The Crusade against Evil: From the Cold War to Terrorism Wars
In the first edition of this book, long before militant Islam was recognized as a global force, long before the Terrorism Wars, I characterized the more right wing elements of the American political spectrum as Holy Warriors and the more right-center elements as the National Security State. At the time the Cold War dominated U.S. foreign policy doctrine, and I pointed out how the repetitive characterization of godless communism as absolutely evil and the thirst for military conflict with socialists around the world was literally a crusade against the heathen. The moderated, mainstream version of this perception of a long-term struggle with the Soviet system also saw the U.S. under a permanent threat. The emphasis on the accumulation of military power and its use against socialist states and guerillas was similar, although the justifications for this struggle and the methods employed emanated from a more rationalistic discourse.
When the Cold War passed into the dustbin of history, one might have thought the National Security State, the massive Pentagon machinery, the arsenals of mass destruction, and the global network of military bases and alliances constructed to fight it might have also passed away. However the National Security State not only survived the end of the Cold War, it continued to flourish. Certainly one well recognized reason for the survival of the National Security State was simple institutional inertia. The Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and the rest of the bureaucratic apparatus of the Cold War were not likely to just let themselves disappear just because the rationale for their existence was no more. Nor were the corporations and individuals grown fat on guaranteed cost-plus contracts likely to go out of business quietly. But on a deeper level, the paranoia and suspicion of the world beyond American borders that certainly predated the emergence of communism but which had been so assiduously cultivated during the Cold War continued to shape U.S. foreign policy. It was not only institutions, but also ideology and exceptionalist identity that maintained the United States at a state of virtual war when there was no real adversary to be found.
A New Mission for the National Security State
The attack on 9/11 gave the National Security State a new mission. President Bush quickly proclaimed a global war on terror. Almost taken for granted now, this characterization is instructive. First of all, by calling the problem global in scope, the Bush administration provided a new justification for expansion of the old Cold War system of bases and alliances. President Bush claimed that Islamic militants saw the entire world as a battlefield, not seeing the irony of the pot calling the kettle black.
Furthermore, by characterizing the necessary response as a war against evil, rather than a police action against isolated extremists, the Bush administration rationalized the extension of the state of permanent warfare far into the 21st century. What had once seemed an artifact of the Cold War now stood as an everlasting American attitude toward the rest of the planet. To paraphrase George Orwell, The United States was at war, the United States had always been at war, the United States would always be at war. After all, evil is ubiquitous and in this world can never be completely and totally defeated.
In one statement soon after 9/11 in what was later explained away as a slip of the tongue, President Bush called the new war a ¡°crusade.¡± This was quickly seen to be politically incorrect and the terminology was never used again, but like a Freudian slip it is revealing. Deep-rooted Christian images of the centuries old wars with Muslim infidels were invoked, stirring ancient animosities and evoking apocalyptic combat between good and evil.
Rechristianizing of American Exceptionalism
The Christian Origins of American Exceptionalism
The Long-term Secularization of the Idea of American Exceptionalism
The Republican Right and the Rechristianizing of American Exceptionalism
While the term crusade was wisely avoided, the Bush administration reversed a long term trend of secularizing the concept of American exceptionalism, of justifying the special mission of U.S. foreign policy to transform the world less by quasi-religious rhetoric based on the United States as God¡¯s chosen people and more on secular assumptions that the American political and economic system were the most xxx advanced and thus the best models for others around the world to follow. The idea of American exceptionalism originated in the belief of early American Christians that the ¡°new world¡± of North America was literally the new Promised Land and the American people were literally God¡¯s new chosen people, chosen to bring a new kingdom to the entire planet. In the more secularized 20th century version, it is the special history and institutions of the United States that bequeath it with its special role to lead a global transformation.