Why we must lose this war

by Jack Lessenberry

02/09/05 "Metro Times" - - Gwynne Dyer isn’t exactly a wimp. Not many
guys from Newfoundland are. Born during World War II, he has been
fascinated by things military all his life, and has served in three
navies — ours, Canada’s and Great Britain’s. He has university
degrees from all three countries too, and a Ph.D. in military and Middle
Eastern history. During the 1980s, he produced and narrated the best
documentary series about the nature of war that I’ve ever seen.

And here’s what he says about what we are doing:

“The United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible.
Even more urgently, the whole world needs the United States to lose
the war in Iraq. What is at stake now is the way we run the world for
the next generation or more, and really bad things will happen if we
get it wrong.”

Those are the opening lines of his latest and perhaps most important
book, Future Tense: The Coming World Order (paperback, McClelland and
Stewart, $12.95). If you plan on reading only one book this year, make
this the one. In perfectly clear prose, with arguments as
well-researched as they are compelling, this military expert explains
why what we’re doing is mad.

He explains how we haven’t grasped that the world has changed, that we
aren’t living in our old superpower world anymore, one in which
we’re the leader of the forces of light against the evil dark powers
of communism. Nor are we, in fact, even a military superpower in the way
we like to think we are; in reality, our military machine can only be
used against very weak countries. As he notes, “War with a serious
opponent would lead to a level of American casualties that the U.S.
public would not tolerate for long.”

What the world needs most in the long run (if there’s to be a long
run), he reminds us, is a stable international order in which all
nations gradually work on abandoning war as an acceptable way of
settling any differences. Dyer isn’t starry-eyed about this; he thinks
it will take a hundred years at least to get major countries to stop
resorting to war, “for it is trying to change international habits
that had at least 5,000 years to take root.”

That, he reminds us, is the whole purpose of the United Nations, which
we played the major role in starting exactly 60 years ago this spring.
Yes, we’ve resorted to war before, as have other countries, but we
always at least pretended that what we were doing was legally
justified by international standards.

Now, however, the current administration is essentially spitting on
this, and openly proclaiming our right to intervene unilaterally
anywhere we want. Why is that so bad? Because others will do it too,
and, eventually, it will break down even the ideal of an international
order, causing a general return to “the old world of alliances, arms
races and all the other old baggage.”

Dyer writes, “No other major power wants to abandon the project to
outlaw war … but if the world’s greatest power becomes a rogue
state, they won’t have much choice.” Some days, it appears we’ve
already crossed the line.

Interestingly, if that happens, we may not be able to afford to be a
rogue state for very long. In what’s surely the most telling and
terrifying part of this book, the author takes on the most frightening
topic of all — the real condition of the American economy, which is
now totally dependent on foreign investment.

You’d scarcely know it from the “mainstream media,” but we’re
now the biggest debtor nation in history, owing far more to foreign
countries than they do to us, and running up $500 billion more on our
“credit card” every year.

Why does this go on? Dyer argues what other economists have told me in
whispers: “The U.S. economy is a confidence trick based on everybody
else’s perception that the United States is centrally important for
the world’s security and that its economy is centrally important for
the world economy.”

That was absolutely true in 1945, and largely true even in 1985. But
not anymore. If you look at only those foreign investments that could
be liquidated fairly quickly, the total, he estimates, would come to
about $8 trillion. If those investments started to move elsewhere, the
value of the dollar could be cut in half, Dyer estimates, overnight.

That would mean not only no more Lincoln Navigators, it more than
likely would lead to the end of democracy as we know it. Which would
be especially unfortunate since, as he notes, “global warming and
other environmental problems are going to hit us very hard over the
next 50 years.”

“How fast they hit and how great the resulting upheavals will be
cannot be known in advance, but very few people apart from the usual
suspects in the United States any longer doubt that climate change is
a reality.”

Incidentally, if you’re tempted to tell me why Gwynne Dyer is all
wrong, I’ll be willing to listen — but not if you haven’t read
this book first.