America' undisputed master essayist Gore Vidalis the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays,more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. The Times LiterarySupplement noted that Vidal's "United States (Essays 1952-1992) isone of the greatest American books of the 20th century. It won the1993 National Book Award.
His latest book, actually a collection of articlestitled "Perpertual War for Perpetual Peace" , published in 2002,caused a sensation, if not a scandal in this country. His sharpintellect and critical view of what the renowned author sees as wrongin America, comes as a shock to the average Americanreader.
The United States has been engaged in what thegreat historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetualpeace." The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearlytwo hundred military incursions since 1945 in which the United Stateshas been the agressor. In a series of penetrating and alarmingessays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September11, 2002 (deemed too controversial to be published in America untilnow), Gore Vidal challendes the comforting consensus following bothSeptember 11th and Timothy McVey's bombing of the bederal building inOklahoma City: these were simply the acts of "evil-doers".
"None of these explanations made much sense, butour rulers for more that half a century have made sure that we arenever to be told the truth about anything that our government hasdone to other people, not to mention our own. That our ruling juntamight have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with.We consumers don't need to be told the why of anything. Certainlythose of us who are in the why-business have a difficult time ingetting through the corporate-sponsored American media, so I thoughtit useful to describe here the various provocations on our side thatdrove both bin Laden and McVeigh to such terrible acts," says Vidalin his book.
And he continues, "the awesome physical damageOsama and company did to us is as nothing compared to the knock-outblow to our vanishing liberties: the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996combined with the recent request to Congress for additional specialpowers to wiretap without judicial order, to deport lawful permanentresidents, visitors, and undocumented immigrants without dueprocess." Could it be that the greatest victim of the September 11thterror attacks will be American liberty? "Once alienated," Vidalwrites, "an unalienable right is apt to be forever lost."
The last article in the book, 'A Letter to BeDelivered' he introduces with these words: 'I am writing this note adozen days before the inauguration of the loser of the year 2000presidential election. We are now faced with a Japaneseseventeenth-century style arrangement: a powerless Mikado ruled by ashogun vice president and his Pentagon warrior counselors. Do theydream, as did the shoguns of yore, of the conquest of China? We shallknow more soon, I should think, than late. Sayonara.
This chapter is actually a letter (written forVanity Fair before the November 7, 2000 presidential election) to thenew President-Elect..
"Congratulations, Mr. President-Elect. Likeeveryone else, I'm eagerly looking forward to your inaugural address.As you must know by now, we could never get enough of your speechesduring the recent election in which the best man won, as he alwaysdoes in what Spiro Agnew so famously called "the greatest nation inthe country"...
...It is my impression, Mr. President-Elect, thatmost Americans want our economy converted from war to peace.Naturally, we still want to stand tall. We also don't want any of ourtax money wasted on health care because that would be Communism,which we abhor. But we would like some of our tax dollars spent oneducation...
...In any case, it is time we abandon ourgenerally unappreciated role as world policeman, currently wastingColombia, source of satanic drugs, while keeing Cuba, Iraq, and,until recently, Serbia "in correction," as policepersons call housearrest. This compulsive interference in the affairs of other statesis expensive and pointless. Better we repair our own country with"internal improvements"...
...since we have literally targeted our enemies,the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, Rogues will take out ourcities, presumable from spaceships. So to protect ourselves, theRonald Reagan Memorial Nuclear Space Shield must be set in place atan initial cost of $ 60 billion even though, as of July, tests of thesystem, no matter how faked by the Pentagon, continued to fail. Thefact that, according to polls, a majority of your constituentsbelieve that we already have such a shield makes it possible for youto say you're updating it and then do nothing. After all, from 1949to 1999 the United States spent $ 7.1 trillion on "national defense."As a result, the national debt is $ 5.6 trillion, of which $ 3.6trillion is owed to the public, and $ 2 trillion to the SocialSecurity-Medicare Trust Funds, all due to military spending and tothe servicing of the debt thus incurred...
...fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the oldrepublic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wageperpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement?February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman,Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressionalleaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that hecould have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hellout of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Trumanobliged. THe perpetual war began. Representative government of, by,and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate Americaenjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays forin an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because thosewho have bought the government also own the media. Now, with therevolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a newand dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societiesas rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state ofall. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strikeunilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nationsbut do not pay our dues...we bomb, invade, subvert other states.Although We the People of the United States are the sole source oflegitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented inCongress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporateAmerica and its enforcer, the imperial militarymachine..."
Gore Vidal's sharp wit and formidable intellectmake for fascinating reading, whether one agrees with his ideas andconclusions or not. What matters is that we are open-minded enough toread his book, and examine and consider the ideas presented in it ontheir strength, and finally come to our own conclusions, based on ourobservation of everyday events as they unfold in thefuture.