Everyone loves a hero. Tales of dragon-slayers, of giant-killers, of larger-than-life heroes defying all odds to emerge triumphant, are as old as the bones of history. They make a rousing tale. And they are useful insofar as they communicate the deep resources of human beings in the face of adversity.
But like all stories, the hero-myth becomes not only worthless but destructive when it is taken literally. This is never more so than when a single nation decides that it has a God-given right to decide the destiny of the world. The notion of a heroic destiny immunizes a culture from self-examination, reflection, or appropriate humility; and it encourages a predisposition toward use of force when confronted with even the flimsiest threats. The reasoning seems to go, We’re the best, the biggest and the strongest—why negotiate? Did Hercules seek conflict resolution with the Hydra, or did he whoop its scaly butt?
Of course, this peculiar notion of heroism depends on a highly selective view of reality. Taking a second glance at our burly friend Hercules, we’re reminded that his first attempt to slay the Hydra was a miserable failure; for every one of its heads he whacked off, two more took its place. Depending on which version of the story one prefers, our hero subsequently either took some good advice or wrapped his own thick noggin around the problem; so in his second attempt to vanquish the beast, he cleverly cauterized the stump of each head before it could regenerate.
Interestingly, most mythological heroes are called upon, at one point or another, to exercise their wits to solve a particularly intractable problem. Yet the behavior of most nation-states that take on the heroic mantle—I’m referring, of course, to those with imperial ambitions—is more reminiscent of the Hercules who shoots arrows into the ocean, angry that the rocking of the boat has disturbed his sleep. In contemporary times, our hero’s press secretary would almost certainly inform the media that he had “sent a clear message” to the misbehaving sea. The press corps, by now benumbed by a thousand such pronouncements, would let the statement go without much comment.
In short, hegemony makes people incredibly dumb.
I’m reminded of this whenever some pundit muses about our “victory” in the Cold War. It seems the only lesson many in this country want to draw from that deeply neurotic chapter of our history is, to wit, “U-S-A! U-S-A! (repeat ad nauseum).” This is all the more sad because our many failures of imagination, insight, and intellectual rigor during those four decades of struggle could prove very useful to us in our current conflicts, if only we would permit ourselves to reflect upon them. Perhaps the greatest potential lesson is the folly of persisting, despite all evidence to the contrary, in the belief in a monolithic enemy—and of furthermore insisting that the conflict with this evil Other be a fight to the death.
The Soviet Union, particularly under Stalin, was indeed a dangerous aggressor state, and in certain specific respects, the containment strategy that evolved in reaction to Stalin’s ambitions proved sane and effective—certainly more so than the notion floated at turns by McArthur and Patton to confront the behemoth with direct military force. But by the 1950s the Cold War was clearly not about containing a mere nation-state; it was about “defeating evil” in the form of a global communist conspiracy that supposedly took its orders directly from the Kremlin. As such, US policy tended to be based upon the assumption that all communists—whether in the USSR, China, Southeast Asia, or the Western Hemisphere—were on the same side. This, despite abundant evidence that many of these parties had competing interests, deep animosities, and long-simmering national and cultural resentments.
With this misunderstanding in mind, it’s vital to remember that the Vietnam War was not merely a provincial dispute in which the United States became enmired; rather, it was seen as an extension of a larger struggle against Communism (now dignified with a capital C). As such, it was impossible for our leaders to be objective about what was actually happening on the ground: no matter how badly things were going, nor how incoherent our “strategy” had become, it was considered impossible, inconceivable, to withdraw, for fear of the perception that we had been defeated in an important front in the larger struggle. Similarly, based on the false premise that attacking any and all communists was an effective means of limiting Soviet expansion, we persecuted citizens at home, supported brutal regimes abroad, and competed in a global arms race whose effects are being felt even now, long after the collapse of the Soviet Union— all for the sake of defeating an enemy that we imagined had one face, one motive, one set of intentions—and which, in this sense, never actually existed.
It doesn’t take an enormous imaginative leap to see that the United States, under the Bush administration, has made a similar mistake in prosecuting the war on “terror” or “Islamo-fascism.” Our policies for the last six and a half years have come to appear more and more like a feeble collection of media events: “clear messages” to terrorists, the arbitrary assignment of a nation-state as the “front line” in the war, the photo opportunities in heavily-patrolled sections of the Green zone, the endless talk from Bush and his media mouthpieces of “victory” and the willingness of Democrats to “accept defeat.” It’s less a war than a coordinated effort to market a war—and thereby to promote a continued belief in our heroic national identity, despite nagging, accumulating evidence of our decline.
John McCain is particularly guilty of this sort of misplaced Herculean posturing. His repeated error in describing a relationship between “Al Queda in Iraq” and Iran—who by virtue of their respective Sunni and Shia constituencies, actively hate each other—is not a mere verbal slip, or even evidence of a particular misunderstanding of geopolitical realities. Instead, it reveals a basic and unshakeable belief system that perpetually pits a heroic America versus a demonic Other—an ethos that necessarily sees the application of military force as the ultimate solution to all real or imagined threats.
This is why I tend to raise my voice at people who claim they’d rather vote for McCain than for one Democratic candidate or the other. In a way, it’s simply not relevant whether or not one personally likes either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton; the reality is, neither of them is seriously talking about opening another front in this sham war (no, while I found Hillary’s “obliterating Iran” line stupid and offensive, I didn’t actually take it seriously), while I think John McCain actually depends on it. Those who praise McCain for his sense of honor should consider what it means for national policy to be based upon it. They should consider what it means to have someone obsessed with winning running our foreign affairs. They should imagine what a commander-in-chief who considers war to be noble will do with his powers. At best, we’re looking at four to eight more years of utter folly; at worst, the profound and relatively sudden collapse of our nation as a world power.
This is no exaggeration. Though for many, the myth of inevitable American ascendancy effectively blots out any consideration of such a scenario, for some of us the warning signs are clear enough. We need only look to the fate of other, formerly preeminent world powers to observe how such an implosion can take place. Returning to the example of the Cold War: the inefficiency of state-run communism was only part of the equation of the USSR’s bankruptcy and disintegration. Another, equally important, was the corrosive influence of imperial prestige on its national policies. Why continue a profitless war in Afghanistan? Why build enough ICBMs and warheads to destroy not only one’s enemy, but all life on Earth several times over? Because an empire fears losing face more than it cares about effective, constructive policies.
To those who have been busy congratulating themselves ever since the Berlin Wall came down, I suggest a second appraisal of our tactics before and after the fall. We could afford to outspend the Soviets into the ground because they were a nation-state with a structurally flimsy economy. But the cost was real: under Ronald Reagan’s watch, the nation accumulated more debt than under every previous administration combined.
If this had realistically been an investment in future global peace and security, it might well have been worth it. Instead, neoconservatives, as well as old-school hawks like McCain, have labored to justify continuing and expanding Reagan-era military bloat, and perceive any cut to the size, extent, and, significantly, the funding of our armed forces as a threat not only to national security, but to our nation’s greatness. As such, we are hearing scarily familiar arguments from militarists in this country about the potential damage our status as the world’s foremost power will suffer if we are seen to have “lost” in Iraq. This is the most deadly kind of circular reasoning: every new escalation, all the continuing carnage and misdirection of resources is deemed necessary to justify the folly that preceded it.
I understand and appreciate that people respect John McCain for the suffering he underwent, and the courage he displayed, in his time as a soldier and a prisoner of war. I appreciate that they see him as a man of honor (though his kowtowing to the reactionary right over the last year makes me wonder about the basis of this belief). But it’s time to discredit the notion that those particular virtues will make him an effective commander-in-chief. Instead, McCain’s desire to preserve the United States’ heroic identity will make him more apt to squander every opportunity we have left to preserve not merely our greatness, but our prosperity and relevance. We all may love a hero, but I think it’s fair to ask if we want a would-be Hercules (or a Don Quixote, for that matter) determining, to a very great extent, the fate of our nation.
