Why did we go to war in Iraq? There is no single reason that America as a country sent its military to invade, destabilizing a region and setting the stage for both a genocide and the end of American influence. It was as best I can tell an alignment of interests among various powerful men with different reasons - Bush's messianic complex, Cheney's hawkish instincts, Rumsfeld's jealousy, the neoconservative intellectual's insecurities, defense contractor profits, and a voracious military-industrial complex. Perhaps a better question is this - given that the Iraq War was self-evidently a really bad idea, and the dire consequences were apparently predicted by various influentials (as they keep telling us now), why did no one stop the country from its path of madness? Where did our system break down? And given that going to war with Iran and Syria is on the table, maybe even in process as we speak, and that this new war is an even worse idea than the Iraq War, just what is going on? Why isn't the American public engaged in a debate as to the merits of a wider conflict? And why isn't the political system listening to the groans of protest it has issued?
Marcy Wheeler's book, Anatomy of Deceit, answers these questions. The book is a meticulous description of the pre-war Iraq sales job, and how the administration used certain structural weaknesses within the DC governing and media class to undermine and betray America. Marcy paints a truly devastating portrait of a thoroughly corrupted New York Times (which has since scrubbed its archives to unsuccessfully remove damning evidence in its complicity in the outing of Valerie Plame and the march to war). She shows how the administration, and specifically Cheney's cabal, used the press to launch a dishonest PR campaign selling the war, and how the press protected them, and still protects them. The book makes a larger point, too, about how we talk about politics in this country.
The book itself is a quick read, clocking in at just over 100 pages, and brought me nicely through the twists and turns of the case without overwhelming me. I was one of those people who got really confused by the whole episode, and stopped following it after a few months because the braying of the press made it too annoying to distinguish the spin from the truth. As far as I was concerned, Bush has been lying since 2000 when he talked of 'fuzzy math' in his tax plan, so there's nothing really new to an administration smearing critics. And yet, I was wrong, this is an important and relevant story that we must grapple with, and for all non-Plameologists out there, Marcy's book is the definitive starting point.
Marcy's graduate studies centered on the feuilleton, a chatty style of pamphleteering developed in France under Napoleonic rule when the larger press could no longer accurately distinguish between propaganda and truth. It was as it turns great training for what she's done here. There are two streams of discourse in American foreign policy - one is, for better or worse, the public media borg, the place where the public is told what is and isn't in bounds for discussion. I used to think that you could distinguish between Fox News and, say, the New York Times, but now it's become clear that however valiant the acts are of individually heroic reporters, the system is run by a vicious set of propagandists. These elitists, whether pro-war or not, and whether in government, at think tanks, or in media, all agree that the public cannot be trusted to debate the merits of public policy. And so they manufacture an alternate reality for public consumption. Any disruptive force that seeks to cross these streams, be it bloggers, Patrick Fitzgerald, Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, or retired generals are demeaned and smeared, or in the words of Karl Rove, 'screwed', and elite press figures not only go along with it but nod their approval at the preservation of their culture.
That's why Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame ultimately matters. Wilson crossed the streams and went to the public to engage in discussion about the war, not to stop it, but to encourage citizens to discuss what it meant. That is why bloggers share Joe's outrage, because we self-consciously fit between the propaganda state and elite discourse, but it's also why Dean was taken down by elites in both parties and the press, and it's why Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondent's dinner was funny to the public and an outrage to the power set. Right now, at this moment in American history, our political elites are corrupted and degraded to remarkable extent. Marcy's book just rips their mask off and shows them as the hypocritical and malevolent force they are.
With a Democratic Congress, one would assume that the natural corrective to this situation is working. But in many ways, this discontinuity is sharper and starker than ever, and we may shortly be embroiled in two more wars, one with Iran and one with Syria, with the consequent massive oil price spikes and devastating destruction of what remains of American credibility and system of government. Rather than accede to a public that wishes for more honest discourse, the powers that be are wrapping themselves even tighter in their 'Gang of 500' cocoon. I was on the phone with a friend of mine who knows many of the characters in the world of foreign affairs, and he was telling me that the national security realist community is depressed about what's going on in Iran and Syria - "Matt, it's much crazier than anyone imagines," he sighed. The signs are obvious that a wider war is coming- Senators Joe Biden and Jim Webb had very significant and newsworthy confrontations with Condoleeza Rice over Bush's constitutional authority in the area, but the elite guardians of discourse are still denying us the debate we desperately need. The President doesn't have the authority to wage war in Iran, but this needs to be made explicit with a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force. This isn't happening because the wider debate is being strangled, so Democrats are debating defunding the escalation in Iraq and non-binding resolutions, and there's an anti-Iraq war march planned for January 27. If it was understood just how crazy the situation is among our governing elites, the public and Congressional actions would in all likelihood react appropriately.
And that means it is up to us. Dick Cheney's power in the White House, his network of hardliners, is as entrenched as ever. Weakened and increasingly insecure, Bush may simply lash out to make a statement, an instinctive reaction among children but one that is dangerous when the person doing the lashing is the President of the United States. We must and we are working to provide the debate that the press will not. The book is out today, a timed release to prepare us for the trial of Scooter Libby. This trial is at the heart of the debate over the coming war with Iran and Syria, because what Marcy shows is that the evidence strongly points to Cheney ordering the hit on Plame and the underming of American national security. This trial is the closest proxy that we will be able to use to argue about Cheney's power and his intentions. Even now, we are being sold a new war in Iran, a nuclear-tipped PR campaign. Thankfully, we have Marcy's book to show us just how corroded the courtier class has become.
Buy it, read it, and let's help our good Democratic allies and apologetic Republicans to reign in this madness.
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