[DEBATE] : The Movie-Made War World of George W. Bush

[Sean Jacobs]

>
> Presidential Bloodlust
>
> The Movie-Made War World of George W. Bush
> By Tom Engelhardt
> Here's a memory for you. I was probably five or six and sitting with  
> my father in a movie house off New York's Times Square -- one of the  
> slightly seedy theaters of that dawn of the 1950s moment that tended  
> to show double or triple feature B-westerns or war movies. We were  
> catching some old oater which, as I recall, began with a stagecoach  
> careening dramatically down the main street of a cow town. A wounded  
> man is slumped in the driver's seat, the horses running wild.  
> Suddenly -- perhaps from the town's newspaper office -- a cowboy  
> dressed in white and in a white Stetson rushes out, leaps on the  
> team of horses, stops the stagecoach, and says to the driver: "Sam,  
> Sam, who dun it to ya?" (or the equivalent). At just that moment,  
> the camera catches a man, dressed all in black in a black hat -- and  
> undoubtedly mustachioed -- skulking into the saloon.
>
> My dad promptly turns to me and whispers: "He's the one. He did it."
>
> Believe me, I'm awed. All I can say in wonder and protest is: "Dad,  
> how can you know? How can you know?"
>
> But, of course, he did know and, within a year or two, I certainly  
> had the same simple code of good and evil, hero and villain, under  
> my belt. It wasn't a mistake I was likely to make twice.
>
> Above all, of course, you couldn't mistake the bad guys of those old  
> films. They looked evil. If they were "natives," they also made no  
> bones about what they were going to do to the white hats, or, in the  
> case of Gunga Din (1939), the pith helmets. "Rise, our new-made  
> brothers," the evil "guru" of that film tells his followers. "Rise  
> and kill. Kill, lest you be killed yourselves. Kill for the love of  
> killing. Kill for the love of Kali. Kill! Kill! Kill!"
>
> "Wipe Them Out!"
>
> Kill! Kill! Kill! That was just the sort of thing the native  
> equivalent of the black hat was likely to say. Such villains -- for  
> a modern reprise, see the latest cartoon superhero blockbuster, Iron  
> Man -- were not only fanatical, but usually at the very edge of  
> madness as well. And their language reflected that.
>
> I was brought back with a start to just such evil-doers of my  
> American screen childhood last week by a memoir from a once-upon-a- 
> time insider of the Bush presidency. No, not former White House  
> press secretary Scott McClellan, who swept into the headlines by  
> accusing the President of using "propaganda" and the "complicit  
> enablers" of the media to take the U.S. to war in 2002-2003. I'm  
> thinking of another insider, former commander of U.S. forces in  
> Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. He got next to no  
> attention for a presidential outburst he recorded in his memoir,  
> Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story, so bloodthirsty and cartoonish  
> that it should have caught the attention of the nation -- and so  
> eerily in character, given the last years of presidential behavior,  
> that you know it has to be on the money.
>
> Let me briefly set the scene, as Sanchez tells it on pages 349-350  
> of Wiser in Battle. It's April 6, 2004. L. Paul Bremer III, head of  
> the occupation's Coalition Provisional Authority, as well as the  
> President's colonial viceroy in Baghdad, and Gen. Sanchez were in  
> Iraq in video teleconference with the President, Secretary of State  
> Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. (Assumedly,  
> the event was recorded and so revisitable by a note-taking Sanchez.)  
> The first full-scale American offensive against the resistant Sunni  
> city of Fallujah was just being launched, while, in Iraq's Shiite  
> south, the U.S. military was preparing for a campaign against cleric  
> Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia.
>
> According to Sanchez, Powell was talking tough that day: "We've got  
> to smash somebody's ass quickly," the general reports him saying.  
> "There has to be a total victory somewhere. We must have a brute  
> demonstration of power." (And indeed, by the end of April, parts of  
> Fallujah would be in ruins, as, by August, would expanses of the  
> oldest parts of the holy Shiite city of Najaf. Sadr himself would,  
> however, escape to fight another day; and, in order to declare  
> Powell's "total victory," the U.S. military would have to return to  
> Fallujah that November, after the U.S. presidential election, and  
> reduce three-quarters of it to virtual rubble.) Bush then turned to  
> the subject of al-Sadr: "At the end of this campaign al-Sadr must be  
> gone," he insisted to his top advisors. "At a minimum, he will be  
> arrested. It is essential he be wiped out."
>
> Not long after that, the President "launched" what an evidently  
> bewildered Sanchez politely describes as "a kind of confused pep  
> talk regarding both Fallujah and our upcoming southern campaign  
> [against the Mahdi Army]." Here then is that "pep talk." While you  
> read it, try to imagine anything like it coming out of the mouth of  
> any other American president, or anything not like it coming out of  
> the mouth of any evil enemy leader in the films of the President's  
> -- and my -- childhood:
>
>
> "'Kick ass!' [Bush] said, echoing Colin Powell's tough talk. 'If  
> somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out  
> and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff,  
> this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that  
> message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.
> "There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is  
> being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay  
> strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are  
> going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!'"
>
> Keep in mind that the bloodlusty rhetoric of this "pep talk" wasn't  
> meant to rev up Marines heading into battle. These were the  
> President's well-embunkered top advisors in a strategy session on  
> the eve of major military offensives in Iraq. Evidently, however,  
> the President was intent on imitating George C. Scott playing  
> General George Patton -- or perhaps even inadvertently channeling  
> one of the evil villains of his onscreen childhood.
>
> American Mad Mullahs
>
> Let's recall a little history here: In the nineteenth century, Third  
> World leaders who opposed Western imperial control were often not  
> only demonized but imagined to be, in some sense, mad simply for  
> taking on Western might. Throughout the latter part of that century,  
> for instance, the British faced down various "mad mullahs" in North  
> Africa.
>
> Later, such imagery migrated easily enough to imperial Hollywood and  
> thence into American movie houses. But here was the strange thing:  
> In the Vietnam years, that era of reversals, a president of the  
> United States privately expressed, for the first time, a desire to  
> take on the mantle of madness previous reserved for the enemy in  
> American culture (and undoubtedly many other cultures as well). It  
> was not just that President Richard Nixon's domestic critics were  
> ready to label him a madman, but that, in his desire to end the  
> Vietnam War in a satisfyingly victorious fashion, he was ready to  
> label himself one.
>
> "I call it the madman theory, Bob," Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman  
> reported the President saying. "I want the North Vietnamese to  
> believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the  
> war. We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you  
> know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when  
> he's angry -- and he has his hand on the nuclear button' -- and  
> [North Vietnamese leader] Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in  
> two days begging for peace."
>
> Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, was equally  
> fascinated with the possible bargaining advantage of having the  
> enemy imagine the President as an evil, potentially world- 
> obliterating madman. "Henry talked about it so much," according to  
> Lawrence Lynn, a Kissinger aide, "… that the Russians and North  
> Vietnamese wouldn't run risks because of Nixon's character." What  
> made this fascination with the idea of a mad president more curious  
> was that it fused with fears held by White House aides and advisers  
> that Nixon, finger on the nuclear button, might indeed be impaired  
> or nearing the edge of derangement. "My drunken friend," "that  
> drunken lunatic," "the meatball mind," or "the basket case," was the  
> way Kissinger referred to him after receiving his share of slurred  
> late night phone calls.
>
> So, in a historic moment almost four decades ago, a desperate  
> president suddenly found it strategically advisable to present  
> himself to his enemies as a potential nation slaughterer, a world  
> incinerator (and his aides were privately ready to think of him as  
> such); the leader of what was then commonly termed "the Free World,"  
> that is, was considering revealing himself as a mad emperor, a  
> veritable Ming the Merciless.
>
> Skip ahead these several decades and, presidentially, things have  
> only gotten stranger. After all, we now have a president who has  
> openly, even eagerly, faced the world as the Commander-in-Chief of  
> Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, Extraordinary Rendition, and  
> Offshore Imprisonment; a Vice President who appeared openly on  
> Capitol Hill to lobby against a bill banning torture; and key  
> cabinet members who, from a White House conference room,  
> micromanaged torture, down to specific techniques in specific cases.  
> Talk about Ming the Merciless.
>
> Back in the 1960s and 1970s, you had one president whose critics  
> would call him a "baby killer" -- "that horrible song" was the way  
> President Lyndon Baines Johnson referred to the antiwar chant, "Hey,  
> hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" -- and another ready to  
> take on the mantle of madness for purposes of private diplomacy; and  
> each was reportedly brought to the edge of private madness while in  
> office. But both were also uncomfortable with imagery of themselves  
> and exceedingly awkward in the televisual world of politics that was  
> already starting to surround them; neither imagined himself "in the  
> movies."
>
> Last Screen Appearance?
>
> Usually Ronald Reagan, an actual actor, is seen as the president who  
> spent his time in office playing the role of a lifetime, but, as it  
> happens, he had nothing on George W. Bush. From the moment the  
> attacks of September 11, 2001 gave him his "calling" as a "wartime"  
> president, he has been deeply embroiled in acting out his cartoonish  
> version of the role of the century. In fact, he has often seemed  
> like little more than an overgrown boy plunged into his own war  
> movie and war-play memories.
>
> Let's remember that, soon after 9/11, this President launched his  
> "crusade, this war on terrorism" with an image of a poster from some  
> generic Western of his childhood. ("Bush offered some of his most  
> blunt language to date when he was asked if he wanted bin Laden  
> dead. 'I want justice,' Bush said. 'And there's an old poster out  
> West… I recall, that said, Wanted, Dead or Alive.'") For years, he  
> visibly glowed when publicly dressing up in a way that was redolent  
> of the boy version of war (that is, doll... er, action figure) play.  
> While Abraham Lincoln never put on a uniform and an actual general,  
> Dwight D. Eisenhower, put his in the closet in his years as  
> president, Bush uniquely and repeatedly appeared in public togged  
> out in military wear, looking for all the world like a life-sized  
> version of the original 12-inch G.I. Joe action figure -- whether  
> "landing" a jet on the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln,  
> and stepping out in a nifty flight suit, or appearing before massed  
> hooah-ing troops in specially tailored jackets with "George W. Bush,  
> Commander In Chief" carefully stitched across the breast. (In fact,  
> more than one toy company did indeed produce G.I. Joe-style Bush  
> action figures.)
>
> Evident above all, from September 14, 2001 -- when he climbed that  
> pile of rubble at "Ground Zero" in New York City and, bullhorn in  
> hand, to "USA! USA!" cheers, wiped out the ignominy of his actions  
> on the actual day of the attacks -- was just how much he enjoyed his  
> role as resolute leader of a wartime America. While his Vice  
> President and top advisors were grimly, if eagerly, preparing to  
> whack Saddam Hussein and taking the opportunity to create a  
> permanent commander-in-chief presidency, the President was visibly  
> having the time of his life, perhaps for the first time since he  
> gave up those "wild parties" of his youth.
>
> A rivulet of telling details about his behavior has flowed by us in  
> these years. We know from Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, for  
> instance, that, after 9/11, Bush kept "his own personal scorecard  
> for the war" in a desk drawer in the Oval Office -- photos with  
> brief biographies and personality sketches of leading al-Qaeda  
> figures, whose faces could be satisfyingly crossed out when killed  
> or captured. In July 2003, frustrated by signs that the Sunni  
> insurgency in Iraq wasn't going away, he impulsively offered this  
> bit of bluster to reporters (as if he were the one who would take  
> the brunt of future attacks): "There are some who feel like the  
> conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is,  
> bring 'em on."
>
> In those moments when he spoke or acted spontaneously, there are  
> plentiful clues that Bush took deep pleasure in finding himself in  
> the role of commander-in-chief, and that he has been genuinely  
> thrilled to do commander-in-chief-like things, at least as once  
> pictured in the on-screen fantasy world of his youth. He was  
> thrilled, for example, to receive from some of the troops who  
> captured Saddam Hussein, the pistol that the dictator had with him  
> in his "spiderhole." Back in 2004, TIME Magazine's Matthew Cooper  
> reported: "'He really liked showing it off,' says a recent visitor  
> to the White House who has seen the gun. 'He was really proud of  
> it.' The pistol's new place of residence is in the small study next  
> to the Oval Office where Bush takes select visitors." Similarly, he  
> returned from one of his brief trips to Iraq "inspired" by a meeting  
> with the pilot who shot off the missile that incinerated Bin Laden  
> wannabe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
>
> On and off throughout these years, you could glimpse just what a  
> cartoon-like white-hat/black-hat persona he imagined himself to be  
> playing. This was true whether he was in his blustery tough-guy  
> mode, as when, in September 2007, he arrived in Australia publicly  
> proclaiming that the U.S. was "kicking ass" in Iraq; or when, as  
> commander-in-chief, he regularly teared up with genuine (movie)  
> emotion as he handed out medals, some posthumous, for bravery; or  
> even when he discussed his own wartime version of "sacrifice" -- he  
> claimed to have given up golf for his war. As he told Mike Allen of  
> Politico.com: "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently  
> died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to  
> the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with  
> them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong  
> signal."
>
> The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin has pointed out that even Bush's  
> callow sacrifice of golf wasn't real -- he kept on playing -- but  
> that hardly matters. What's crucial is that all this real life play- 
> acting still moves, even thrills, him. Recently, for instance, he  
> gave a graduation speech at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he  
> once again compared Iraq to World War II (and so, implicitly,  
> himself to President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister  
> Winston Churchill, a bust of whom he has kept in the Oval Office all  
> these years). As Associated Press reporter Ben Feller commented:  
> "Bush noted it was his last military academy commencement speech,  
> and he seemed to savor it. He personally congratulated each cadet as  
> cheers bounded across the stadium." Note that word "savor," when  
> linked to the military and his commander-in-chief role. It's been a  
> quality evident in the President's ongoing performance these last  
> seven years. The photos of him goofing around with Air Force Academy  
> graduates after his speech tell the story well.
>
> In all this, you can sense a man in his own bubble world, engrossed  
> in, and satisfied with, his own performance -- both as actor and, as  
> in childhood, audience. What Gen. Ricardo Sanchez has added to this  
> is the picture of a man who, even in 2004, was already dreaming  
> Vietnam disaster ("This Vietnam stuff… We can't send that  
> message."); who, perhaps sensing that his blockbuster was busting,  
> like Richard Nixon before him, proved willing to mix the white-hat  
> and black-hat codes of his movie childhood in remarkable ways. Under  
> the strain of a failing war, in private and among his top officials,  
> he didn't hesitate to take on that "guru" role and rally his closest  
> followers with a call to kill, kill, kill!
>
> A confused pep talk indeed. Even if Bush is still exhorting his top  
> officials not to "blink," Americans should. After all, there are  
> almost eight months left to his presidency, and a man of such  
> stunning immaturity, who confuses fantasy with real life, and is  
> given to outbursts of challenge, bluster, and bloodlust should be  
> taken seriously. Nixon's "mad mullah" stayed private until  
> transcripts of the Watergate tapes and memoirs started coming out.  
> For us, the question remains, will this President be able to take a  
> final turn on-screen before his term ends, playing the "mad mullah"  
> in relation to Iran?
>
> Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is  
> the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of  
> Victory Culture, has recently been updated in a newly issued  
> edition. He edited, and his work appears in, the first best of  
> Tomdispatch book, The World According to Tomdispatch: America in the  
> New Age of Empire (Verso), which is being published this month.
>
> [Note for Readers: As far as I know, the key passage in Sanchez's  
> memoirs quoted in this piece was first noticed and commented upon by  
> that indefatigable Iraq reporter, Patrick Cockburn. Unlike the key  
> passages in Scott McClellan's memoir, this one from Sanchez's book  
> has been little attended to. However, Dan Froomkin (cited in this  
> piece), who does the Washington Post's online column, White House  
> Watch, also noted its existence. That's not surprising. He seems  
> never to miss any important development when it comes to the Bush  
> administration. I link to his invaluable column often. As far as I'm  
> concerned, it may be the most striking example of the sort of  
> service a sharp columnist for a major paper can offer in the online  
> world. I find it a daily must-read and recommend it strongly.  
> Finally, if you want to know more about Mad Mullahs, American war  
> movies, and a host of other subjects from World War II through the  
> Iraq War, check out my recently updated book, The End of Victory  
> Culture.]
>
> Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt
>
>
>
>
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