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Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration

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Lapham's monthly essays for Harper's were always some of the best writing of the magazine. This collection from the last four years touches on "Empire" only as a basic theme for the unending expansion of American militarism and loss of demestic freedoms. Lapham is an acute observer, bringing his usual brilliant insights into the American political, social and international scenes. The book will make you think, will remind you of missed opportunities caused by the Bush Administration's actions and give you a perspective on what the American nation may be like in just a few years. Highly recommend.

At the time of the US "mid-term" elections in the Autumn of 2006, the credibility of the Bush regime in that nation had reached nadir. The favouritism of its domestic policies and the false premise of its foreign wars prompted a belief in the need for "regime change". The exposure of the deceptions and illegal activities of the regime was largely due to such journalists as Lewis Lapham. Lapham lays bare the inconsistencies, evasions and falsehoods that Bush and his team have put forth during their time of governance. This collection of those columns makes dismal reading, but the information they present is invaluable. They are a requiem chorus of a once-admirable nation.

Lapham, who wrote the "Notebook" column for Harper's Magazine for many years, was an early detector of the direction the Bush coalition was taking. That direction not only disturbed him for its potential results, Lapham was also alarmed at the lack of attention US media gave the trend. The fundamental issue, Lapham argues, is the attempt to transform a democratic republic into a global empire. Underlying this change is a document published in 1993 by Pentagon "officials" - officials who later played major roles in the Bush administration. The paper defined the US as the sole superpower - a power with the means and will to strike anywhere on the planet. Inhibiting or challenging that will was tantamount to treason if domestic, or tending to "terrorism" if external.

The US would undergo a fundamental change resulting from the provisions of the document. "Terrorism" was already long in the US lexicon by the time the World Trade Center towers were struck. Yet, Lapham recognises that declaring a "war on terrorism" necessitates defining non-existent ideology, then countering its adherents. Because the WTC attacks were carried out from within the US, one tactic must be the close surveillance of the domestic population. Lapham asserts that the implementation of that policy is turning the US into a "quiescent police state". This new condition is exacerbated by the economic policies of the government which enlarges the chasm between corporate wealth and real income for the less well-off. He is clear that, irrespective of which individual is in the White House or which party that individual represents, it is the shift from the traditional ideals of his country that alarms him. He wants others to share his concern, since once those ideals are demolished, their reconstruction will be a long, monumental task shared by all citizens.

Lapham's keening is a lament for lost principles. His conclusion, that Bush must be brought to account for ignoring or violating his Oath of Office, may be an act of political redemption, but it will not shift attitudes in the US very much. Lapham seems convinced that by placing Bush on a sacrificial political alter will restore the past. He ignores the fact that the legislation enacted by the regime will remain on the books unless repealed or sharply revised. The thousands now employed by "Homeland Security" and other "anti-terrorist" agencies will need jobs somewhere. Nor is it likely that the elimination of one individual will reset the collective viewpoints of a nation committed to maintaining world hegemony. This reality may seem to give Lapham's essays a tinge of "Bushwhacking", but the blatant disregard of the regime for law and truth show how badly this collection was needed. The results of those mid-term elections may have been an encouraging glimmer, but they don't promise the level of restoration Lapham is looking for. [stephen a. haines = Ottawa, Canada]

Lewis Lapham's notes reveal the perspective of a deeply informed man on the current republican mess, written with elegance and brillance.
"How does one reconcile the demand for small government with the desire for an imperial army,[...] match the warmhearted currencies of "conservatism compassion" with the cold cruelty of "the unfettered free market", know that human life must be saved from abortionists in Boston but not from cruise missiles in Baghdad?"
The essays cover the whole affair, from the rise of conservative propaganda to the last proofs of incompetence(or crimes) of the Bush administration.
An instructive, captivating, refreshing critic worth to be read.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a crisis for the US, writes Lewis Lapham. It "deprived the United States of an asset as precious to the national economy as General Motors and Iowa corn, the sine qua non that had provided nine American Presidents with a just and noble cause, supplied the dark black cloth of Communist menace against which every freedom-loving politician could project the wholesome images of American innocence and goodness of heart".

But with the Red hordes now gone, a new enemy was needed to justify a violent American empire - "the Japanese couldn't play the part because they were lending the United States too much money; the Colombian drug lords were too few and too well-connected in Miami ... and the Chinese were busy making shirts for Ralph Lauren". Arab terrorists attacking US soil, however, were made for the part - foreign, fanatical and requiring a global response and a massive defence budget.

It was illogical, says Lapham, that when the US was attacked by Saudi Arabian Islamic jihadists on September 11, "we responded by attacking a secular regime in Iraq", but adding the pious rhetoric of `staying the course' to the moveable feast of excuses for war and you have the debacle of the Vietnam War revisited.

Like that earlier imperial war, says Lapham, there was a "criminal intent" that will never make it to an episode of the eponymous TV cop show. The Bush regime was gunning for Iraq long before the Twin Towers. Like Vietnam, the invasion of Iraq was not a case of `good intentions gone astray', not a `tragic mistake', not based on `faulty intelligence' but another example of state terrorism, "precision-guided and electronically accessorised", but terrorism all the same. Like the long and inglorious century of US imperialism, the corporate looters and their militaried muscle went on a Middle Eastern rampage, glorified as `national security', wrapped up in a super-patriotic love of the flag and cheered on by a "loyal media".

After the depleted-uranium dust and cluster bomb pellets settled in Iraq, "government prefects" moved in to dispense the "no-bid government reconstruction contracts" to "Bechtel, Halliburton, and any other friend of liberty willing to lend a hand with the oil derricks around Baghdad and the balloons at next year's Republican nominating convention". The word-warriors and policy managers also swung into action to maintain the semblance of noble cause - polite language disguised the killing of Iraqis, the bodies of the `unworthy' Iraqi dead were not tabulated.

Another theme from Vietnam (`to save the village, we must destroy it') could also be heard, with the Bush administration suggesting that we preserve our liberties by placing them - "temporarily and for our own good, of course" - in administrative detention. Abolished were human rights for arrestees in the Pentagon's torture chambers and wound back were civil liberties and freedom of speech for Americans - on Labor Day in 2002 in Pittsburgh, a retired steel-worker was arrested for walking around outside a `free speech zone' ("protest pens" at a safe distance from Presidential speech or motorcade) for carrying a sign saying "The Bush Family Must Surely Love the Poor, They Made so Many of Us".

Complementing this triumphant work of liberty-spreading around the world, writes Lapham, is liberty-spreading at home under the baton of the born-again, evangelical right who make up one quarter of American voters and around 130 House of Representatives' politicians, zealots all, "saving life from Satanic feminists" in abortion clinics but "blind to cruise missiles in Baghdad".

And, when Hurricane Katrina exposed "a society divided across race and class" in the Mississippi mud, the President discovered a silver lining in the cyclonic cloud, offering deliverance "for Vice-President Dick Cheney's duck-shooting companions at Halliburton" if not for the black, poor and illiterate residents of Biloxi and Gulfport, as the reconstruction cash-flow rose to a government-guaranteed high water mark.

From imperial occupations to corporate health care, from civil ill-liberties to censorship of scientists, it is class warfare all round, says Lapham, his attractive blend of satirical wit and literary elegance bringing into savagely ironic relief the decidedly unattractive injustice of modern American global capitalism.

Award-winning essay writer and editor emeritus of "Harper's Magazine" Lewis Lapham presents Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration, a stinging indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration from its first days in Washington up to the present. Chronicling the presidency's abuses of power, and drawing upon the lessons of history to provide an ominous background to current events, Pretensions to Empire dissects the government's shameful incompetence in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; the copious, unwarranted domestic spying authorized by the president; and above all, the jingoism and pretensions to empire that prompted the administration's war in Iraq on shoddy intelligence. The resounding, passionate message is that the nation can no longer afford to tolerate George W. Bush or his cronies. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the author, his reasoning is compelling, measured, and completely accessible to readers of all backgrounds.