A Mythic Reality
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The best book I've
read about America after 9/11 isn't about either America or 9/11. It's
"War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning," an essay on the psychology of
war by Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent. Better than any poll analysis
or focus group, it explains why
War, Mr.
Hedges says, plays to some fundamental urges. "Lurking beneath the surface
of every society, including ours," he says, "is the passionate
yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is
able to deliver." When war psychology takes hold, the public believes,
temporarily, in a "mythic reality" in which our nation is purely
good, our enemies are purely evil, and anyone who isn't our ally is our enemy.
This state
of mind works greatly to the benefit of those in power.
One striking
part of the book describes Argentina's reaction to the 1982 Falklands war. Gen.
Leopoldo Galtieri, the leader of the country's military junta, cynically launched
that war to distract the public from the failure of his economic policies. It
worked: "The junta, which had been on the verge of collapse" just
before the war, "instantly became the saviors of the country."
The point is
that once war psychology takes hold, the public desperately wants to believe in
its leadership, and ascribes heroic qualities to even the least deserving
ruler. National adulation for the junta ended only after a humiliating military
defeat.
George W.
Bush isn't General Galtieri: America really was attacked on 9/11, and any
president would have followed up with a counterstrike against the Taliban. Yet
the Bush administration, like the Argentine junta, derived enormous political
benefit from the impulse of a nation at war to rally around its leader.
Another
president might have refrained from exploiting that surge of support for
partisan gain; Mr. Bush didn't.
And his
administration has sought to perpetuate the war psychology that makes such
exploitation possible.
Step by
step, the fight against Al Qaeda became a universal "war on terror,"
then a confrontation with the "axis of evil," then a war against all
evil everywhere. Nobody knows where it all ends.
What is
clear is that whenever political debate turns to Mr. Bush's actual record in
office, his popularity sinks. Only by doing whatever it takes to change the
subject to the war on terror - not to what he's actually doing about terrorist
threats, but to his "leadership," whatever that means - can he get a
bump in the polls.
Last week's
convention made it clear that Mr. Bush intends to use what's left of his heroic
image to win the election, and early polls suggest that the strategy may be
working. What can
Campaigning
exclusively on domestic issues won't work. Mr. Bush must be held to account for
his dismal record on jobs, health care and the environment. But as Mr. Hedges
writes, when war psychology makes a public yearn to believe in its leaders,
"there is little that logic or fact or truth can do to alter the
experience."
To win, the
Kerry campaign has to convince a significant number of voters that the
self-proclaimed "war president" isn't an effective war leader - he
only plays one on TV.
This charge
has the virtue of being true. It's hard to find a nonpartisan national security
analyst with a good word for the Bush administration's foreign policy. Iraq, in
particular, is a slow-motion disaster brought on by wishful thinking, cronyism
and epic incompetence.
If I were
running the Kerry campaign, I'd remind people frequently about Mr. Bush's
flight-suit photo-op, when he declared the end of major combat. In fact, the
war goes on unabated. News coverage of Iraq dropped off sharply after the
supposed transfer of sovereignty on June 28, but as many American soldiers have
died since the transfer as in the original invasion.
And I'd
point out that while Mr. Bush spared no effort preparing for his carrier
landing - he even received underwater survival training in the White House pool
- he didn't prepare for things that actually mattered, like securing and
rebuilding Iraq after Baghdad fell.
Will it
work? I don't know. But to win, Mr. Kerry must try to puncture the myth that
Mr. Bush's handlers have so assiduously created.
© Paul Krugman
This article originally appeared in the New York Times
