The Age (Melbourne) March 11, 2002
Shocked Into A Different World
By Gay Alcorn
Black Hawk Down, the story of the disastrous mission of American soldiers in Somalia in 1993, was rushed to cinemas 10 weeks early to take advantage of the surge of patriotism after September 11. And "Black Hawk Down in the Snow" was how the death of eight US soldiers in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan was described this week, a label testily dismissed by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who pointed out that, this time, American troops went back in to retrieve the bodies.
In Mogadishu, dead Americans were paraded through the streets. The only similarity, Rumsfeld said, was that Americans were heroes in both countries.
There was a more telling difference between the fighting in the mountains of Gardez and the deaths of 18 Americans in Mogadishu. Somalia became the symbol of America's fear of casualties - President Bill Clinton pulled US soldiers out of the country immediately after the ambush - and its preoccupation with fighting wars from the air with whiz-bang weapons. Also, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, said many times that Americans were soft and cowardly and could therefore be defeated. But the American people never believed Somalia was crucial to their interests. This time, Americans did not flinch at the deaths of eight soldiers in the bloodiest ground battle of the war, with US troops firing at al Qaeda fighters just 150 metres away. "We are leaning forward," said Rumsfeld.
Six months after the horror of September 11, the United States is "leaning forward" all over the world, with such might that pushing back seems futile.
When the inexperienced, inarticulate, skin-of-his-teeth President George W. Bush said back then that night had fallen on a "different world", he was telling the truth. Today the US is dominant militarily, confident that its war on terror is being won, convinced that the threat is not just terrorist groups "of global reach" but old enemies like Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and contemptuous of dissenters at home and abroad.
French critics of America's "simplistic" war had a case of the "vapours", said the Bush administration's least unilateralist member, Secretary of State Colin Powell. Republican leaders hyperventilated when Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle suggested the administration needed to clarify the war's objectives. "Disgusting" was the one-word statement released by Republican House Whip Tom DeLay. "On to Iraq!" cried Republican Senator John McCain after the Taliban regime fell in Afghanistan.
A former member of Clinton's National Security Council, James Lindsay, says if the deaths of the eight soldiers in Afghanistan had an upside, it was to jolt Americans into understanding that the war remained dangerous, bloody and complicated.
Before September 11, the US believed its military strength would deter a mainland attack. That was wrong. A deep sense of vulnerability and a brief moment after the attacks when it seemed the administration's unilateralist tendencies would evaporate have morphed instead into a roaring, super-confidence.
"Humility can quickly transform itself into hubris and we're seeing that," Lindsay says.
Apart from what may be a climactic battle against al Qaeda forces in the Afghan mountains, the US is spreading its military links across the globe to an extent not seen since the Cold War. It has new bases in Central Asia. More than 600 troops are off to the Philippines to help counter the Abu Sayyaf militants. There are even reports of the Philippines again granting "access rights" to the US military, which was evicted from its bases in a fit of nationalism in the early 1990s. And up to 200 soldiers arrive in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia this month to fight suspected al Qaeda members hiding along its north-eastern border.
Who would have thought that the Arab state of Yemen, where the USS Cole was bombed less than two years ago, would be welcoming scores of American troops to train local forces in counter-terrorism?
Analysts say the "Bush Doctrine" - "from this day forward, any nation that continues to harbour or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime" - is a fundamental shift in foreign policy because it anticipates pre-emptive, not defensive, strikes against regimes America believes pose a threat.
The New Yorker recently reported that Bush has instructed his feuding State and Defence Departments to come up with a plan by April 15 to end the regime of Saddam Hussein, before he has a chance to use Iraq's chemical or biological weapons.
Bush, once the accidental president and more recently voted No. 3 on a list of all-time great American presidents in a poll, says his declared war will last "however long it takes to make sure America is secure". There is no reason to doubt him.
Bush says the "first war of the 21st century" will be unlike any other, but the best analogy is the Cold War, that "long twilight struggle", as President John F. Kennedy called it.
In 1947, President Harry Truman declared that it was up to the US to lead the world against the evil of communism, and it would be an open-ended and ideological war. The world was divided into two neat camps.
Similarly, on September 20, Bush put the world on notice: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists."
Of course, there are obvious differences from the Cold War. Then, the US faced a nation state, the Soviet Union, as its enemy, not a shadowy group of extreme fundamentalists and "sleeper" cells. But there are parallels.
"One of the mistakes of the Cold War was that we militarised it," says Lindsay, now with the Brookings Institution in Washington. "We saw everything in military terms - Korea, Vietnam. You were never going to solve the Cold War through military means alone because it would mean Armageddon.
"It required, in the end, a whole lot more of our foreign policy, trade, foreign aid, poverty and human rights policies."
Long-time Pentagon watcher John Pike agrees that, with America now an empire with unrivalled and unprecedented power, the temptation is to enforce its will through military strength alone.
"The Soviet Union was faulted for placing excessive emphasis on military domination to the exclusion of other power. The Bush administration is making the same mistake."
Last month, Bush announced a $US48 billion ($A91.4billion), or 12 per cent, boost in military spending, the largest increase since Ronald Reagan's build-up in the 1980s against the "evil empire", the Soviet Union. The increase means the US is spending more on defence than the next 15 biggest-spending countries put together.
"The administration is guided by individuals who believe in the power of military force, they believe in American primacy, and they believe that in the past the US has been too reluctant to use its military force," says Lindsay.
That reliance on military might is at the root of the now open rift between the US and many of its allies. "We are all American today," Le Monde newspaper had declared in Paris the day after the attacks. This week, Munich's Suddeutsche Zeitung hoped that American deaths in Afghanistan might reduce support for the unlimited anti-terror war. "Maybe the Terminator team in Washington will realise then that it's not enough to pass judgment on the removal of despots and regimes without giving thought to what happens the day after."
Perceptions in Europe and America about the war on terrorism are so wildly different that it is as though there are two wars. Europeans, particularly the Germans and the French, resent America's military, economic and cultural dominance and the dwindling importance of Europe in American thinking. They want to broaden the war to include a fight against Third World poverty and environmental devastation.
But Washington is not interested. Neither does the administration have any interest in the suggestion of Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, to implement a new "Marshall Plan" for poor nations and double international aid to $US100 billion a year. It points out that the 19 hijackers were middle-class and educated, and most came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, hardly countries on the breadline.
So reforming globalisation is not on America's agenda. Its mission is a battle between "good and evil", a cringe-inducing notion in much of Europe, but in the more religious and still-enraged United States it is self-evident.
Still, it is a strange and nebulous war. After Pearl Harbour, American lives changed: petrol and sugar were rationed; women went to work in the factories and some would never go back to the kitchen again. For most people, there have been no such dramatic shifts after September 11. Petrol is cheap and Americans are being urged to take holidays as a patriotic gesture. The economy is picking up.
The obsession with celebrity is also returning. Monica Lewinsky was back on Larry King Live last week, touting a new documentary about her affair with Bill Clinton. Paula Jones, the woman who accused Clinton of sexual harassment, is taking on the scandalous skater, Tonya Harding, in a celebrity boxing match.
The media are returning to news as entertainment. The ABC network is trying to woo late-night variety-show host David Letterman to replace the most serious and comprehensive news program on commercial television, Nightline. The reason? Nightline is now "irrelevant".
Americans overwhelmingly support this war, even if it will cost many lives. They want to oust Saddam Hussein, and they liked their President's "axis of evil" speech, where he linked Iraq, North Korea and Iran as countries developing weapons of mass destruction that threatened the world.
They barely notice overseas dissent, and struggle with the big question so often asked after September 11: Why do they hate us?
Two recent and astounding polls have found that the mistrust between Muslim nations and America remains profound. A Gallup poll of 10,000 people in nine predominantly Muslim countries found that 61 per cent did not believe Arabs were responsible for the attacks against America - they preferred to blame Israelis or even Americans. The US says that all of the 19 hijackers were Arab. In addition, only 12 per cent of respondents believed the West respected Arabs or Muslim views. Does the West respect Muslim views? Another Gallup Poll asked Americans about the Muslim world. Two-thirds thought Muslim countries would be better off if they adopted Western values. Almost a quarter said Muslim opinions did not matter much to them, and 23 per cent said they had no interest at all in Muslims' views.
Truth is supposed to be the first casualty of any war, and this odd war, with no end in sight, with no defined goals, is no different. The festering resentments overseas can't be heard above America's certainty that the cause is not just right, but is saving, in Bush's words, "civilisation itself".
Black Hawk Down, which has been nominated for an Oscar, has been attacked by Somali groups who say it portrays their people as savages who, without reason, ambushed the American soldiers who landed by helicopter in October, 1993. About 1000 Somalis died, compared with 18 Americans, a fact barely mentioned in the United States.
In an unusual twist, one actor in Black Hawk Down, Brendan Sexton, is travelling around university campuses criticising the film as inaccurate and simplistic. His small voice of dissent is telling.
Sexton says he took the part because his character criticised America's actions in Somalia. That note of discord was all right before September 11. After that, the producers erased the little speech made by his character, Alphabet, in the movie.
Americans, after all, prefer it straight and simple.
Copyright 2002 The Age Company Limited
