In William Miller’s fascinating biography of The Catholic Worker movement, A Harsh and Dreadful Love, he writes of the reaction of the movement to the emerging war in Vietnam in the early 1960s (and the militarism of the 1950s), and the constant justification of American wars with the defense and propagation of “freedom”:
But what a curious freedom! It was the order of the Grand Inquisitor’s freedom. It was a freedom uncomprehending of the spirit and with but only a passing reference to it. Even the Grand Inquisitor had spoke of freedom in terms of work, song, and “innocent dances,” but the “freedom” looked to by the American government was one that found its life in the exercise of that dubious process of ballot casting and which sought to uphold this exercise at whatever the price in violence. In the name of this freedom the men of the Pentagon, of the State Department, of the White House, wrote their memoranda, cloaked their thoughts with an eye to the stylistic effect of their verbiage, planned the “scenario” of war, and played tennis to relax from the tension of work. They spoke as men of high faith, knowing all the while that they possessed the power to destroy finally and fully. Thus they fashioned the diplomacy of “the carrot and the stick,” and when the carrot failed to beguile, their conscience and that of Americans was consoled, even with the killing and debauchery that followed. (p. 317)
These “men of high faith,” as Miller calls them, were most ably represented by the late Robert McNamara, but he is only a type: the “competent” [sic] and professional technocrat who can manage anything — mass production, mass distribution, mass destruction — efficiently and effectively, with measurable results for the betterment of mankind. The McNamara type has infested US governments since at least the 1930s (though perhaps Herbert Hoover prefigured the type), and continues to do so. The regime of the Mahatma Obama (peace and blessings be upon him) is stuffed with such allegedly competent technocrats, trying to save the economy and (I suspect) planning the “scenario” of war with Iran.
It’s a curious freedom, indeed, that we are not free to rid ourselves of these types.
11:41 am on July 18, 2009
