AUGUST 24, 2011
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“I want to see some history!” So went Johnny Rotten’s desperate plea in 1977. But the front man for the Sex Pistols, cursed in so many ways, was not cursed with living in especially interesting times. We are. And, yes, it’s all been very adrenalizing, to the point of downright exhilaration and even mass delirium. But, for all the cheap speechifying about civic vigor and American cohesion, September 11 was a curse. Nothing more.
In the direct aftermath of September 11, policy- and opinion-makers acted in ways that responded to multiple needs unrelated to that day. They were bored by the “democratic malaise” into which Christopher Lasch, writing in 1995, believed the country had descended; or deeply suspicious of the Hegelian teleology embedded in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History; or downright scornful of the Clinton-era cliché that soft (i.e., economic) power had supplanted hard (i.e., military) power. And they wanted, like Johnny Rotten before them, to see some history.
None of this, to be clear, meant that someone ginned up the war on terrorism to get a buzz. The country’s elite was making a virtue of necessity, not the other way around. Still, the notion that September 11 would and should lead to newfound national purpose, to a reengagement with history, was widespread. In the ephemeral aftermath of September 11, George Will noted, and Charles Krauthammer celebrated, the end of America’s “holiday from history.” The point was clear: Fukuyama was wrong; September 11 had given the engine of history a jumpstart. To all of this, President Bush added his own commentary: “For too long, our culture has said, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Now, America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: ‘Let’s roll.’”
But, over the past ten years, America, or rather most Americans, did not reengage with history. Why? Put aside whether the wars we got were the wars we were promised. They were never our wars to begin with. “The communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation.” Those are the words—the concession, really—of Chris Hedges, a war correspondent-cum-antiwar correspondent. A mountain of social science data and historical evidence from past U.S. conflicts exists to bolster his contention. Yet the aftermath of 9/11 was different: It turned out that our wartime sense of civic and national responsibility no longer extended very far. With the coming of an all-volunteer military in 1973—applauded at the time as a gesture of heightened moral awareness—the definition of American citizenship narrowed to the point of excluding any obligation to defend the Republic. So, in 2001 and the years after, only a thin demographic slice, disproportionately composed of small-town Americans, went off to fight. The insult to New York was avenged by the children of Texas. Those kids were, and remain, knee-deep in history—coordinating airstrikes, cajoling tribesmen, calling in medevacs. This, even as the nation they purport to defend has opted out of history, anesthetizing itself with Abilify and reruns of “The Real Housewives.”
Aside from the limiting effect of limited war, there was something even more fundamental on the table: In their contentment with the humdrum routines of post-historical America, our countrymen may have possessed more good sense than their would-be elites. There was always something crummy about the portrayal of war as a means of reengaging with history and renewing national purpose, recalling as it did the exhilarating spirit of 1914. For whatever war’s civic effects might have been, they paled next to its carnage. They still do. Whatever war may or may not do for the body politic, one really ought to weigh this against what it does to actual bodies. At a distant remove, Americans made this calculation, and they somehow did so sooner than, say, the nearly two years in Iraq that it took this writer to tote up the same pros and cons. On filthy streets, in blood-spattered helicopters, at funeral processions, I registered the costs and benefits, the tidy methodologies and the obscene realities. And, like most Americans, I finally made my choice: If this is history, change the channel.
Lawrence F. Kaplan is a contributing editor for The New Republic. This piece ran in the September 15, 2011, issue of the magazine.
22 comments
These articles seemed like they were all penned in 2009, well before the death of Osama Bin Laden and the eruption of the Arab spring. Gadhafi, the man who ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103 which killed hundreds of people, was just overthrown. You really want to change the channel and miss that? Yes, there was bloodshed but tell the people in Libya that secured their freedom that they should have suffered in slavery because poor Mr. Kaplan did not want to be offended by the sight of the human costs they themselves suffered. Nor do I wish to avert my eyes to the incredible bravery of the Syrians, who meet gunfire with even larger and peaceful protests. If they succeed how much cheaper will be the words written here (and as Assad is running out of money the chances of their success is greater than people imagine, though it is nowhere near a sure thing)
- blackton
August 31, 2011 at 1:25pm
No, I am with Mr. Kaplan here. War is an obscenity. There are other ways to change history and engaging with history doesn't mean engaging with violence. As long as we believe this, that only violence and war = history, we are missing the whole point of life, we are missing the fact that history also means the quiet flight of a moth, the spider spinning her web, the flower slowly growing, the woman sewing, the artist making a painting. We go to war, we don't see the dancers turning in spirals. Our missiles aim at the heart of an enemy we refuse to acknowledge as human, we hit the dancers instead. 9/11 was a curse. It was.
- Sophia
September 5, 2011 at 2:12am
Just as WWI planted the seeds for the next world war that would inevitably follow from the peace to end the first world war, WWII planted the seeds for the Muslim extremism that would inevitably follow; for there are no wars to end all wars, as the peace to end one war plants the seeds for the next war. Kaplan states that the wars following 9/11 "were never our wars to begin with". Ture enough if considered wars of liberation. But one need only a map and some common sense to surmise that the peace to end WWII would inevitably lead to conflict and carnage in the middle east. And what seeds will be planted in the Arab Spring? Is there any doubt.
- rayward
September 5, 2011 at 9:44am
Let us stipulate that war is an evil obscenity. Further may I allow that the best one can hope for in the moral realm is that I so engaged am less guilty than my adversary in degrees of consequence as the result of said conflict. It isn't difficult to imagine my refusal to engage as being the larger and more consequential culpability. One SHOULD be thoroughly turned over by the contemplated import. I wonder what the ME would look like today with a Saddam Hussein still in power and the means by which he remained so being a power calculus in the minds and hearts of various interested parties. If you are free to speculate a more beneficial circumstance I am free to contemplate a much more complicated and dangerous situation.
- jacko
September 5, 2011 at 12:23pm
Fukuyama has been badly served by history, if anyone has. His essay is a lot more subtle and intelligent than the cliché of its content spread around the world. And it is undeniably true that neither the U.S. or the West in general (if that concept still has meaning) has engaged in conflict with a competitive ideology since the fall of the Soviet Union. Both western (social) market capitalism -- you can remove or replace the parenthetical adjective depending on the country you're talking about -- and Soviet-style socialism/communism were about how to steer and shape modernity. The struggle was over the given world. No ideology, neither Islamism nor localized despotism nor even radical ecology, is a comparable opponent for Western (indeed, now one could call it Western-Asian) modernity. That very fact seems indeed to be part of the hostility.
- ironyroad
September 5, 2011 at 12:57pm
Irony is correct I think about modernity. We need to think about this and stop making assumptions about what is "good." People all over the world are being dragged willy-nilly into the modern world whether they want to go or not. They are being forced to forsake their cultures, their traditions, to give up the work of their hands, to stop listening to music of the flute and plug in the heavy metal, perforce. Their horse is slaughtered to buy a motorcycle, the motorcycle is fast but it stinks, the noise it makes is appalling - and - the Kurdish nomad is now plugged into the petrochemical grid. Progress!
- Sophia
September 5, 2011 at 1:29pm
As for Saddam and his ilk. Exactly who empowered them in the first place?
- Sophia
September 5, 2011 at 1:29pm
Sophia: Saddam was the cynical creation of realpolitik and the crappy soil that fed him. Are you saying that the US should have been rendered paralyzed by virtue of its past choices? Just because the bolts in Frankensteins neck were manufactured in the US of A? Under the circumstances perhaps such a thing should increase responsibility. No?
- jacko
September 5, 2011 at 2:45pm
"So, in 2001 and the years after, only a thin demographic slice, disproportionately composed of small-town Americans, went off to fight. The insult to New York was avenged by the children of Texas." Mr. Kaplan might want to Google what state George W. Bush came from. This provides for yet another irony and since Kaplan's piece is largely an excuse to wallow in world-weary posturing, dubious allusions (Johnny Rotten, in fact, was evoking Belsen) and labored irony (all the Americans Kaplan knows back home - rather than as a reporter in Iraq -were disengaged from the war, but, hey, maybe that beats being a neocon cheerleader) he could throw it in with the others. Kaplan's central point (most American lost interest but, um, that beats having fantasies about war) ignores all context (historical, political, etc.) and, frankly, is somewhat dubious, but is not entirely without merit. Still, his tone is way off. Affected and oddly smug.
- mtinora@me.com
September 5, 2011 at 3:08pm
No, Grimes, Mr. Kaplan's tone is not smug; it's a truthful piece, and the fact that you are bitten by its tone indicates that it is effective. He says he has the blood-splattered medevac helo experience and the experience among millions of cruelly apathetic fellow Americans to back up his observations. It's a goddamn sick joke the way these wars have been covered in the States, and good people like Mr. Kaplan owe us millions more words & pictures to force us to understand the consequences of war policy. "[D]isengaged from the war" -- I can't think of a more condemnatory remark. Talk about people who shouldn't be allowed to vote!
- Konstantin
September 5, 2011 at 3:32pm
""'D]isengaged from the war" -- I can't think of a more condemnatory remark." - Konstantin Well, no. Um, actually there are plenty of things worse you can be than disengaged from the war. Killing children would, um, be an obvious one. Or to cite the eg. Kaplan does: celebrating war as a way to transcend complacent, affluent mediocrity. He's saying that that are worse than being disengaged. Um, that's the very point of his essay: that there are worse things than apathy! Got it? What you write in support of the article is, in fact, 180 degrees from his very point! The absolute opposite. The fact that you don't grasp this (can't read it at a freshman level to get his essential point) shows your letting your feelings overtake any objective reading, much less criticism. The problem - well, the first of of many - is he's conflating an ironical shock nihilism (Johnny Rotten's wanting to see the Nazi death camp Belsen) with the neocon's pathetic childlike like desire for greatness via military conquest with his own wishes as a journalist to be where the action is. Three different things. It gets worse. This is then contrasted against the supposed apathy of America. By which he means the sort of educated, blue-state voted who voted for Gore, Kerry and Obama. The fact that he terms the 9/11 attack an "insult to New York" is a sign of his anger, which like yours, veers from coherence. Though, granted, he's writing behind a mock nonchalance and irony throughout. His rhetorical point at that strange juncture being that the children of Texas are fighting to avenge - what, New York's honor? This at the behest of a Texan President their family's supported? His essential point, which - again - you utterly fail to grasp, is that disengagement is, in fact, superior to the neocon desire for greatness (or his desire to see history or his misreading of Johnny Rotten shock nihilism). He's pro-disengagement. Got it? And he may be right? But in his emotion he's all over the place. And it's not clear what an "engaged" America would be? American in 1971? 1966? 1952 when we were in Korea? The phenomena of veterans and journalists coming home to find the public not wanting to deal with what they've been through (or the moral dimensions of what their country has been doing) pre-dates the elimination of the draft (though, granted, it wasn't the WW-2 experience, which is our fallback yardstick) And when you get stuff like "the insult to New York" you know the writer's emotions are nowhere near as tranquil as he's pretending. This is not a knock on Kaplan, his intentions or what's he's been through. All of which I respect. Or even his central point, i.e., that indifference to war (changing the channel) is superior to celebrating it. You, Konstantin, disagree: you think ignoring the war is a greater evil than Kaplan does. Maybe you should go back, read his article and state your disagreement. Rather than get it totally wrong and mistakenly write in support.
- mtinora@me.com
September 5, 2011 at 6:52pm
". . .the tidy methodologies and the obscene realities. . ." << Disengagement allows lazy preaching about the former to prevail over good reporting on the latter. That in turn facilitates needless death and tarnishes the conscience of an entire generation, Cheney's new book be damned. You got me, though, Grimes. Yeah, I definitely believe baby-killers should be allowed to vote, but those who don't read newspapers shouldn't. Nailed it. Or maybe my "disengagement" remark was meant to be understood within the realm of civilized discourse, so as to avoid a too-quick fall into a form of the sad trap of Godwin's Law. I read this article with an eye toward the events that shaped its current sentiment, and those events transpired several years ago. Mr. Kaplan now says he chooses to "change the channel" because he "registered the costs & benefits, the tidy methodologies and the obscene realities." He did this after a couple years of war on site coverage, and he is now articulating it several years later still. He says that most Americans "changed the channel," or achieved his level of "disengagement" before he ever did, and that they did so without one bit of engagement in the first place. "At a distant remove, Americans made this calculation, and they somehow did so sooner than, say, the nearly two years in Iraq that it took this writer to tote up the same pros and cons." How's *your* reading comprehension, Grimes? I see snarky, cynical diction here, including "at a distant remove" and "somehow." Are Americans psychic, foreseeing that they would become tired of OIF even as it kicked off, that the best strategy to deal with the obscenity of war was to ignore it, to not bother to question or protest, to go shopping and watch more TV than ever rather than to invest their time into solving the tough issues presented by 9/11 and our response to it? Can we even say that many of those who celebrate the conduct of OIF, which you rightly identify as the inferior attitude, are not guilty of disengagement as well? (Unfortunately, I believe this could reopen that can of worms tossed to the landfill of discomfiting ideas by so many politicians who haven't a family member with a service stripe on his/her uniform.) Very few Americans have earned the level of apathy they celebrate, that you propose as, what, presumably the only counteroption to neocon-style rah-rahism? You can ignore the war, but no one should ignore the fact that a population of American (ignoring the coalition for now) armed service members one and a half times the size of the population of my hometown (Charleston, SC) is deployed to war zones. If a major hurricane hit Charleston, it would be big news for weeks. That number of people and then some are in war zones day after day after month after year after year. . . where’s the remote? Who cares, right?
- Konstantin
September 5, 2011 at 8:09pm
Wow. We are not disinterested we are APPALLED but we can't do anything.
- Sophia
September 5, 2011 at 8:23pm
Saddam. Did we have to launch a war against him RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT, taking advantage of 9/11, in which he wasn't involved? Give me a break. He was completely under observation at that point, the UN was all over Saddam, we were flying overhead constantly, and yes it does matter that we put him in power and armed him. It matters! It also matters that the Bush Administration lied through its teeth to get us involved there. It matters that they cut taxes and started these wars and crashed our economy, with no end in sight to the misery at home or abroad.
- Sophia
September 5, 2011 at 8:27pm
One more thought: not making war does not equal "paralyzed." Sheese. This is the same argument that history only counts if it is violent, if it involves war, crisis, bigtime drama. No. It. Doesn't. History also means the quiet work of ordinary people, growing things, caring for their animals and their children, planting gardens, painting houses. Is this so boring, really? Diplomacy, non-violent intervention isn't boring non-history either and it doesn't equal "paralyzed."
- Sophia
September 5, 2011 at 8:31pm
I just never thought it a particularly brave, compelling stance to posit that the US is better full of disengaged citizens rather than a bunch of Dick Cheneys. (And I admit I'm unprepared to compare the national sentiment of 9/12/01 to what it was at the beginning of WWI in 1914.) That's self-evident, but the gray area lies within the scale & timing of the disengagement or apathy that defines this generation. There's a paradox -- you can't blame Cheney for being disengaged in the current wars, but then again he's the king of deferments, and also he's the ex-CEO of a company that heavily profits from the war he started. But he's a bestselling author now, so let's move on and ignore all that unpleasantness. Conflict of interest? Too late to care now, so hey it's a good thing we all started ignoring the problem years ago when it might have mattered. Ignorance is bliss? Bliss is relative, though, and the default mode of most Americans the past several years has been ignorance.
- Konstantin
September 5, 2011 at 8:44pm
Indeed, Sophia, there is no limit to my imagined musings of how we could better spend the money we spend on OIF/OND. If 4,474 American casualties (plus 1,758 in OEF so far) doesn't catch one's eye, perhaps a trillion dollars will?
- Konstantin
September 5, 2011 at 8:51pm
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
- Konstantin
September 5, 2011 at 9:34pm
Ah Sophia. You did a ricochet thing right there. Don't you think that's a touch dishonest?
- jacko
September 5, 2011 at 10:53pm
Jacko, with respect I don't know what you are talking about. I'm simply stating my opinion, which apparently is at odds with yours. I'd like to add to Konstantin's casualty list, besides the trillion or so dollars and the several thousand Americans who've been killed: countless, literally, Arab and Central Asian people, NATO allies, basically the entire country of Iraq, many more thousands of horribly maimed and injured soldiers and civilians, the environment which has been damaged, our relations with Pakistan, if possible maybe making things worse in Afghanistan; and so forth.
- Sophia
September 6, 2011 at 1:08am
Oh speaking of dishonest, here's dishonest: Bush Administration trying to sell the Iraq war as "The Thinking Man's War," I think that was Wolfie The Awful; and claiming The War Will Pay For Itself. Uh huh. People wonder why the average American doesn't want to look?
- Sophia
September 6, 2011 at 1:11am
Sophia: I have absolutely no objections to disagreement. The greatest weight SHOULD fall upon the shoulders of those advocating for military action. However the ' We created him" argument is irrelevant within the context of of this advocacy. Except in, perhaps, the consideration of how powers that be might view such a thing. We've been over this ground before. You argue that the UN was sufficient to the task and that all was well and hunky dory. I have argue that the UN was an impotent and ultimately a counterproductive hindrance to any resolution. It was worse than paralysis. Especially with the help of the American left. That's a whole different can of worms though. Suffice that you have yours and I have mine and we shall disagree. Um. I don't have time to contribute any further for the next while so if you reply I'll not respond. Not that I wouldn't like to.
- jacko
September 6, 2011 at 1:49pm