by Ross Levine

In 1995, a yellow rent-a-truck laden with explosives was left in front of the Oklahoma City federal building. It blew up at nine in the morning, just in time, one supposes, for those responsible to get the most bang for their buck. The blast was so powerful it obliterated a third of the seven-story structure, killed 168 people (including babies) and injured 500 more. It was a devastating shock to the American psyche, given it occurred in the nation's ventricle and was an unprecedented terrorist act on domestic soil. The FBI first announced it was after two "Middle Eastern-looking" men, but in the end, it turned out to be one of our own. A white boy and Gulf War army hero from Pendleton, New York, Timothy McVeigh.

He had been a little off to start with, having made contact with aliens and such, but it didn't help that he got in with the wrong folks -- anti-government types who saw Waco and the Branch Davidian massacre (which it was) as the beginning of the end for liberty. In their minds, Uncle Sam would soon be trying to take away their guns and kill them, too, so they struck first.

After all, some of those murdered Oklahoma City babies might have grown up to be gun control advocates. But I digress.

Once McVeigh was found guilty of the crime, the federal government went into action. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops converged on western New York, and the U.S. Navy Second Fleet was deployed to Lake Erie, training its big guns on every population center from Buffalo to Rochester. President Clinton announced his intention to eradicate evil in the United States, and what better place to start than McVeigh's personal stomping grounds. In the end, the populations of four New York counties -- Erie, Niagara, Orleans and Monroe -- were annihilated, at which point Clinton ordered the carnage stopped. "To eradicate evil," he said with his mellifluous tongue, "is to eradicate ourselves. In rooting out sinners, I myself have joined their ranks. May God forgive me."

Surely, I jest, since no such scenario unfolded. McVeigh got his lethal injection and, for the rest of us, life went on, though, of course, we were forced once more, as per Lieutenant Calley before him, to seriously scrutinize ourselves -- to think about Waco, the military, the Gulf War, our deep-rooted gun culture -- was it any wonder we were reminded that the American way sometimes leads to hell? And if one of our own could believe it his patriotic duty to fire the first salvo against the supposed enemy of freedom, the very government empowered to protect it, was there a grain of truth in there somewhere? That our system had become tyrannical enough to deserve an overhaul?

Not on your life. McVeigh was a mass murderer, and though the government isn't perfect, it's all that stands between us and the rest of the mass murderers out there. Or is it? There are always doubts -- healthy doubts, healthy ponderings. Recent history has rendered "just following orders" the most specious excuse in the book.

But then came September 11.

Suddenly, overnight, a mealy-mouthed leader named George Bush went from usurper to crusader. The white whale had bitten his leg off, and now our West Wing Ahab was determined to avenge his injuries. It was to be a "war against terrorism," he declared. The U.S. would be "steadfast, and patient, and persistent" as it hunted down the evil agents of the evil axis in caves, in INS files, in presidential palaces, wherever such malefactors might be lurking. It was described as a "campaign [that] may not be finished on our watch -- yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch." We must "fight freedom's fight" against -- against evil itself, the rhetoric went, a war to make the world -- what? Evil-free? A utopia? A veritable Reich of righteousness?

The White Whale relaxes before killing a confidant. "The war against terrorism is a cloak for a bigger war, one that has now come to include 'Saddamicide' in Iraq." (Photo: Reuters/INA)

Even Ahab never sounded quite so messianic. Didn't the Nazis already prove that you can't perfect humanity? That if you kill in the name of a perfect society, you're not getting off to a very good start? But we're not Nazis, we're Americans. We have a special place in the world. We're always the good guys, and when we do slip up, it's not our fault, it's -- well, the government's. They're the ones who carpet-bombed Viet Nam and poisoned Nevadans with radiation and let African Americans die of venereal disease.

But, according to the principles of democracy, are we not our government? What do we do then when our leaders begin behaving like paranoid schizophrenics? Do we run to a shrink or a voting booth, when both seem equally futile? Yes, there are terrorists afoot, and they must be stopped, and Osama Bin Laden (who is alive and well, rest unassured [deus ex machina only exists in rotten Greek plays, not here]) must be brought to justice, no argument. But you don't scrap the entire ship just because it springs a few leaks, and you don't blame the leaks on every deckhand with a foreign background until you have actual evidence to that effect.

You cannot -- repeat, cannot -- fight a finite war against terrorism. The definition of terrorism is a matter of perspective. It's like fighting a war against crime, a battle police departments wage every day with the understanding it will never end. Unless one is truly delusional, it's impossible to believe otherwise. As long as there are people, there will be crime, and as long as there are nations and political, ethnic and economic divides, there will be terrorism of one sort or another. The war against terrorism is a cloak for a bigger war, one that has now come to include "Saddamicide" in Iraq, and may very well engulf the Koreas, with the North splitting atoms while we split hairs, and then -- why stop there? -- Axis #3 perhaps, Iran (don't we owe them for helping put Reagan in power?), and after that -- surely, with all our arrogance and jingoism, there ought to be plenty of real, potential and imagined terrorism to keep our troops doing the international shuffle for a long, long time.

Yes, Monroe had his doctrine, to attack Europe if her powers put their greedy hands into our hemisphere, and Bush has his, to attack any part of the world before they attack us, even if it means justifying our assault with unsubstantiated or undiscussable evidence of an impending attack, a chutzpah Jimmy Monroe never dreamed of. Such a notion -- that we can solve all of our foreign relations problems before they even occur -- makes our illustrious, pretzel-popping leader seem more a fanatical Ayatollah than a compassionate conservative.

Now we have immigrants marched off to jail not because of links to Al Qaeda, but to certain countries, just as Japanese Americans landed in Manzanar and Tule Lake not because of links to terrorism but to a country we didn't like much at the time. If we don't want terrorists taking out their virulence on innocent Americans, why do we take out ours on innocent citizens of other nations? And didn't "regime change" used to be the purview of the CIA? OK, they botched Bay of Pigs but they got Allende pretty good, and for a fraction of what it costs to feed hundreds of thousands of troops overseas waiting to do what one well-placed bullet might accomplish. Who would complain? Not me. I get no kicks from Hussein.

Or maybe our intelligence forces only like to shoot the good guys?

Who's ever heard of a war like this anyway, discussed before it even starts in newspapers, in Congress, in the U.N., as if everyone's searching for a motive. LBJ made up Tonkin Gulf, he knew how to wag that dog, why doesn't Bush do the same? Plant some anthrax in Tariq Assiz's underpants and be done with it. Or manufacture some other excuse that steers well clear of our addiction to oil. With OPEC opening up the floodgates at this very moment to dampen all the war talk, it will have to be pretty clever. Save the Kurds? Ha, we've watched Saddam gas 'em for years. Save democracy? If that was our motive, we'd be massing our boys around the Supreme Court.

Perhaps we need to move from Melville to Ibsen. Poor syphilitic Osvald Alving, his Papa's sins returning to roast him. Little George, trying to clean up Daddy's mess. No, too psychological for a man with the depth of Dubya. It's much simpler -- this is a war against terrorism, not a war of words against terrorism, and you can' t have a real war without whammies. Dubs doesn't want to avenge George, Sr., he just doesn't want to be a peacetime president. He had nearly a year of that and couldn't take it. Peacetime prezes don't win popularity contests. Who would remember Polk if he hadn't purloined California? Lincoln if he hadn't disciplined Dixie? Truman if he hadn't atomized Japan?

I'm not a president, but I play one on television. "Now we're stuck with a war that cannot end. A war like they have in science fiction novels, where war becomes part of everyday life, an ongoing population control, an ever-present industry that keeps a defense-based economy viable, a sustained state of fear, misery and carnage meant to keep populations under the thumb of Big Brother." (Photo: Reuters/Jim Ruymen)

Afghanistan was a good first step, Americans waiting in hushed expectation to see Osama dragged by his goatee from a Tora Bora tunnel. But once the Taliban were routed, and Afghan women flung their birqas off and Afghan men started gyrating to Elvis, what was the war on terrorism to do? What could it do, but go from a war on terrorism to a war on potential terrorism, which means the U.S. now bears the onerous responsibility of pre-empting aggression, of attacking first and in that way, guaranteeing we'll never be caught with our pants down ever again. A noble notion -- nobody wants a repeat of 9/11 -- but now we're stuck with a war that cannot end. A war like they have in certain science fiction novels, where war becomes part of everyday life, an ongoing population control, an ever-present industry that keeps a defense-based economy viable, a sustained state of fear, misery and carnage meant to keep populations under the thumb of Big Brother. The American public, the Congress, we're all afraid a second band of 14 suicidal murderers may make scrap of another beloved icon of our civilization, so we're hobbling along nervously and submissively as our unelected leader embarks on part two of his Lukewarm War, insisting every day that Iraq has the power to wipe us out. No one wants Neville Chamberlain in the White House, but nor do we want Il Dubya.

You can no sooner eradicate evil than you can disgorge the apple that got us booted from Eden in the first place. Has it ever -- will it ever -- occur to us, to U.S., that lest we stop sucking up the world's resources for naught but our own edification, the imbalance we cultivate will only keep the evil headed our way? That what we need to do is cooperate with the rest of the world in making life better for all instead of keeping ourselves great by making sure our interests are always a giant greenhouse-gas bubble above everyone else's?

Do we all want to go down with this Ahab and his whitewashed whale? Or do we let the captain sink himself in the 2004 election?

Homeland security/national security. War against terrorism/war against communism. Material breach/domino theory. Donald Rumsfeld/Robert McNamara. Select Muslim men must register with the INS/Are you now or have you ever been...? Attack Iraq. Attack New York. Evil is everywhere.

Yes, call me Bush-mael. Call us all Bush-mael. And let's just hope we live to tell the tale.

14 January 03