizing.
Right now, I am part of the bewildered
voice of the chorus who represents the puzzlement of the audience.
But once we decide, then we become the voice of judgment, of
eventual sanction or condemnation. At the end of a play the chorus
may at last choose to express future fears and hopes. For instance,
I fear that if this pre-emptive strike into Iraq turns into a
tragedy, its moral may be T. S. Eliot's:
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
from Murder in the Cathedral
James Bunn
is professor of English at University at Buffalo. His most recent
book is Wave
Forms, published in 2002 by Stanford University Press. He
can be reached at: bunn@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
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