Alien's Eye View of the War

[Clay Fink]

I think that this is right on the money.

Briefing for a descent into hell
A wide-eyed extraterrestrial is instructed about how a man named Bush became the most powerful leader on Earth -- and how he led the planet into chaos.
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By Fred Branfman
April 2, 2003 | Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Bush administration's war against Iraq is that so many otherwise sensible observers discuss it as if it were a rational decision about which reasonable people can disagree. To gain some needed perspective, it is useful to recall Doris Lessing's classic science fiction novel, "Briefing for a Descent Into Hell."
The book revolves around a group of beings from another planet who are sent to save Earth, known for its "aggressiveness and irrationality." They must save our beleaguered planet because they have learned what we have not: that everything is interconnected. They must save us to save themselves. During the "briefing," the beings are told about their mission, and then memories of their own home are erased from their consciousness -- because remembering the sane place they came from while living on Earth would drive them mad.
The following is what might occur if the Briefer from Lessing's novel were compelled to explain our planet's current crisis to one of the beings who has volunteered to help save it. The discussion begins after the being has spent several hours watching the war on satellite television. The innocent, sad-eyed extraterrestrial creature is filled with queries about this troubled place called Earth, so we will call him the Questioner.
The Questioner: Excuse me, I've just watched several hours of TV coverage of the war in the nation called Iraq. I saw howling mobs in something called the "Arab world" chanting "Death to America!" and live coverage of buildings being blown up by this America's bombing and shelling, civilians screaming and sobbing over dead relatives after these attacks, captured American soldiers with bewildered expressions, and reports of whole cities going without food or water and fears of epidemics.
Apparently thousands of people have died in just the first few weeks of the war, and many more thousands will die in coming weeks and months. What is responsible for all this human suffering and mayhem?
The Briefer: Well, the planet Earth is divided into nation-states. The mightiest nation, the United States of America, with 280 million people, a $400 billion defense budget, and a GDP of $10 trillion -- has attacked Iraq, a nation of 25 million people, with a defense budget of $1.4 billion, and a GDP of $80 billion.
Q: How do American leaders justify initiating this war?
B: Their fundamental rationale is that Iraq poses a threat to American lives.
Q: I'm confused. I thought you said the United States, the giant nation, initiated the war.
B: It did.
Q: But how could Iraq, outspent 350 times militarily, pose so great a threat to the U.S. as to justify all this suffering?
B: U.S. leaders fundamentally justified their attack by claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened U.S. citizens. In a March 6, 2003, press conference, the U.S. president, a man named Bush, declared, "My job is to protect the American people ... I put my hand on the Bible and took that oath. And that's exactly what I am going to do." By "Bible" he referred to a book he believes is inspired by an all-powerful God who guides his actions against enemies who believe their very different God guides their activities against him.
Q: What evidence did he present that Iraq intended to use these weapons against the U.S.?
B: None. While most people believed Iraq possessed such weapons, the main U.S. intelligence agency -- the CIA -- said it was unlikely to use them unless attacked by the U.S.
Q: So the giant country attacked the tiny country to prevent them from using the weapons that its own CIA said Iraq would not use unless attacked?
B: Yes.
Q: But that's insane! Are you seriously suggesting that all this killing that I just saw on Earth's TV is entirely unnecessary? It would mean that America's leaders are entirely irrational!
B: Yes. They are irrational, if we define "rational" as engaging in behavior that logically connects means and ends. The U.S. president's stated goal is to reduce threats to Americans. But his actions are endangering Americans, increasing the probability that thousands -- maybe even tens or hundreds of thousands -- will die in coming years.
Q: But why are Americans endangered? You just said the U.S. is not seriously threatened by Iraq.
B: It isn't, but it is threatened by a separate, more serious enemy upon which the president is not focusing. The more serious enemy is a loose confederation of thousands of anti-American religious fanatics spread throughout dozens of nations that practice a religion known as Islam. The best-known such organization, though it is only one of many, is called al-Qaida, which launched a catastrophic attack on important American buildings on Sept. 11, 2001.
Q: Is there no link between Iraq and al-Qaida?
B: Virtually none. The ruler of Iraq, a secularist named Saddam Hussein, opposes the religious fanatics who compose al-Qaida and would depose him if they could. He also did not wish to give the United States a pretext for attacking him. U.S. leaders presented no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida were linked. Two former U.S. intelligence analysts concluded in a book called "The Age of Sacred Terror" that "there is little evidence that state sponsors like Iraq and Iran provide Al Qaeda with meaningful assistance. Bin Laden [its leader] ... was preparing to destroy the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House, while state sponsors of terrorism were drawing relatively little American blood."
Q: So the U.S. president attacked the smaller country that posed no immediate threat, while giving far less attention to the enemy which really threatened the U.S.? Do you really mean he has attacked the wrong enemy?
B: Yes, and even more troubling for American citizens, the real enemy has been strengthened by their country's misdirected attack against Iraq. U.S. warmaking in Iraq has alienated the vast majority of public opinion in virtually every country on Earth, destabilized friendly governments, and reduced the likelihood that more neutral governments will cooperate in the intelligence and police work needed to attack the anti-American extremists.
He has also particularly enraged more than a billion Muslims, making almost certain the rise of Islamic violence against American targets and U.S. citizens all over the world. The president of Egypt, a U.S. ally, declared on March 31 that "if there is one [Osama] bin Laden now, there will be 100 bin Ladens afterward" as a result of a prolonged U.S. war against Iraq. Religious terrorists had previously even tried to bomb American tourists in Bali, one of the most peaceful and remote parts of the world. No American will ever be able to feel entirely safe anywhere in the world again.
Q: Didn't U.S. leaders realize that attacking Iraq would increase terrorist threats against Americans?
B: They did. U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and many other responsible officials stated publicly that attacking Iraq would increase the likelihood of these attacks. Official warnings of terrorist attacks have dramatically increased since the Iraq war began.
Q: So the giant country attacked the smaller country that posed no immediate threat, knowing that this would increase the more immediate danger from religious extremists it did not attack?
B: Yes.
Q: But that means the American president's bungling would make him partly responsible for any future American deaths from terrorist attacks!
B: Yes, especially since he started the war before ensuring homeland security.
Q: What? You can't be serious!
B: I am. Experts say, for example, that the biggest domestic threat to the United States comes from the possibility of a nuclear weapon being smuggled onto one of 7 million containers a year coming into U.S. ports. It would cost $2 billion to protect U.S. ports, but only some $300 million -- much of it misdirected -- has been allocated. Similar or larger gaps exist in many other areas. For example the president has refused to support a program to defend U.S. civilian airliners against shoulder-fired missiles that have already been used to shoot down similar airplanes.
Q: But that amounts to criminal negligence! How could he fail to protect his own citizens before provoking more attacks against them?
B: Good question.
Q: But wait, I see a rational argument. If Iraq possessed these weapons of mass destruction, didn't it make sense to go after them now while Saddam's regime is weaker rather than wait until it has grown stronger?
B: No. A former CIA analyst named Kenneth Pollack wrote an influential book advocating an invasion of Iraq -- but he said that before attacking, the U.S. first needed to build domestic and international support, decapitate al-Qaida, fulfill its broken promises to rebuild another country it had invaded named Afghanistan, and resolve a major territorial dispute in a nation called Israel. By attacking Iraq before taking such actions, and inflaming world and Muslim opinion, it is the U.S. that is weakened, not Iraq.
U.S. leaders would have been far stronger had they waited a year and taken the actions recommended by Pollack, particularly since foreign inspectors roaming Iraq made it unlikely that the Iraqi government would develop, let alone use, these dangerous weapons during this period.
Q: Well why didn't U.S. leaders wait a year so as to accomplish those goals? To attack now sounds absolutely crazy!
B: It is indeed crazy. Even those who made the best case for overthrowing Saddam for the sake of the Iraqi people could not make a reasonable case for doing so prematurely in 2003 rather than properly in 2004.
Q: But why would U.S. leaders behave so irrationally?
B: That's a matter of speculation. Some suggest present U.S. leaders are ideologically and emotionally committed to a doctrine of world supremacy called the Bush Doctrine and felt it would be easier to implement it this year rather than during the coming presidential election year. Others believe they have no understanding of the region they are attacking and were overly optimistic about the prospects for a clean victory. Others think they themselves were so terrorized and panicked by the Sept. 11 attacks -- which made U.S. leaders believe that they themselves could be killed -- that they are incapable of thinking logically or behaving rationally.
Q: What do you think?
B: All of the above. Their ignorance of realities on the ground is particularly obvious. It was predictable, for example, that Muslims would be enraged by the humanitarian disasters that would likely ensue from U.S. intervention. By launching war first – and without international support -- the United States was certain to be blamed for the whole mess. It was unlikely to be greeted as liberators by the people whose relatives it had killed and whose homes it had bombed.
But U.S. leaders deluded themselves that they would speed to Baghdad with a small force, be welcomed as liberators, and achieve victory with minimal civilian damage. U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, said three days before the war began, "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."
Q: They certainly appear to be incompetent, even on their own terms. It sounds as if they are dangerously detached from reality.
B: Yes, well, irrationality has actually been quite common among leaders of powerful nations for most of human history. A historian named Barbara Tuchman wrote a book called "The March of Folly," in which she defined "folly" as the propensity of leaders since the fall of Troy 2,400 years ago to act against their own interests because of fixed notions divorced from reality. What is frightening about our time is not that powerful leaders still behave irrationally, but that they -- and the even more insane people who oppose them -- now possess an unprecedented technological capacity to kill, and also to destroy the biosphere upon which people on Earth depend for life itself.

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