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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Decoding Susan Sontag, line by arduous line.
Sep 11, 2002 | From Tuesday's New York Times, in an Op-Ed headlined "Real Battles and Empty Metaphors":
By Susan Sontag
Since last Sept. 11, the Bush administration has told the American people that America is at war. But this war is of a peculiar nature. It seems to be, given the nature of the enemy, a war with no foreseeable end. What kind of war is that?
Er, has Sontag heard of the Hundred Years War? Or the Peloponnesian War? Or the almost century-long war against totalitarianism in the 20th century? Most wars in history have been engaged with no clear understanding of when exactly they might end. In fact, this is the rule of most difficult international conflicts, not the exception.
There are precedents. Wars on such enemies as cancer, poverty and drugs are understood to be endless wars. There will always be cancer, poverty and drugs. And there will always be despicable terrorists, mass murderers like those who perpetrated the attack a year ago tomorrow -- as well as freedom fighters (like the French Resistance and the African National Congress) who were once called terrorists by those they opposed but were relabeled by history.
Is Sontag aware that there is a distinction between domestic and foreign policy? (And notice the sly notion that not all terrorists are actually terrorists. Does she believe the terrorists of 9/11 will one day be described as noble freedom fighters? She doesn't say.) She's right, of course, to bemoan the awful militaristic metaphors of such domestic campaigns. (And for the record, I've long opposed the domestic "wars" on drugs and poverty. They debase the solemn currency of war and make the problems worse, not better.) But it doesn't in any way follow that an armed conflict with foreign powers who have invaded our cities and murdered American citizens is not a "war" in any meaningful sense of that term.
When a president of the United States declares war on cancer or poverty or drugs, we know that "war" is a metaphor. Does anyone think that this war -- the war that America has declared on terrorism -- is a metaphor? But it is, and one with powerful consequences. War has been disclosed, not actually declared, since the threat is deemed to be self-evident.
Excuse me, but war was not disclosed or declared by the United States. It was declared quite emphatically and unapologetically by Islamist terrorists years ago, and has been going on in the Middle East and elsewhere for the better part of three decades. (Sontag might read Lawrence Wright's superb reporting in this week's New Yorker to see how deep this war goes and who is really galvanizing it. Hint to Susan: not us.) And it is not and never has been a metaphor. Metaphors didn't crash into New York, Washington and Pennsylvania a year ago. Metaphors didn't liberate Afghanistan. Special Forces troops, even now defending Sontag's freedom to write her Op-Ed, are not metaphorically trying to hunt down al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan. From our enemy's perspective, the war has been real for decades. The only people who didn't see it were those trying not to see it, or those who were distracted elsewhere. Such distractions no longer count as an excuse.
Real wars are not metaphors. And real wars have a beginning and an end. Even the horrendous, intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine will end one day.
Huh? When, according to Ms. Sontag, did the wars in the Balkans ever really end? Or begin? When did the conflict in Ireland ever really end? Why would the conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, bubbling for millennia, automatically be required one day to end? Maybe there will be some sort of settlement some day that isn't beset by violence. But I doubt it. Some wars -- like the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries which our current war strongly resembles -- last generations, or go dormant, and then revive.
But this antiterror war can never end.
In the sense that conflict this deep disappears overnight, of course not. But in the sense that war and politics can make the Middle East a less barbaric, depraved and despotic place, the answer is that the anti-terror war absolutely can end. But only if we wage it with conviction and skill, and recognize that all the belligerent components, from Iraq and Iran to Saudi Arabia, are connected -- exactly the response Sontag opposes.
That is one sign that it is not a war but, rather, a mandate for expanding the use of American power.
What can that last sentence mean? Could it not have been written during every single war that this country or any country has ever waged? Of course, wars mean an expansion of government power. That is why, for example, small-government types like me support war only as a last resort. But unlike Sontag, I consider the massacre of 3,000 people in New York City, after decades of low-level terrorism against American citizens, and the promise of even more bloodshed, to be a reason to defend ourselves. At long last.
