Cheney vs. History

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake,” wrote James Joyce. The Bush Administration’s arch-pessimist, Dick Cheney, would seem to share Joyce’s dour assessment of the human condition. So it is more that a little ironic that the vice-president, a card-carrying Hobbesian if ever there was one, reportedly still believes History with a capitol “H” will vindicate the administration’s decision to invade Iraq. In other words, the gloom-monger-in-chief is counting on a happy ending in Iraq (a land with a 1,500 year history of unremitting Hobbesian strife).

I can understand that a guy who’s endured four heart attacks, a blood clot, the felony conviction of his top aide, and twenty percent approval rating has got to think positive sometime. Did I leave out the incident where the VP shot his friend in the face, the Taliban assassination attempt, and the strain of having to explain to your conservative base that your gay daughter is going to have a baby with another woman? Personally, I’d rather face Taliban assassins than explain to Focus on the Family’s James Dobson why he should read Heather Has Two Mommies.

The Veep maintains that it may be five decades before he’s vindicated. Sure, and my decision invest in lottery tickets to secure my retirement may end up being vindicated too. In the meantime, however, it’s difficult to see how the civil conflagration in Iraq, the decimation of the American military, and the fact that we’ve managed to turn Iraq into a jihadist training ground (dominated by axis-of-evil member Iran) actually furthers American interests.

Actually, the lessons of history – which us liberals supposedly didn’t learn from 9/11 – are completely lost on this administration. First of all, as anthropologist Jared Diamond notes in his book Collapse, pivotal military defeats signaling imperial decline invariably mask ecological catastrophes that are the true cause of collapse. For instance, Mayan leaders resorted to military raids against neighbors in order to maintain their lavish lifestyles and distract the masses from the ecological devastation and economic deprivations that inevitably attended slash and burn agricultural practices at home.

The U.S. faces a similar predicament as reliance on fossil fuels contributes to ecological and political backlashes (global warming and terrorism respectively). The bid to secure American hegemony over Iraq’s oil reserves was intended to address a potentially crippling vulnerability: anti-American forces in the Middle East in control of the region’s oil wealth. American efforts to alleviate this concern have increased this possibility rather than lessened it.

In the meantime, as Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, America’s aging infrastructure and under funded response systems are less resilient than anyone imagined. As historian Arnold Toynbee pointed out, societies go through life cycles: youthful vigor, middle-aged resilience, and aged senescence. Vigorous and resilient societies meet challenges and weather storms effectively, while senescent societies do not direct their energies and marshal resources appropriately.

When historians look back on America’s invasion of Iraq they are likely to ponder the billions (if not trillions) gambled away in a vain attempt to rebuild Iraq while America’s dilapidated power grids, highway system, and public health system crumbled. Whether global warming is manmade or not, or whether we can do anything about it or not, we have entered a period of global climate change that is unleashing more intense and more unpredictable weather patterns. Further, the forces of globalization are all but certain to make natural disasters, pandemics and acts of terrorism more likely. In other words, America’s resilience is likely to be tested on many fronts.

The administration’s panacea for terrorism was predicated on the notion that transforming Iraq would take the air out of the jihadist movement. Instead, just the opposite has occurred. Tellingly, most terror plots (including 9/11) have been hatched in Europe, illustrating how much the Bush/Cheney bet misses the mark. Terrorism is not the only challenge America faces; natural disasters and pandemics are all but inevitable. The prudent course to address all three – terrorism, natural disasters, and pandemics – would have been to invest in America’s infrastructure, health system, and first responders in order to bolster the nation’s resilience. A lesson Toynbee gleaned from his careful study of history is that those empires that try and change the world rather than themselves usually fail.

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