The United States of Fear

protest from my father.

We exchanged letters—none of which remain—for a year or two, and then who knows what interest of mine or his overcame us. Perhaps only the resistance boys can have to writing letters. In any case, he, too, entered a realm of silence. Only now, remembering those quiet moments of closeness when my father and I worked on our albums, do I note that he existed briefly and without discussion in our lives. He existed for both of us, perhaps, in the ambiguous space that silence can create. And now I wonder sometimes what kinds of nuclear dreams my father may have had.

For all of us, in a sense, the Earth was knocked off its axis on August 6, 1945. In that one moment, my father’s war ended and my war—the Cold War—began. But in my terms it seems so much messier than that. For we and that boy continued to live in the same world together for a long time, accepting and embroidering each other’s silences. When I think of him now, when I realize that he, my father, and I still can’t inhabit the same story except in silence, a strange kind of emotion rushes up in me, which is hard to explain.

The bomb still runs like a fissure, but also like an attracting current—a secret unity—through our lives. The rent it tore in history was deep and the generational divide, given the experiences of those growing up on either side of it, profound. But any story would also have to hold the ways, even deeper and harder to fathom, in which we lived through it all together in pain, hatred, love, and, most of all, silence.

Defining an American State of War

With at least six wars cooking (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and more generally, the Global War on Terror), Americans find themselves in a new world of war.

War has a way of turning almost anything upside down, including language. This undoubtedly means that you’re using a set of antediluvian war words or definitions from your father’s day. It’s time to catch up. So here’s the latest word in war words: what’s in, what’s out, what’s inside out. What follows are nine common terms associated with our present wars that probably don’t mean what you think they mean.

Victory: Like defeat, it’s a loaded word and rather than define it, Americans should simply avoid it.

In his final press conference before retirement, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was asked whether the United States was “winning in Afghanistan.” He replied, “I have learned a few things in four and a half years, and one of them is to try and stay away from loaded words like ‘winning’ and ‘losing.’ What I will say is that I believe we are being successful in implementing the president’s strategy, and I believe that our military operations are being successful in denying the Taliban control of populated areas, degrading their capabilities, and improving the capabilities of the Afghan national security forces.”

In 2005, George W. Bush, whom Gates also served, used the word victory fifteentimes in a single speech (“National Strategy for Victory in Iraq”). Keep in mind, though, that our previous president learned about war in the movie theaters of his childhood where the marines always advanced and Americans actually won. Think of his victory obsession as the equivalent of a mid–twentieth-century hangover.

In 2011, despite the complaints of a few leftover neocons dreaming of past glory, you can search Washington high and low for “victory.” You won’t find it. It’s the verbal equivalent of a Yeti. Admittedly, the assassination of Osama bin Laden was treated as if it were VJ Day ending World War II, but actually win a war? Don’t make Gates laugh!

Maybe, if everything comes up roses, in some year soon we’ll be celebrating DE (Degrade the Enemy) Day.

Enemy: Any super-evil pipsqueak on whose back you can raise at least $1.2 trillion a year for the National Security Complex.

“I actually consider al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula with Al-Awlaki as a leader within that organization probably the most significant risk to the U.S. homeland.” So said Michael Leiter, presidential adviser and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, in February 2011, months before Osama bin Laden was killed (and Leiter himself resigned). Since bin Laden’s death, Leiter’s assessment has been heartily seconded in word and deed in Washington. For example, in June 2011, New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti wrote, “Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is believed by the C.I.A. to pose the greatest immediate threat to the United States, more so than even al-Qaeda’s senior leadership believed to be hiding in Pakistan.”

Now, here’s the odd thing. Once upon a time, statements like these might have been tantamount to announcements of victory: That’s all they’ve got left? Of course, once upon a time, if you asked an American who was the most dangerous man on the planet, you might have been told Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong. These days, don’t think enemy at all. Think comic book–style arch villain like Lex Luthor or Doctor Doom—anyone, in fact, capable of standing in for globe-encompassing Evil.

Post–bin Laden, America’s super-villain of choice is Anwar al-Awlaki, an enemy with seemingly near superhuman powers to disturb Washington, but no army, no state, and no significant finances. The U.S.-born “radical cleric” lives as a semi-fugitive in Yemen, a poverty-stricken land of which, until recently, few Americans had heard. Al-Awlaki is considered at least partially responsible for two high-profile plots against the United States: the underwear bomber and package bombs sent by plane to Chicago synagogues. Both failed dismally, even though neither Superman nor the Fantastic Four rushed to the rescue.

As an Evil One, al-Awlaki is a voodoo enemy, a YouTube warrior (“the bin Laden of the Internet”) with little but his wits and whatever superpowers he can muster to help him. He was reputedly responsible for helping to poison the mind of army psychiatrist major Nidal Hasan before he blew away thirteen people at Fort Hood, Texas. There’s no question of one thing: he’s gotten inside Washington’s war-on-terror head in a big way. As a result, the Obama administration is significantly intensifying its war against him and the ragtag crew of tribesmen he hangs out with who go by the name of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Covert war: It used to mean secret war, a war “in the shadows” and so beyond the public’s gaze. Now, it means a conflict in the full glare of publicity that everybody knows about, but no one can do anything about. Think: in the news, but off the books.

Go figure: today, our “covert” wars are front-page news. And America’s most secretive covert warriors, elite SEAL Team 6, caused “SEAL-mania” to break out nationwide after Osama bin Laden was killed. Moreover, no minor drone strike in the “covert” CIA-run air war in the Pakistani tribal borderlands goes unreported. In fact, future plans for the launching or intensification of Pakistani-style covert wars are now openly discussed, debated, and praised in Washington, as well as widely reported on.

Think of covert war today as the equivalent of a heat-seeking missile aimed directly at the mainstream media newshole. The “shadows” that once covered whole operations now only cover accountability for them.

Permanent bases: In the American way of war, military bases built on foreign soil are the equivalent of heroin. The Pentagon can’t help building them and can’t live without them, but “permanent bases” don’t exist, not for Americans. Never.

That’s simple enough, but let me be absolutely clear anyway: Americans may have at least 865 bases around the world (not including those in war zones), but we have no desire to occupy other countries. And wherever we garrison, we don’t want to stay, not permanently anyway.

In the grand scheme of things, for a planet more than four billion years old, our ninety bases in Japan, a mere sixty-odd years in existence, or our 227 bases in Germany, some also around for sixty-odd years, or those in Korea, fifty-odd years, count as little. Moreover, we have it on good word that permanent bases are un-American. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said as much in 2003 when the first of the Pentagon’s planned Iraqi megabases were already on the drawing boards. Hillary Clinton said so again in June 2011 about Afghanistan, and an anonymous American official added for clarification: “There are U.S. troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently.” Korea anyone? So get it straight, Americans don’t want permanent bases. Period.