- Look at what America has become. We are moving on steel
treads across a harsh landscape as a creature of destruction, kicking up
clouds of unreality through which we see illusions of our efficiency and
virtue.
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- The prodigality of our nation's claims for itself is
staggering. We can decide alone when the use of overwhelming violence is
justified. Before the onslaught of our weapons, enemy resistance will be
nil. The display of ''shock and awe,'' an unprecedented bombardment aimed
less at human beings and buildings than at the human imagination, will
bend the world to our will. Unlike all previous powers in history, we can
wage war humanely. Our success will be so complete that no other nation
will challenge us -- or imitate us. The time for complexity is past: You
are for us or against us. Either way, your world will be a far safer place
when we are finished. Those who opposed this war will sheepishly return
to the fold, the flock of our dominance. We are so good.
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- Young Americans in uniform are now dying for this cloud
of illusion -- dying of it -- and so are Iraqis of all ages and stations
-- uniformed and naked. When the dying begins, the arguments leading up
to the war cease to have resonance. Who is debating anymore the hazards
of intervention, the relationship of ends and means, the question of whether
Saddam Hussein is Osama bin Laden's partner or nemesis?
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- Those who opposed the war on the grounds that its good
effects would be outweighed by unintended disasters -- chemical attacks,
oil wells aflame, riots in the street across the globe -- are now in the
position, only, of praying to have been wrong. Those who opposed it more
broadly, as reckless hubris whether successful or not, are still saying
no without waiting for outcomes. Yet all are braced today for the Battle
of Baghdad, hardly breathing.
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- Americans overwhelmingly support this war -- but do we
understand it? The bombardment that has already been carried out, for example:
more bombs already than in the 40 days of Desert Storm. Assume for a moment
that civilian casualties have indeed been kept to a minimum by precision
weapons. Still, what are we seeing through the lenses of news cameras mounted
on hotel rooftops on the ''safe'' side of the river? What do those far
off raging fires actually signify? Set aside moral and political abstractions
that differentiate Baghdad from Washington to focus on the merely physical
effects of such bombing.
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- If Washington were the target of a ''shock and awe''
campaign, the US Capitol would now be rubble, along with that entire parade
of becolumned federal buildings astride seven blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The White House a smoldering ruin (like Camp David -- and the Bush ranch
house in Crawford, Texas). The Pentagon a fetid sinkhole, in-rushing waters
of the adjacent Potomac River having snuffed the burning abyss. The vice
president's residence at the head of Embassy Row in ruins. Bolling Air
Force Base and Andrews Air Force Base on the Maryland side of the Potomac
aflame. Fort Myers and the Navy Annex on the ridge of Arlington, Fort McNair
in Southwest Washington and the Marine Barracks in Southeast, the Naval
Hospital in Bethesda, and Walter Reed Hospital in far Northwest -- all
on fire. CIA headquarters in McLean, Va., a smoking scar on the landscape.
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- Such is a ''limited'' campaign, targets chosen ''humanely''
according to a strategy of ''decapitation.'' We can leave until later the
question of who and how many are dead and wounded.
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- And what, exactly, would justify such destruction? What
would make it an act of virtue? And is it possible to imagine that such
violence could be wreaked in a spirit of cold detachment, by controllers
sitting at screens dozens, hundreds, even thousands of miles distant? And
in what way would such ''decapitation'' spark in the American people anything
but a horror to make memories of 9/11 seem a pleasant dream? If our nation,
in other words, were on its receiving end, illusions would lift and we
would see ''shock and awe'' for exactly what it is -- terrorism pure and
simple.
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- American broadcasts are full, already, of the language
of glory and eventual triumph. But the firmness of assertion suggests uncertainty.
Are we the new masters of morality, imposing our order on a world that
will someday be grateful? Are we victors, at last, over self-deceit and
pride, crushing opposition only because it forces us to? Have we overcome
the tragic momentum of mechanized violence so that at last it can be used
humanely?
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- If so, the glory and triumph are right and just. If not,
then when the clouds of illusion finally do lift, our claims will be seen
for what they are: vainglory and triumphalism.
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- James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
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- © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company
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