Why Are We at War? (6 page)

Appendix
NOTES ON A LARGE
AND UNANCHORED UNEASINESS

A word would be appropriate here about the interview I did with
The American Conservative
, December 2, 2002, a magazine published by Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos and edited by Scott McConnell. The piece was titled (by them) “Why I Am a Left Conservative.” Much of what I said there was put into the address to the Commonwealth Club.

More remains, however, from that magazine and from the interview with Dotson Rader. Since I think
it can serve the purpose of this book, I include such sections in this Appendix.

FLAG CONSERVATIVES

Back when the Soviet Union fell, flag conservatives felt this was their opportunity to take over the world. They felt they were the only people who knew how to run the world. So their lust was fierce. They were furious when Clinton got in. That was one reason he was so hated. He was frustrating the world takeover. That seemed so open, so possible to their point of view, back in 1992. How that contributed to their hatred of Clinton! This attitude, I think, deepened and festered through the eight years of Clinton’s administration. Moreover, they loathed the ongoing increase in sexual liberties. White House principals may not talk to one another in private about this, but a key element in their present thought, I suspect, is that if America becomes an empire, then of necessity everything in America that needs to be
cleansed
will be affected positively. By their lights! If America grows into the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire, it will be necessary to rear whole generations who can serve the military in all parts of the world. It will put a new emphasis again upon education. Americans, who are famous for their inability to speak foreign languages, will suddenly be encouraged and over-encouraged to become linguists in order to handle the overseas tasks of empire. The seriousness of purpose will be back in American life. These are, I suspect, their arguments.

What they don’t take into account is the exceptional perversity of human affairs. Indeed, the entire scheme could fail. The notion reeks of overweening hubris.

DREAD: A LARGE AND UNANCHORED UNEASINESS

This war, if it proliferates over the next decade, could prove worse in one respect than any conflict we have yet experienced. It is that we will never
know just what we are fighting for. It is not enough to say we are against terrorism. Of course we are. In America, who is not? But terrorism compared to more conventional kinds of war is formless, and it is hard to feel righteous when in combat with a void, for then the action smacks of rage and relative impotence, a frightful combination that deprives warrior and citizen alike of any sense of virtue. Be it said, the sense of national virtue is crucial to waging a war.

We violate Christianity with every breath we take. Equally do the Muslims violate Islam. We are speaking of a war then between two essentially unbalanced and inauthentic theologies. It may yet prove to be an immense war. A vast conflict of powers is at the core, and the motives of both sides do not bear close examination. At bottom, the potential for ill is so great that we can wonder if we will get through this century. We could come apart—piece by piece, disaster after disaster, small and large,
long
before a final conflagration.

AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
: The conflict between communism and capitalism seems so much more sensible and manageable in comparison.

NORMAN MAILER
: Looking back, it was kind of logical. Capitalism and communism had clear and opposed objectives, but neither was ready to destroy the world. Certainly, the more that conflict ebbed into its end days, the less danger was present that the big bang would come.

AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
: You have cast the fight as Allah versus moolah, Islam versus money. If ours is indeed a post-Christian society in which materialism is the highest good and it takes a faith to fight a faith, are they not better suited to combat us?

NORMAN MAILER
: Are they better suited? No, I don’t think so. It does seem to me, on the face of it, that if we did nothing in terms of attacking them, that might delay such a war for fifty years. The next argument would be, well, can we afford to delay? We can win it now and we might lose it in fifty years. But my notion is that this war is so unbalanced
in so many ways, so much power on one side, so much true hatred on the other, so much technology for us, so much potential terrorism on the other, that the damages cannot be estimated. It is bad to enter a war that offers no clear avenue to conclusion. Terrorism can proliferate. It is not that complicated to be an effective terrorist, after all. Pick up the phone, make a call, and disrupt traffic for half a day. The real question is how pervasive can terrorism get, not whether you can wipe it out. There will always be someone left to act as a terrorist. If we try to become an empire, the real question will soon be whether we are able to live with terrorism at the level that the Israelis, let us say, are living with it now.

A NOTE ON PRESIDENTS

Given the rigors of presidential campaigns, most men who run successfully for president have been rubbed down by then to their lowest common denominator.
They are not all that impressive any longer as humans
. So it is worth taking a quick look at their resources and their foibles. Compulsive adoration of our leaders is poison, after all.

I once sat on Reagan’s left at a lunch for eight people. This was in 1972, at the convention that nominated Nixon for the second time. I spent the entire meal trying to figure out a tough question to ask him. I always found that if you meet someone’s eyes, a good question can come to mind. But for two hours he sat there at the head of the table, perfectly calm and pleasant, and kept making jokes and talking. It was a lightweight conversation. The physical impression of him was that he had about as much human specific density as, let’s say, a sales manager for a medium-size corporation in the Midwest. That kind of modest, mild, well-knit heft was in his bearing. During those two hours, he chatted with all six
Time
reporters at the table, but his eyes never met mine, and I found myself unable to come up with that tough question. It became a matter of decorum. The mood was too
genial. It occurred to me that all through his political life, he probably, if he could help it, never spent time talking to anyone who was of no use to him. He was, be it said, an instinctive climber who scaled the face of success with great skill. That was his gift. Soon enough, he was surrounded by people who had many powerful (if self-serving) ideas and they knew how to illumine him to the point where they could wind him up. Then he could do his special stuff. At the time, he had an enormous impact on old-line conservatives, because they thought he was one of them. I suspect he had about as much to do with them as a screen star does with an agricultural laborer.

I would guess George W. Bush can tell when one of his experts knows what he’s talking about and when he’s only pretending he knows. So I would assume he makes his decisions in opposite fashion to his predecessor. Bill Clinton made a point of surrounding himself with people who might be 90 percent as intelligent
as himself but never his equal, never more intelligent. Clinton, therefore, was always the brightest guy in his circle. Whereas Bush is smart enough to know that he couldn’t possibly do the same or the country would be run by morons. In contrast, he looked to get bright people around him: Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Powell. And when they start arguing, Bush has an ear for who is most incisive at a given moment. He can pick up a hint of the inauthentic in even a seasoned expert’s voice. I’m speaking as a novelist now. Bush has a bullshit detector. Since different experts have days when they’re better than on other days, Bush, on a given morning, decides that Expert A’s voice sounds the best. Three days later, Expert D comes in better. The result is that he’s always tweaking his policies just a little. If that is his one intellectual strength, he still has the persona of a fraternity president, sententious, full of cant, pleased with his assertions and always indifferent to their lack of verisimilitude and/or specificity. Mottos and platitudes are steak tartare to him. He knows exactly what he’s doing. So, that one good half of
America, composed of religious people who are not particularly political, is with him all the way. Give us more of your mottos and platitudes, they ask. Spice them, please, with your incomparably holy touch of mendacity.

IMMIGRATION

AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
: Our side of the immigration debate generally feels that America is getting transformed into something less like the country we understand and are used to. It seems a kind of foreign place. It is not an argument we often use, but that is in the back of it. Have you thought much about the more multicultural America? What are its possibilities? What are its limitations?

NORMAN MAILER
: Given the modern world of technology, I don’t know whether the race or culture question is paramount. The long-term tendency for the world is to have no races. Technology has
become the dominant culture in existence and may soon be the only real culture. The similarities between computer users all over the world may now be far greater than their differences in ethnicity.

AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
: Go back to the integrity of races. I know it is a politically incorrect thought, but it doesn’t have to be expressed with rancor. It might be interesting.

NORMAN MAILER
: Let me put it this way: I don’t see immigration as a pressing problem other than that it gets some white people so furious that they can’t think about more important things. They feel America is being lost. All right, America is being lost, but in ways that have nothing to do with races or excessive immigration. America, for one example, is being lost through television.
    Because in advertising, mendacity and manipulation are raised to the level of internal values for the advertisers. Interruption is seen as a necessary concomitant to marketing. It used to be
that a seven- or eight-year-old could read consecutively for an hour or two. But they don’t do that much anymore. The habit has been lost. Every seven to ten minutes, a child is interrupted by a commercial on TV. Kids get used to the idea that their interest is there to be broken into. In consequence, they are no longer able to study as well. Their powers of concentration have been reduced by systematic interruption. Add to that our present-day classrooms. Does anybody ever say that one reason our education is such a blighted mess is that just about all schools now use fluorescent lights? Why? Because they cost less. I would say that in the final count of dollars and cents, they cost more, because the kids are less productive. What characterizes fluorescent light is that everybody looks 10 percent plainer than they do under incandescent bulbs. Fluorescent tubes offer a sickly light. Skin looks washed-out and a bit livid. If everybody seems uglier than they are normally, why then, everyone naturally grows a little depressed. They begin to think,
What am I doing with all these plain-looking people? Aren’t I worth more?
    This little matter does contribute to the deterioration of the powers of concentration. Bad architecture, invasive marketing, ubiquitous plastic—such deleterious forces bother me much more than immigration. I could go on about this. Our first problem is not immigration but the American corporation. That is the force which has succeeded in taking America away from us.