THE IMPOVERISHMENT OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE UNITED
Joseph A. Buttigieg  

In a brilliant and moving article excoriating George Bush and Tony Blair for the carnage and devastation they have wrought in Iraq with their illegitimate and immoral war of aggression, the renowned Indian writer Arundhati Roy introduces a cautious note of hope and encouragement. There is a difference, she points out, between the governments of the Anglo-American coalition members and the people they govern. The multitudes who have taken to the streets all across the world in vigorous opposition to the war represent, in Roy’s words, “the most spectacular display of public morality ever seen.” She heaps special praise on the anti-war movement in the US. “Most courageous of all, are the hundreds of thousands of American people on the streets of America’s great cities . . . The fact is that the only institution in the world today that is more powerful than the American government, is American civil society. American citizens have a huge responsibility riding on their shoulders. How can we not salute and support those who not only acknowledge but act upon that responsibility? They are our allies, our friends.” (See, “Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates,” The Guardian, 2 April 2003.)

By certain measures, the public opposition that anti-war activists have been able to mobilize in the US is impressive. In addition to the huge crowds that have turned out at the peace demonstrations over the past several months in the big metropolitan centers, thousands of people have participated in rallies and vigils in many of the smaller cities and on university campuses all across the US. Once the war was launched, the anti-war demonstrations shrank both in size and number; nevertheless, the 30,000 protestors who marched in the streets of Washington on April 19th greatly outnumbered the “jubilant crowds” seen on TV celebrating the demolition of the Saddam Hussein statue by US marines in the heart of Baghdad. “The ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the US,” as Roy correctly describes it, makes the strength and the intensity of dissent within the country all the more remarkable. The peace movement in the US represents a grass roots effort that has had to overcome enormous obstacles, not least among them the passivity of the majority of Democratic Party leaders and the general indifference of the major news media. The newspapers as well as radio and television have provided only marginal and fleeting information on the protest demonstrations, when they did not ignore them altogether.

It is important, however, not to exaggerate either the magnitude of domestic opposition to the Iraq war or its potential future impact on US foreign policy. Since few expected the anti-war movement to be embraced by such a broad cross-section of the US public, and since everyone was surprised when countless people who had never in their lives attended a political demonstration showed up with their children in tow, there has been a tendency towards euphoria among the anti-Bush forces. Impressive though they are, the achievements of the anti-war movement in the US pale in comparison to what has been happening elsewhere. On February 15th the anti-war demonstration in London drew well over a million people; the number of protestors in the US on the same weekend was less than half of that. The US has five times as big a population as the United Kingdom. Had five million people gathered in US cities to oppose the war, the Bush administration might have been compelled to take notice. Or the Democratic Party might have been shamed into living up to its political responsibilities as the formal opposition. Instead, Bush has been able to brush aside all forms of domestic opposition with imperious disdain. Recent opinion polls show that his actions are supported by well over two-thirds of the population.

Sad to say, contrary to Arundhati Roy’s assessment, US civil society is not stronger than the US government, at least not at present. To be sure, domestic opposition to the Bush administration’s unilateral and aggressive policies may yet grow stronger, especially if the Iraqi resistance to foreign occupation becomes intractable and/or if the current official US doctrine of preemption and domination were to instigate other wars that would prove too costly and prolonged. In the wake of the rapid military success achieved with relatively few casualties in Iraq, the Bush administration may be tempted to resolve other international “problems” with additional displays of its unmatched military power. The belligerent rhetoric aimed at Syria currently emanating from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department is extremely ominous. Is this an effort to intimidate Assad into compliance with US plans for the region, or is the ground being prepared for the Pentagon to bring about “regime change” in Damascus? Iran and North Korea are also on the list of “evil” states and one has to wonder whether Bush, Rumsfeld, & Co. are contemplating military action against them too. Whatever the case might be, it is clear that, thus far, the US government has shown no signs of being concerned, much less restrained, by the level of resistance and dissent in civil society.

There is tendency to think of civil society solely as some kind of benign space beyond the reach of government control wherein ideas are freely exchanged, promoted, and contested, and where non-governmental organizations of all kinds are formed to promote justice, peace, human rights, environmental protection, etc., and to hold the government accountable for its actions. This view of civil society has been reinforced by right-wing intellectuals, politicians, and propagandists who never tire of complaining that the left has been engaged in a “long march through the institutions”—a kind of Gramsci-inspired cultural warfare aimed at undermining traditional values, religious belief, and everything wholesome that “America” stands for. (See, for example, the books by the arch-conservatives Rush Limbaugh, See I Told You So (1993); and Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West (2002).) In reality, though, it has been the right that since the time of the Reagan presidency has assiduously and methodically marched through the institutions. Research institutes like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which were set up with a blatantly right wing agenda and that now play a major role in formulating political, social, and economic strategy for the Republican Party, have no progressive, much less leftist equivalents. Philanthropies have sprung up for the exclusive purpose of funding conservative initiatives such as the formation of student organizations (with their own campus newspapers) at some of the most prestigious and influential universities. Religious leaders of large Christian fundamentalist congregations have formed close strategic alliances with conservative politicians. Radio stations all across the country transmit the extreme right-wing talk-shows run by personalities that have acquired national prominence. The Fox TV network, established by Rupert Murdoch, is so overtly conservative that it has become, to all intents and purposes, the mouthpiece of the Republican Party. Right-wing periodical abound and they not only exercise a strong influence on an increasingly large leadership, they also help shape government policy. One could go on and on. The point is that the strong and active presence of conservatives in many spheres of US civil society has helped move the country rightwards and put progressive forces on the defensive. It has also greatly impoverished the strong American tradition of dissent and non-conformism. Furthermore, the strident populist rhetoric employed by many exponents of the right has been making increasingly difficult for thoughtful, critical voices to get a fair hearing.

Civil society has turned out to be George Bush’s major source of strength. The Bush administration and the Republican Party have been masterful in their exploitation of least admirable characteristics of US civil society. Broadly speaking, the US public is neither very interested in, nor particularly well-informed about international affairs. Even direct US military involvement in foreign lands generates only short-lived concern among the general public. Afghanistan had been relegated to the inside pages of the newspapers well before the onset of the Iraqi war. In the New York Times of April 14th a report on the explosions and shootings that took place in Kabul and in Kandahar the previous day occupied the same amount of space as an article on the outcome of the elections on the tiny island of Malta. Thus, though there is yet no end in sight to the US military engagement in Afghanistan, Bush was not in the least inhibited about launching a new war. More than anything else, though, Bush obtained domestic support for his war on Iraq because by taking advantage of ignorance, by appealing to the patriotism of the “American people”, and by employing the moralistic rhetoric of good and evil.

If it were not for widespread ignorance (and the gullibility that always accompanies ignorance), how could Bush have persuaded the overwhelming majority of the population that Iraq posed an imminent threat to US security? Unless he could count on ignorance, would he have tried to convince the citizenry that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Saddam Hussein was plotting to provide terrorists with weapons of mass destruction? What, other than ignorance, can account for the fact that the demonization of Saddam Hussein as a tyrant was not undermined in the public’s mind by the long history of friendly relations between US and tyrannical regimes? This ignorance becomes especially dangerous when reinforced by the special strain of US nationalism that militates under the banner of patriotism. In times of crisis—such as the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001, the imminence of war, and war itself—patriotism becomes a formidable weapon in the hands of politicians intent on silencing dissent. During the past eighteen months the use of this political weapon has been so indiscriminate and vicious that some fundamental aspects of democracy and liberalism are now being threatened. The legislation known as the Patriot Act that is meant to tighten domestic security and diminish the threat of terrorism has, in fact, greatly increased the power of the state’s law-and-order apparatus to intrude into the private life and activities of all citizens. US citizens born in Muslim countries have been subjected to police surveillance and interrogation. Ordinary citizens have to think twice about engaging in dissent and resistance against the government for fear of being investigated. The Patriot Act is supposedly an emergency measure set to expire in 2005. But Republicans in Congress are now planning to introduce new legislation that will make the Patriot Act permanent.

Patriotic fever has made some of the nation’s political leaders delirious; their actions have been infantile. The animus against France, for example, inspired congressmen to banish “French fries” (patate fritte) from the Capitol’s dining halls and replace them with “Freedom fries.” This has generated many jokes, but it has also led many people to follow the lead of their political representatives and boycott everything French—wines, cheeses, restaurants, etc. Many puerile articles anti-French articles have appeared in conservative periodicals and in regional newspapers. On the Fox news channel, the newscaster Brit Hume called the French foreign minister De Villepin a “Vichyite.” (Of course, most US television viewers know nothing about Vichy, which is precisely why the arcane reference conveys the impression of profundity.) This silliness is not amusing in the least; it is actually quite frightening to witness the legislative body of the world’s only hyper-power behave in such a petty manner, and some of the major news media react

Even more frightening have been the attempts to silence dissent in the name of patriotism. This has been taking place at all levels of civil of civil and political society. In response to the anti-war movement, conservative activists have been organizing and promoting pro-war rallies and demonstrations. In demagogic fashion, speakers at these events have condemned the opposition for failing to support “our troops.” They have also consistently sought to portray the advocates of peace as anti-American. The rhetoric at these events is utterly irrational and yet it intimidates potential dissenters. At my university, the University of Notre Dame, the College Republicans (i.e. the Republican party organization of university students) organized an event on April 10th that they advertised as a Pro-American rally. They claimed (probably correctly) that they “wanted to represent a silent majority” at the university. They had the money to bring in a couple of militant conservatives to give speeches, one of whom (Don Feder, a conservative publicist) made some remarks that can only be described as incendiary. “There’s a civil war going on in the United States today. It’s a war for the soul of our republic,” Feder said. He also said: “The slogan ‘No Blood for Oil’ is classic Marxism.” Since students at Notre Dame, like most students at US universities, are unlikely to have ever read a word written by Marx, one could not have expected them to challenge Feder on this point. What is shocking, however, is that most Notre Dame students (especially the most conservative among them) are proud of the university’s Catholic heritage—yet, those who attended the rally obviously felt that the relatively unknown but vocally patriotic Feder is a more credible authority on the subject of the Iraq war that the Pope. When rhetoric of this kind finds an approving audience on a Catholic university campus, one can only assume that in the rest of US civil society patriotic fervor holds sway over reason.

Most disturbing of all has been the largely successful effort to stifle the speech of politicians opposed to George W. Bush. A few days before the outbreak of the Iraq war, Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader of the Democrats in the Senate, criticized Bush for his “miserable” diplomatic failure to generate United Nations consensus for his war plans. He was immediately attacked in the most virulent fashion by Republican legislators who stopped just sort of calling him a traitor. The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives stated that Daschle’s comments “may not give comfort to our adversaries, but they come mighty close.” Needless to say, once the war started Daschle has consistently called upon the nation to unite behind “our” armed forces and their commander-in-chief, president Bush.

An even more brutal attack was launched against Senator John Kerry (Democrat from Massachusetts) who stated, in a speech to the nation delivered on March 17th: “I find myself genuinely angered, saddened and dismayed by the situation in which this nation finds itself tonight.  As the world's sole superpower in an increasingly hostile and dangerous world, our government's obligation to protect the security of the United States and the law abiding nations of the world could not be more clear, particularly in the aftermath of September 11th. Yet the Administration's handling of the run up to war with Iraq could not possibly have been more inept or self-defeating.  President Bush has clumsily and arrogantly squandered the post 9/11 support and goodwill of the entire civilized world . . .  The Administration's indifference to diplomacy and the manner in which it has treated friend and foe alike over the past several months have left this country with vastly reduced influence throughout the world, made impossible the assembly of a broad, multinational effort against Saddam Hussein, and dramatically increased the costs of fulfilling our legitimate security obligations at home and around the world.” In the same speech, Kerry expressed his full support of the armed forces in their effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power. A couple of weeks later (on April 2nd, to be precise) with the war under way, Kerry was in a relatively small town in New Hampshire preparing the ground for his presidential campaign. While there, he made a political speech in which he said he said that “what we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States.” The Republicans, acting like vigilantes, went immediately into attack mode and sought to raise doubts about Kerry’s patriotism. The Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Marc Racicot, all but accused Kerry of treason “Senator Kerry crossed a grave line when he dared to suggest the replacement of America's commander in chief at a time when America is at war.” The leaders of the Republican Party in both the Senate and the House joined in the attack. Kerry’s responded by pointing out that the entire polemic was a “phony issue of patriotism.” The whole controversy petered out because Senator Kerry’s patriotism could not be impugned; his service in Vietnam earned him some of the most coveted miliotray honors, whereas his accusers had never served in the US military.

It would be foolhardy to predict what the Bush administration’s doctrine of “preemption” might lead to. Much depends on whether the anti-war movement both in the US and abroad can rouse the Democratic Party into action. At the same time, though, one must bear in mind that the Bush administration is as unilateralist and as arrogant in its domestic policy as it is in foreign affairs. This may yet prove to be its undoing. Civil society in the US is not very capable of understanding the complexities of international relations, but its concerns about the deterioration of the “American way of life” may lead to its repudiation of Bush in the next presidential election.