THE WANDERER, FEBRUARY 19, 2004

JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH

Things We Don't Know

     Even supporters of the Iraq war were disappointed by 
President Bush's lame performance in his heralded 
interview with NBC's Tim Russert. It wasn't that Russert 
asked tough questions; he lobbed softballs and didn't 
follow up on Bush's inadequate replies.

     In particular, Bush wasn't asked to explain his 
repeated warnings that Iraq posed a nuclear threat to the 
United States, that "the smoking gun might take the form 
of a mushroom cloud." That kind of talk, though it may 
now sound absurd, was well pitched to drive an already 
nervous country into war hysteria.

     Neither Bush nor Russert raised the issue. Instead, 
Bush merely repeated his theme that Saddam Hussein was a 
"madman" without explaining why this made him a threat to 
America or justified an unprecedented pre-emptive war.

     In his own speech a day before this interview was 
taped, CIA director George Tenet also avoided the topic 
of nuclear weapons. With calculated vagueness, he tried 
to exculpate himself and Bush at the same time. He 
stressed that gathering intelligence is always an iffy 
business, seldom "completely right or completely wrong."

     This left us to wonder how Bush and his spokesmen 
could claim such absolute certainty about Saddam's 
arsenal and intentions. Every indication was that Iraq 
was weak and in no mood for even another invasion of tiny 
Kuwait. But we were asked to disregard this commonsense 
view precisely because the president "knows things that 
we don't."

     This venerable cliche applies to every president. 
After all, Bill Clinton also knew things we didn't. 
Important information is always withheld from us on 
grounds of "national security"; official secrets from 
World War II are still being kept from the American 
public. We are left to speculate on the honor and 
judgment of any given president. Is he dealing honestly 
with us? And even if he is, can we trust his judgment?

     We are now being distracted from these questions by 
the question whether Bush himself was the victim of 
"faulty intelligence." And even that question is being 
focused on the CIA, when he may also have been misled by 
British and neocon intelligence -- or disinformation.

     So totally is an automatic pro-war stance now 
equated with conservatism that I've grown accustomed to 
e-mail accusing me of being a "liberal" and "Democrat" 
for opposing the Iraq war. How could any conservative be 
against *any* war? Are "peace on earth" and "blessed are 
the peacemakers" now considered left-wing slogans?

     Bush doesn't comprehend that the statist revolution 
(as I say, nobody seems to have found an adequate term 
for it) is very far advanced, and it is driven by both 
"leftist" and "rightist" forces, among others, who favor 
the continued expansion of the state into every nook and 
cranny of our lives. Bush in his own way is helping 
advance it further; so will John Kerry, if he's elected 
to replace Bush.

     Kerry is currently riding high, winning one 
Democratic primary after another simply because he's the 
anti-Bush. He's tough, he's articulate, and his record as 
a decorated Vietnam veteran makes Bush's bravado shrivel 
into a silly pose, especially considering his dubious 
record in the National Guard. Even if Bush is telling the 
truth about what he did in the past, the National Guard 
was well known in those days as a safe alternative to 
going to Vietnam -- not exactly credentials for a future 
war president.

     Whether they realize it or not, conservatives will 
face a miserable choice in a Bush-Kerry race. They may 
choose to pretend that Kerry is so much worse that it's 
imperative to re-elect Bush, but superficial differences 
on "issues" -- even abortion or same-sex unions -- won't 
affect the deeper currents of the state's momentum.

     What we face, either way, is a continuation of what 
C.S. Lewis called "the abolition of man," a process Lewis 
saw, even during World War II, as being promoted by 
"mild-mannered" democrats and Communists as well as by 
the Nazis. Today, even without Communists and Nazis, the 
process continues under Democratic and Republican, 
"liberal," "moderate," and "conservative," auspices.

     Even nominal conservatives now call for centralized 
state power to enforce their "values." This has become a 
well-nigh universal reflex.

     Bereft of his obsessive pre-war theme of "weapons of 
mass destruction," Bush now keeps repeating that Saddam's 
undoubted cruelty was sufficient reason for an allegedly 
defensive and "pre-emptive" war on a country that hadn't 
attacked or threatened the United States. He won't even 
admit that this was a radical new departure in foreign 
policy, or that it has cost this country dearly in the 
respect and admiration of people around the world, 
possibly making us new enemies and causing future wars. 
Will other governments, given the American example, now 
refrain from pre-emptive military action?

     Conservatives who still don't see the connection 
between war and the growth of state power should read 
Paul Fussell's modern classic, WARTIME, which, in rich 
and readable detail, shows the real everyday cost of 
World War II. Fifteen years after I first read it, it 
continues to shock me, not only in its vivid depiction of 
combat, but in its keen observations about how Americans 
willingly gave up daily freedoms and deeper traditions in 
the belief that they were merely being "patriotic."

     To this day, Franklin Roosevelt's war measures are 
cited as models -- admirable, not regrettable -- for how 
the state should treat not only the enemy population but 
even its own citizens during wartime. Bush's supporters 
actually praise him for emulating Roosevelt! Yet as 
Fussell shows, these wartime policies, not only German 
and Soviet totalitarianism, helped inspire George 
Orwell's nightmare of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR.

     One of the most dreadful parts of that nightmare is 
the state's rewriting of the past and the historical 
amnesia of its subjects, which makes them easy to whip 
into fury against the alleged enemy -- even if he doesn't 
really exist. Sound familiar? Big Brother always knows 
things we don't, and he likes to keep it that way.


New Allies

     The official "conservative" press has made the Iraq 
war such a high priority that it even welcomes the 
bitterly anti-Christian leftist Christopher Hitchens, 
best known for his obscene ridicule of Mother Teresa, to 
its pages simply because he favors the war. He tries to 
straddle the awkward ideological chasm by calling the 
enemy "Islamofascism," whatever that means, and however 
it may apply to the notoriously impious Saddam Hussein.

     In his mocking attack on Mel Gibson's PASSION OF 
THE CHRIST in the March issue of VANITY FAIR, Hitchens 
charges that the film is "only pseudo-realistic" because 
its "heart-throb Jesus ... doesn't shriek or beg or 
defecate during his martyrdom." He also blames the Church 
for anti-Semitism and for torturing and murdering 
"millions and millions of non-Christians and heretical 
Christians."

     Hitchens doesn't explain how he knows what "really" 
happened during the crucifixion, or where he gets his 
other historical "facts" and statistics. Presumably these 
are just things "everyone knows." At any rate, his new 
Judeo-Christian allies don't seem to mind his opinions on 
either Christianity or Judaism (which he also ridicules).

     The war must be awfully important to them.

                 +          +          +                  

     Speaking of C.S. Lewis, my monthly newsletter, 
SOBRAN'S traces the state's constant attacks on 
Christianity itself, unnoticed by conventional 
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                                        --- Joseph Sobran

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