10 years ago we were called upon to answer 9/11 by going shopping, and it's been eating me up ever since. I typed this up on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 world trade center attacks and sent it to my friends, regarding the subsequent 10th anniversary of something that has been eating at me ever since. It is the one and only thing that ever made me wonder if I did the right thing in becoming a US citizen. It is the day the president of the United States told us all to go shopping, which happened 10 years ago at the end of September. I am posting it now for Veterans' Day.
Now before I continue, I should disclaim that this is not exactly how it went. (Yes, I insisted on checking the facts and not defaming the Republican president without just cause, before releasing this rant everywhere.) But what did happen showed a little thing that nobody noticed, that vanished in America during my time here. For some context, remember, if you can, the NFL playoffs in 1991. It was winter, and Kuwait was under Iraqi occupation. On Saudi Arabia's northern border, a coalition was massing to retake the kingdom. In the mean time, in the United States, the Coca Cola company had been telling the public to save the labels from all the 2 liter bottles. Their plan was to show a commercial in the Superbowl that would reveal that the labels were watermarked, and some were worth prizes. That commercial featured actors from The Naked Gun, engaging in the same kind of humor.
Just before the game, Coca Cola (and the NFL, and the ad agency, and NBC) got cold feet, and decided it was too frivolous to broadcast when soldiers were preparing to march into harm's way. So instead, they just announced plainly what the deal was with the bottle labels, and that was that. This war was the first CNN war, meaning not only that CNN was broadcasting from the front lines, but also that networks were broadcasting TO the front lines, and word eventually spread that the soldiers were bored and just wanted to watch a Super Bowl in all its commercialized, sexualized glory. So some time afterwards, the Naked Gun commercial did air. But it goes to show that in 1991, most of us thought that when soldiers are gearing up for battle, stateside life should be different somehow. 10 years later, that meme was gone.
In 2001, were were told to go shopping. Kind of. Let's look at the context. At the time, it was not the most awful thing to say. It was the summer of 2001. The dotcoms blew up, and even the ones supplying new, novel and valuable goods and services were shown to be grossly overvalued. Enron was rotten to the core. The economy was in a pelican dive even before the attack, and everyone wanted to punch Gary Condit in the face. Then Osama Bin Laden sent 19 men to hijack planes and fly them into buildings. 3 days later, Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York got on TV to ask us to go shopping in lower Manhattan to revive the suffering businesses there. And 3 weeks after that, President Bush got on TV to ask us to start flying again. His words:
" Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy
America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in
Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be
enjoyed."
What Giuliani said was perfectly reasonable. Lower Manhattan was hurting. What Bush said was a challenge to rise to the call of duty and sacrifice, well, okay, it was not the most inappropriate thing to say from the Oval Office. The very existence of our airlines was dependent on people boarding planes once again. And those two statements, by Bush and Giuliani, were what the media punditocracy mutated into a call to go shopping at the mall. Which, for that particular moment in time, was not a completely horrible descent into something out of Brave New World. In the middle of September in 2001, it was almost okay for our leaders to ask us to go and give the economy an infusion of the animal spirits by going to the mall and buying something. That much was particularly true when you keep in mind that the clerks at TJ MAXX and the waitresses at Chili’s would be the first laid off as the recession worsened. [0]
Then the Vice President upped the ante. Not long afterwards, the Vice President made the infamous comment that the “American way of life is non-negotiable.” After that it became impossible for any public figure to come forward and ask the American populace to make any material sacrifice. As far as I am concerned, that was the day American power became doomed to decline, for two reasons.
The first is that the American way of life is not non-negotiable. This way of life requires massive inputs of raw materials and energy. 3% of the world’s population consumes 20% of the world’s oil production in order to live this way of life. And it takes never ending effort on part of a significant portion o the US workforce to enable the rest of us to live this way of life. It is very, very, negotiable, and the terms by which we get to live the American way of life get renegotiated every day in the stock market and the commodities market. See that marquee at the gas station? That’s the world economy renegotiating whether or not you, dear reader, get to live the American way of life.
The other is the long list of things that became negotiable instead. The Constitution? Negotiable. The terms of America’s participation in international organizations like NATO and the UN? Negotiable. How you get to travel? Negotiable. How much more of their lives our servicemen get to spend in uniform? Negotiable. The relationship between a citizen and the new surveillance state? Very, very, negotiable. As far as Dick Cheney was concerned, everything was negotiable except the continued comfort of the American consumer.
If America loses the war on terror, this will be the reason why.
It wasn’t always so. For World War I and World War 2, the stateside civilian population was called upon to take part in the war effort. It meant conservation of materiel above all. Driverless Sundays. Rubber conservation. Scrap metal collection. Needless to say, we don’t really need to conserve every last bit of metal so we can send it at high speed at some village at Helmand. But that doesn’t mean the home front could not take part in the war on terror. It goes something like this:
Q. Why did Osama Bin Laden send the hijackers out?
A. To coerce America to redeploy American forces outside of “holy” Saudi soil. (His own stated motive.)
Q. Why were US forces stationed in Saudi Arabia?
A. Because the US needs to ensure stability in Arabia and the Persian Gulf region.
Q. Why does the US need to ensure stability there?
A. Because the US needs stability in the world’s production and distribution of oil.
Q. Why does the US need that?
A. Because the US needs its share of the oil. Really really needs it.
What the president should have said is that it’s never good for a country to “really really” need anything. When you really need something you’re needy. And in the US’s case, our relationship with oil makes us as needy as a psycho ex-girlfriend. And that is what needs to change.
The reason that needs to change is that we have soldiers stationed and engaged in combat in two theaters of operation (that I know about. Only the Cleared know where else.) In each of those places we rely on the cooperation of local leaders. And in two of those, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have gotten stabbed in the back repeatedly by Hamid Kharzai in the latter and multiple others in the former. And each time it was because our generals in those theaters cannot look a local in the eye and threaten to leave with the worlds “we don’t really need to be here.” Because we do. Because we’re needy. And we’re needy because we have leaders who think the “American way of life” is non-negotiable.
In a sane world, this essay would be as welcome in a right wing site like FreeRepublic as it is on DailyKos. But we're not in a sane world, and both sides of our political divide seem (from my perspective) to have drunk some poisoned koolaid about the sacred comfort of the American consumer. I'll steal from author and activist James Howard Kunstler now:
I saw a bumper sticker in my town the other day. It said "War Is Not The Answer." I emphasize: a bumper sticker. On a car. You know, if you really want to live in a drive-in utopia, in a car-dependent, oil-addicted society, and you want to keep those profits flowing into bank accounts of the suburban tract house builders, and the strip mall developers, and you want to build a new freeway link south of town, and a swell conference center like this one miles and miles from anything else in your region -- then war actually is the answer. Get used to it. Get over it. We don't have enough oil to run our own show, and other people in other parts of the world do. So war IS the answer. I've got friends back home who have been picketing down at the Post Office against the war in Iraq for months. They drive their SUVs down there to demonstrate their indignation over US military policy. I've got news for you: we're not going to be able to continue living this way in America, whether we like it or not. . .
http://www.kunstler.com/...
And now I'll add the counterpoint to call out the right wingers:
I saw a bumper sticker in my town the other day. It said "Support The Troops." I emphasize: a bumper sticker. On a car. You know, it you really want to support the troops, you have to do more than just a bumper sticker. You have to support the generals, the ones who deal with our supposed allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ones who are only a little better than two bit mafiosos. They're allegedly US puppets, but the sad truth is that we don't have nearly enough control over them, and that's because we don't have bargaining leverage. Our generals can't look them in the eye and say "you need us more than we need you." If you want to support the troops, you know what you have to do.
With some noble exceptions (Raymond Lahood, for example), not only have the Republicans not called the nation to rise to the challenge and support the effort, they've ridiculed the mere idea, and even worked to make it harder, by openly opposing and sabotaging every effort that makes us less physically dependent on oil. Even now, they are pushing for a law that restricts bicycling on lands managed by Federal agencies. They've agitated against every mass transit project. Every passenger rail project. Every renewable energy project. President G. W. Bush is the only president in American history to lower taxes during a major war. And this election is the first one I know of where we had everyone whining about taxes at a time when the armed forces are engaged in combat in three theaters of operation. (Down to two now that Lybia’s in a mopping up stage, I hope.) Something has to give here.
To close up, I'll give a link and a shoutout to Grist Magazine and the hippie dippie town of Oberlin, Ohio:
Environmental studies professor David Orr has set out to turn the aging rust belt town of Oberlin, Ohio, into a laboratory for sustainability. In the process, he has drawn interest from unlikely places: Experts from the military and in national security see the Oberlin Project as a compelling plan to focus on vulnerabilities in the nation's food, energy, and socioeconomic systems. They and others, including leaders of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington research group, see it as a model that communities across the country could follow.
Please read the whole thing.
Notice that military brass are looking at Oberlin, of all places, as the way forward for national security. I know first hand that James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, feelss very similarly. Now, as a lifelong civilian, I'd like to know what veterans think about that 2001 call to "go shopping." I thank you all for your service. Hope you had a good Veterans' Day.
[0] In case you're wondering, yes, I do relish using damnation by faint praise. When I realize my ambition to become a Bond villain complete with Persian cat and monocle, my minions will be armed with snark.