Gore vidal, last defender of the american republic

[Guest guest]

from the LA weekly

JULY 5 - 11, 2002

The Last Defender of the American Republic?

An interview with Gore Vidal

by Marc Cooper

 

HE MIGHT BE AMERICA'S LAST small-r republican. Gore Vidal, now 76, has made a

lifetime out of critiquing America's imperial impulses and has -- through two

dozen novels and hundreds of essays -- argued tempestuously that the U.S. should

retreat back to its more Jeffersonian roots, that it should stop meddling in the

affairs of other nations and the private affairs of its own citizens.

 

That's the thread that runs through Vidal's latest best-seller -- an oddly

packaged collection of essays published in the wake of September 11 titled

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated. To answer the

question in his subtitle, Vidal posits that we have no right to scratch our

heads over what motivated the perpetrators of the two biggest terror attacks in

our history, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and last September's twin-tower

holocaust.

 

Vidal writes: " It is a law of physics (still on the books when last I looked)

that in nature there is no action without reaction. The same appears to be true

in human nature -- that is, history. " The " action " Vidal refers to is the hubris

of an American empire abroad (illustrated by a 20-page chart of 200 U.S.

overseas military adventures since the end of World War II) and a budding police

state at home. The inevitable " reaction, " says Vidal, is nothing less than the

bloody handiwork of Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh. " Each was enraged, " he

says, " by our government's reckless assaults upon other societies " and was,

therefore, " provoked " into answering with horrendous violence.

 

Some might take that to be a suggestion that America had it coming on September

11. So when I met up with Vidal in the Hollywood Hills home he maintains (while

still residing most of his time in Italy), the first question I asked him was

this:

 

 

 

L.A. WEEKLY: Are you arguing that the 3,000 civilians killed on September 11

somehow deserved their fate?

 

GORE VIDAL: I don't think we, the American people, deserved what happened. Nor

do we deserve the sort of governments we have had over the last 40 years. Our

governments have brought this upon us by their actions all over the world. I

have a list in my new book that gives the reader some idea how busy we have

been. Unfortunately, we only get disinformation from The New York Times and

other official places. Americans have no idea of the extent of their

government's mischief. The number of military strikes we have made unprovoked,

against other countries, since 1947-48 is more than 250. These are major strikes

everywhere from Panama to Iran. And it isn't even a complete list. It doesn't

include places like Chile, as that was a CIA operation. I was only listing

military attacks.

 

Americans are either not told about these things or are told we attacked them

because . . . well . . . Noriega is the center of all world drug traffic and we

have to get rid of him. So we kill some Panamanians in the process. Actually we

killed quite a few. And we brought in our Air Force. Panama didn't have an air

force. But it looked good to have our Air Force there, busy, blowing up

buildings. Then we kidnap their leader, Noriega, a former CIA man who worked

loyally for the United States. We arrest him. Try him in an American court that

has no jurisdiction over him and lock him up -- nobody knows why. And that was

supposed to end the drug trade because he had been demonized by The New York

Times and the rest of the imperial press.

 

[The government] plays off [Americans'] relative innocence, or ignorance to be

more precise. This is probably why geography has not really been taught since

World War II -- to keep people in the dark as to where we are blowing things up.

Because Enron wants to blow them up. Or Unocal, the great pipeline company,

wants a war going some place.

 

And people in the countries who are recipients of our bombs get angry. The

Afghans had nothing to do with what happened to our country on September 11. But

Saudi Arabia did. It seems like Osama is involved, but we don't really know. I

mean, when we went into Afghanistan to take over the place and blow it up, our

commanding general was asked how long it was going to take to find Osama bin

Laden. And the commanding general looked rather surprised and said, well, that's

not why we are here.

 

Oh no? So what was all this about? It was about the Taliban being very, very bad

people and that they treated women very badly, you see. They're not really into

women's rights, and we here are very strong on women's rights; and we should be

with Bush on that one because he's taking those burlap sacks off of women's

heads. Well, that's not what it was about.

 

What it was really about -- and you won't get this anywhere at the moment -- is

that this is an imperial grab for energy resources. Until now, the Persian Gulf

has been our main source for imported oil. We went there, to Afghanistan, not to

get Osama and wreak our vengeance. We went to Afghanistan partly because the

Taliban -- whom we had installed at the time of the Russian occupation -- were

getting too flaky and because Unocal, the California corporation, had made a

deal with the Taliban for a pipeline to get the Caspian-

area oil, which is the richest oil reserve on Earth. They wanted to get that oil

by pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan to Karachi and from there to ship it

off to China, which would be enormously profitable. Whichever big company could

cash

in would make a fortune. And you'll see that all these companies go back to Bush

or Cheney or

to Rumsfeld or someone else on the Gas and Oil Junta, which, along with the

Pentagon, governs the United States.

 

We had planned to occupy Afghanistan in October, and Osama, or whoever it was

who hit us in September, launched a pre-emptory strike. They knew we were

coming. And this was a warning to throw us off guard.

 

With that background, it now becomes explicable why the first thing Bush did

after we were hit was to get Senator Daschle and beg him not to hold an

investigation of the sort any normal country would have done. When Pearl Harbor

was struck, within 20 minutes the Senate and the House had a joint committee

ready. Roosevelt beat them to it, because he knew why we had been hit, so he set

up his own committee. But none of this was to come out, and it hasn't come out.

 

 

 

Still, even if one reads the chart of military interventions in your book and

concludes that, indeed, the U.S. government is a " source of evil " -- to lift a

phrase -- can't you conceive that there might be other forces of evil as well?

Can't you imagine forces of religious obscurantism, for example, that act

independently of us and might do bad things to us, just because they are also

evil?

 

Oh yes. But you picked the wrong group. You picked one of the richest families

in the world -- the bin Ladens. They are extremely close to the royal family of

Saudi Arabia, which has conned us into acting as their bodyguard against their

own people -- who are even more fundamentalist than they are. So we are dealing

with a powerful entity if it is Osama.

 

What isn't true is that people like him just come out of the blue. You know, the

average American thinks we just give away billions in foreign aid, when we are

the lowest in foreign aid among developed countries. And most of what we give

goes to Israel and a little bit to Egypt.

 

I was in Guatemala when the CIA was preparing its attack on the Arbenz

government [in 1954]. Arbenz, who was a democratically elected president, mildly

socialist. His state had no revenues; its biggest income maker was United Fruit

Company. So Arbenz put the tiniest of taxes on bananas, and Henry Cabot Lodge

got up in the Senate and said the Communists have taken over Guatemala and we

must act. He got to Eisenhower, who sent in the CIA, and they overthrew the

government. We installed a military dictator, and there's been nothing but

bloodshed ever since.

 

Now, if I were a Guatemalan and I had

the means to drop something on somebody in Washington, or anywhere Americans

were, I would be tempted to do it. Especially if I had lost my entire family and

seen my country blown to bits because United Fruit didn't want to pay taxes.

Now, that's the way we operate. And that's why we got to be so hated.

 

 

 

You've spent decades bemoaning the erosion of civil liberties and the conversion

of the U.S. from a republic into what you call an empire. Have the aftereffects

of September 11, things like the USA Patriot bill, merely pushed us further down

the road or are they, in fact, some sort of historic turning point?

 

The second law of thermodynamics always rules: Everything is always running

down. And so is our Bill of Rights. The current junta in charge of our

affairs, one not legally elected, but put in charge

of us by the Supreme Court in the interests of the oil and gas and defense

lobbies, have used first Oklahoma City and now September 11 to further erode

things.

 

And when it comes to Oklahoma City and Tim McVeigh, well, he had his reasons as

well to carry out his dirty deed. Millions of Americans agree with his general

reasoning, though no one, I think, agrees with the value of blowing up children.

But the American people, yes, they instinctively know when the government goes

off the rails like it did at Waco and Ruby Ridge. No one has been elected

president in the last 50 years unless he ran against the federal government. So,

the government should get through its head that it is hated not only by

foreigners whose countries we have wrecked, but also by Americans whose lives

have been wrecked.

 

The whole Patriot movement in the U.S. was based on folks run off their family

farms. Or had their parents or grandparents run off. We have millions of

disaffected American citizens who do not like the way the place is run and see

no place in it where they can prosper. They can be slaves. Or pick cotton. Or

whatever the latest uncomfortable thing there is to do. But they are not going

to have, as Richard Nixon said, " a piece of the action. "

 

 

 

And yet Americans seem quite susceptible to a sort of jingoistic

" enemy-of-the-month club " coming out of Washington. You say millions of

Americans hate the federal government. But something like 75 percent of

Americans say they support George W. Bush, especially on the issue of the war.

 

I hope you don't believe those figures. Don't you know how the polls are rigged?

It's simple. After 9/11 the country was really shocked and terrified. [bush]

does a little war dance and talks about evil axis and all the countries he's

going to go after. And how long it is all going to take, he says with a happy

smile, because it means billions and trillions for the Pentagon and for his oil

friends. And it means curtailing our liberties, so this is all very thrilling

for him. He's right out there reacting, bombing Afghanistan. Well, he might as

well have been bombing Denmark. Denmark had nothing to do with 9/11. And neither

did Afghanistan, at least the Afghanis didn't.

 

So the question is still asked, are you standing tall with the president? Are

you standing with him as he defends us?

 

Eventually, they will figure it out.

 

 

 

They being who? The American people?

 

Yeah, the American people. They are asked these quick questions. Do you approve

of him? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, he blew up all those funny-sounding cities

over there.

 

That doesn't mean they like him. Mark my words. He will leave office the most

unpopular president in history. The junta has done too much wreckage.

 

They were suspiciously very ready with the Patriot Act as soon as we were hit.

Ready to lift habeas corpus, due process, the attorney-client privilege. They

were ready. Which means they have already got their police state. Just take a

plane anywhere today and you are in the hands of an arbitrary police state.

 

Don't you want to have that kind of protection when you fly?

 

It's one thing to be careful, and we certainly want airplanes to be careful

against terrorist attacks. But this is joy for them, for the federal government.

Now they've got everybody, because everybody flies.

 

 

 

Let's pick away at one of your favorite bones, the American media. Some say they

have done a better-than-usual job since 9/11. But I suspect you're not buying

that?

 

No, I don't buy it. Part of the year I live in Italy. And I find out more about

what's going on in the Middle East by reading the British, the French, even the

Italian press. Everything here is slanted. I mean, to watch Bush doing his

little war dance in Congress . . . about " evildoers " and this " axis of evil " --

Iran, Iraq and North Korea. I thought, he doesn't even know what the word axis

means. Somebody just gave it to him. And the press didn't even call him on it.

This is about as mindless a statement as you could make. Then he comes up with

about a dozen other countries that might have " evil people " in them, who might

commit " terrorist acts. " What is a terrorist act? Whatever he thinks is a

terrorist act. And we are going to go after them. Because we are good and they

are evil. And we're " gonna git 'em. "

 

Anybody who could get up and make that speech to the American people is not

himself an idiot, but he's convinced we are idiots. And we are not idiots. We

are cowed. Cowed by disinformation from the media, a skewed view of the world,

and atrocious taxes that subsidize this permanent war machine. And we have no

representation. Only the corporations are represented in Congress. That's why

only 24 percent of the American people cast a vote for George W. Bush.

 

 

 

I know you'd hate to take this to the ad hominem level, but indulge me for a

moment. What about George W. Bush, the man?

 

You mean George W. Bush, the cheerleader. That's the only thing he ever did of

some note in his life. He had some involvement with a baseball team . . .

 

He owned it . . .

 

Yeah, he owned it, bought with other people's money. Oil people's money. So he's

never really worked, and he shows very little capacity for learning. For them to

put him up as president and for the Supreme Court to make sure that he won was

as insulting as when his father, George Bush, appointed Clarence Thomas to the

Supreme Court -- done just to taunt the liberals. And then, when he picked

Quayle for his vice president, that showed such contempt for the American

people. This was someone as clearly unqualified as Bush Sr. was to be president.

Because Bush Sr., as Richard Nixon said to a friend of mine when Bush was

elected [imitating Nixon], " He's a lightweight, a complete lightweight, there's

nothing there. He's a sort of person you appoint to things. "

 

So the contempt for the American people has been made more vivid by the two

Bushes than all of the presidents before them. Although many of them had the

same contempt. But they were more clever about concealing it.

 

 

 

Should the U.S. just pack up its military from everywhere and go home?

 

Yes. With no exceptions. We are not the world's policeman. And we cannot even

police the United States, except to steal money from the people and generally

wreak havoc. The police are perceived quite often, and correctly, in most parts

of the country as the enemy. I think it is time we roll back the empire -- it is

doing no one any good. It has cost us trillions of dollars, which makes me feel

it's going to fold on its own because there isn't going to be enough money left

to run it.

 

 

 

You call yourself one of the last defenders of the American Republic against the

American Empire. Do you have any allies left? I mean, we really don't have a

credible opposition in this country, do we?

 

I sometimes feel like I am the last defender of the republic. There are plenty

of legal minds who defend the Bill of Rights, but they don't seem very vigorous.

I mean, after 9/11 there was silence as one after another of these draconian,

really totalitarian laws were put in place.

 

 

 

So what's the way out of this? Back in the '80s you used to call for a new sort

of populist constitutional convention. Do you still believe that's the fix?

 

Well, it's the least bloody. Because there will be trouble, and big trouble. The

loons got together to get a balanced-budget amendment, and they got a majority

of states to agree to a constitutional convention. Senator Sam Ervin, now dead,

researched what would happen in such a convention, and apparently everything

would be up for grabs. Once we the people are assembled, as the Constitution

requires, we can do anything, we can throw out the whole executive, the

judiciary, the Congress. We can put in a Tibetan lama. Or turn the country into

one big Scientological clearing center.

 

And the liberals, of course, are the slowest and the stupidest, because they do

not understand their interests. The right wing are the bad guys, but they know

what they want -- everybody else's money. And they know they don't like blacks

and they don't like minorities. And they like to screw everyone along the way.

 

But once you know what you want, you are in a stronger position than those who

can only say, " Oh no, you mustn't do that. " That we must have free speech. Free

speech for what? To agree with The New York Times?

 

The liberals always say, " Oh my, if there is a constitutional convention, they

will take away the Bill of Rights. " But they have already done it! It is gone.

Hardly any of it is left. So if they, the famous " they, " would prove to be a

majority of the American people and did not want a Bill of Rights, then I say,

let's just get it over with. Let's just throw it out the window. If you don't

want it, you won't have it.