An Orwellian Nightmare: Critical Reflections on the Bush Administration by Douglas Kellner

After World War II, the United States participated in helping to produce an international set of institutions, treaties, and multilateral relationships to cope with political conflict and global problems. Internationalist multilateralism was complicated by the Cold War that split the world into competing camps and blocs. Facing a Soviet nuclear threat and challenges on the military, political and economic front, the US developed multilateral institutions and alliances with European and other allies to provide national security. Doctrines of containment and deterrence combined with a global system of alliances protected the US from military assault and provided outlines of a global system from within which conflicts could be resolved and global problems dealt with.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were brief hopes that a more peaceful and secure world could be produced through strengthened multilateral global alliances and with major countries working together within international law. The first Bush administration and the two Clinton administrations developed globalist and multilateral politics and the 1990s exhibited remarkable economic prosperity, at least for those in the overdeveloped countries, and, with some marked failures, began to deal with human rights and violations of international law collectively and multilaterally within a global framework.

The second Bush administration renounced internationalist and multilateralist policies and alliances. From the beginning, they rejected international accords such as the Kyoto Treaty on the environment and a series of arms limitations treaties ranging from attempts to cutback on nuclear weapon to controlling the small arms trade. After the September 11 terror attacks on the US, the Bush administration responded with unilateralist militarism, developed new doctrines of preemptive strikes, and waged violent but unresolved wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The result is a highly insecure world whereby human rights are regularly violated, human life is devalued, and military violence is the preferred route for the Bush administration to address political problems and challenges.

On the global front, the US has never been more isolated from allies and more hated by opponents. Domestically, there have been serious attacks on civil liberties and the democratic and constitutional order in the US. The consequences of the Bush administration's failed Terror War policies and domestic policy outrages are frightening.[1] The Bush regime seems to be erecting an Orwellian totalitarian state apparatus and plunging the world into ongoing war that could generate a military and police state both domestically and abroad. In his prophetic novel 1984, George Orwell envisaged a grim condition of total warfare in which his fictional state Oceania ruled its fearful and intimidated citizens through war, police state terror, surveillance, and the suppression of civil liberties. This constant warfare kept Oceania's citizens in a perpetual situation of mobilization and submission. Further, the Orwellian state controlled language, thought, and behavior through domination of the media, and was thereby able to change the very meaning of language ("war is peace") and to constantly re-write history itself.[2]

Orwell's futuristic novel was, of course, an attack on the Soviet Union and therefore became a favorite of conservatives over the years, but it uncannily describes the horrors and dangers of the regime of George W. Bush. Orwell's totalitarian state had a two-way television screen that monitored its citizens' behavior and a system of spies and informers that would report on politically incorrect thought and activity. Bush's police state has its "USA Patriot Act" that enables the state to monitor the communications of e-mail, wireless, telephones, and other media, while allowing the state to arrest citizens without warrants, to hold them indefinitely, to monitor their conversations, to examine their library records and book purchases, and to submit them to military tribunals, all of which would be governed by the dictates of the Supreme Leader (in this case, a dangerously demagogic figure-head, ruled by rightwing extremists).

The Bush administration also proposed an Operation TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System) program that would turn citizens into spies who would report suspicious activities to the government and would recruit truck drivers, mail carriers, meter readers, and others who would "report what they see in public areas and along transportation routes," thus turning workers into informants. In addition, John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General, has proposed concentration camps in the U.S. for citizens that he considers "enemy combatants."[3] Sign me up, because I'm an enemy of Orwellian-fascism, Bush-style, and it is clear that the U.S. needs a regime change if its democracy is to be preserved and a more peaceful and secure world could emerge in the new millennium.

With their Orwellian-sounding Office of Homeland Security, proposed Office of Strategic Information, Shadow Government, and "USA Patriot Act," the Bush administration has in place the institutions and apparatus of a totalitarian government. The Bush administration's surprise call on June 6, 2002 for a new cabinet-level Homeland Defense agency was seen by critics as an attempt to deflect attention from investigations of Bush administration and intelligence failures. Indeed, the "USA Patriot Act" pushed through by the Bush administration following September 11 already was erecting powerful trappings of a police state and there have been widespread fears that it would increase bureaucracy and even provide the apparatus for a Gestapo-type police state. They included allowing the government the right to eavesdrop on all electronic and wireless communication, to arrest individuals without specific charges and to hold them indefinitely, to monitor conversations between lawyer and client, and to carry out secret military trials of suspected terrorists.[4]

Although the Bush administration has repeatedly made warnings of imminent terror attacks, keeping the country jittery and justifying their unjustifiable foreign and domestic policies, they have done little to make the country safer and have instead exploited the crisis to push through their hardright agenda. The Bush administration assault on civil liberties has weakened constitutional democracy and the rule of law in the United States. On August 15, 2002, Human Rights Watch released a report that claimed: "The U.S. government's investigation of the September 11 attacks has been marred by arbitrary detentions, due process violations, and secret arrests." Human Rights Watch discovered that over 1,200 non-citizens were secretly arrested and incarcerated and that "the U.S. government has held some detainees for prolonged periods without charges; impeded their access to counsel; subjected them to coercive interrogations; and overridden judicial orders to release them on bond during immigration proceedings. In some cases, the government has incarcerated detainees for months under restrictive conditions, including solitary confinement. Some detainees were physically and verbally abused because of their national origin or religion. The vast majority is from Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African countries. The report describes cases in which random encounters with law enforcement or neighbors' suspicions based on no more than national origin and religion led to interrogation about possible links to terrorism."[5]

Yet not only has the Bush administration dangerously undermined the U.S. constitutional order, but their unilateralist and militarist foreign policy has alienated allies, provoked enemies, and increased instability and insecurity throughout the world. Since Election 2000, the Bush clique has practiced a form of Orwellian "Bushspeak" that endlessly repeats the Big Lie of the moment. Bush and his propaganda ministry engage in daily propagandistic spin to push its policies and to slime their opponents, while showing little regard for the canons of truth and justice that conservatives have traditionally defended.[6]

Indeed, conservatives have traditionally defended values of truth and integrity while attacking dishonesty and lying. During the Clinton administration, conservative defenders of the value of truth like William Bennett, constantly attacked Bill Clinton for lying and dishonesty. Yet few, if any, conservatives have spoken up to criticize the Bush administration for its systematic policy of deception and lying.

In my books Grand Theft 2000 (2001) and From 9/11 to Terror War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy (2003), I criticize "Bushspeak" as a mode of systematically engaging in the discourse of deception and lies. I document a wealth of Bush falsehoods in the 2000 election campaign, the 36-Day Battle for the White House, fallacious claims about his economic policies, and other deception and lies on the economy, environment, energy policy, and foreign affairs. It has therefore been interesting to see best-selling books emerge by Al Franken with the title Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them) and by Joe Conason called Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How it Distorts the Truth, with another book by David Corn on The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception demonstrating Bush administration mendacity. In addition, Web-sites like www.spinsanity.com expose lies from all sides of the political spectrum, while MoveON.org has a web-site www.misleader.org, George Soros has a web-Site www.wedeservethetruth.com, and www.Bushwatch.com has long posited examples of Bush administration lying.

As Paul Krugman has demonstrated in his New York Times columns and recent books, Bush administration economic policy has been based on "fuzzy math" and outright lying concerning deficit figures, about who would get the giant tax cuts, and concerning the effects of the tax breaks for the rich on job production and social services. President Bush said in 2002 that his tax cut would generate 800,000 jobs and repeatedly claimed that "everyone knows" that tax cuts create jobs. Yet major economists took out newspaper ads saying that this simply was not true and since Bush's initial statements another million jobs have been lost, with over three million jobs vanished en toto since Bush became president.

Bush administration spokespeople continue to lie about the extent of the deficit and its potential harmful effects. Bush and Cheney have repeatedly claimed that the Bush tax cuts constitute only 25% of the mushrooming federal deficit, while the White House's own Office of Management and Budget shows that the tax cuts account for 39%. As Paul Krugman and others have repeatedly shown (2003), the projected record deficit will be much larger than current Bush administration figures that do not include sky rocketing expenses for U.S. programs in Afghanistan and Iraq.

To keep the public in a state of fear, Bush and his administration have repeatedly evoked the specter of renewed terrorist attacks and promised an all-out war against an "axis of evil." This threatening "axis," to be defined periodically by the Bush administration, allegedly possesses "instruments of mass destruction" that could be used against the U.S. Almost without exception, the mainstream media have been a propaganda conduit for the Bush administration Terror War and have helped generate fear and even mass hysteria. The mainstream corporate media have thus largely failed to advance an understanding of the serious threats to the U.S. and to the global economy and polity from Bush administration policy, and to debate the range of possible responses to the September 11 attacks and their respective merits and possible consequences.

In a speech to West Point cadets on June 1, 2002 George W. Bush proclaimed a new "doctrine" that the U.S. would strike first against enemies. It was soon apparent that this was a major shift in U.S. military policy, replacing the Cold War doctrine of containment and deterrence with a new policy of preemptive strikes, one that could be tried out in Iraq. U.S. allies were extremely upset with this shift in U.S. policy and move toward an aggressive U.S. unilateralism. In an article "Bush to Formalize a Defense Policy of Hitting First," David E. Sanger wrote in the New York Times (June 17, 2002) that: "The process of including America's allies has only just begun, and administration officials concede that it will be difficult at best. Leaders in Berlin, Paris and Beijing, in particular, have often warned against unilateralism. But Mr. Bush's new policy could amount to ultimate unilateralism, because it reserves the right to determine what constitutes a threat to American security and to act even if that threat is not judged imminent."[7]

After a summer of debate on the necessity of the U.S. going to war against Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, on August 26, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney applied the new preemptive strike and unilateralist doctrine to Iraq, arguing: "What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or willful blindnessä Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network or murderous dictator or the two working together constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action." Cheney was responding to many former generals and high-level members of the earlier Bush administration who had reservations against the sort of unilateralist U.S. attack against Iraq that hawks in the Bush administration were urging.

Indeed, Bush and others in his circle regularly described Terror War as World War Three, while Donald Rumsfeld said that it could last as long as the Cold War and Dick Cheney, speaking like a true militarist, said it could go on for a "long, long time, perhaps indefinitely." Such an Orwellian nightmare could plunge the world into a new millennium of escalating war with unintended consequences and embroil the U.S. in countless wars, normalizing war as conflict resolution and creating countless new enemies for the would-be American hegemon. Indeed, as Chambers Johnson writes in Blowback (2000), Empire has hidden costs. Becoming hegemon breeds resentment and hostility and when the Empire carries out aggression it elicits anger and creates enemies, intensifying the dangers of perpetual war.

On September 20, 2002 it was apparent that the hawks' position in the Bush administration had triumphed, at least on the level of official military doctrine, when the Bush administration released a document signaling some of the most important and far-ranging shifts in U.S. foreign and military policy since the end of the Cold War. Titled "The National Security Strategy of the United States," the 33-page report outlined a new doctrine of U.S. military supremacy, providing justifications for the U.S. to undertake unilateral and preemptive strikes in the name of "counterproliferation." This clumsy Orwellian concept was offered as a replacement for the concept of nonproliferation and in effect would legitimate unilateral destruction of a country's presumed weapons of mass destruction. The document, in effect, renounced global security, multilateralism, and rule by international law that had informed U.S. thinking since World War Two and that appeared to be a consensus among Western nations during the era of globalization.

The Bush administration's language of "preemptive strikes," "regime change," and "anticipatory self-defense," is purely Orwellian, presenting euphemisms for raw military aggression. Critics assailed the new "strike first, ask questions later" policy, the belligerent unilateralism, and dangerous legitimation of preemptive strikes.[8] Israel, Pakistan, Russia, China, and lesser powers had already used the so-called "Bush doctrine" and "war against terrorism" to legitimate attacks on domestic and external foes and there were dangers that it could legitimate a proliferation of war and make the world more unstable and violent. As William Galston states:

A global strategy based on the new Bush doctrine of preemption means the end of the system of international institutions, laws and norms that we have worked to build for more than half a century. What is at stake is nothing less than a fundamental shift in America's place in the world. Rather than continuing to serve as first among equals in the postwar international system, the United States would act as a law unto itself, creating new rules of international engagement without the consent of other nations. In my judgment, this new stance would ill serve the long-term interests of the United States.[9]

In his book Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Future of Good Intentions, Clyde Prestowitz (2003) argues that Bush's doctrine of preemptive strikes and military supremacy undermines three key pillars of international order and stability: the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia which established a principle of respect for national SV and noninterference in the affairs of other countries; the UN Charter which bans the threat or use of military force except in self-defense or under the authority of a UN Security Council mandates; and the Nuremberg Trails which deemed preemptive strikes to be a war crime.

Moreover, the Bush administration doctrine of preemptive strikes could unleash a series of wars that would plunge the world into the sort of nightmare militarism and totalitarianism sketched out in George Orwell's 1984. The Bush policy is highly barbaric, taking the global community to a social Darwinist battleground where decades of international law and military prudence were put aside in perhaps the most dangerous foreign policy doctrine that had ever appeared in U.S. history. It portends a militarist future and era of perpetual war in which a new militarism could generate a cycle of unending violence and retribution, such as has been evident in the Israel and Palestine conflict (see Vidal 2002 and 2003).

Around the same time that the Bush administration was pushing its new strategic doctrine and seeking to apply it in a war against Iraq, a 2000 report circulated titled "Rebuilding American Defense: Strategies, Forces and Resources for A New American Century." Drawn up by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC) for a group that now comprises the rightwing of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, the document clearly spelled out a plan for U.S. world hegemony grounded in U.S. military dominance of the world and control of the Persian Gulf region and its oil supplies.[10] Its upfront goals were a "Pax Americana" and U.S. domination of the world during the new millennium. The document shows that core members of the Bush administration had longed envisaged taking military control of the Gulf region, with the PNAC text stating: "The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC document argues for "maintaining global U.S. pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests." The vision is long-range, urging U.S. domination of the Gulf "as far into the future as possible." It is also highly militarist, calling for the U.S. to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" as a "core mission." U.S. American armed forces would serve as "the cavalry on the new American frontier," with U.S. military power blocking the emergence of other countries challenging U.S. domination. It would enlist key allies such as Britain as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership," and would put the U.S., and not the UN, as leader of military interventions or peacekeeping missions. Moreover, it envisages taking on Iran after Iraq, spotlights China for "regime change," and calls for the creation of "U.S. Space Forces" to dominate outer space, and positioning the U.S. to totally control cyberspace to prevent "enemies" from "using the Internet against the U.S."

As 2002 unfolded, the Bush administration intensified its ideological war against Iraq, advanced its doctrine of preemptive strikes, and provided military build-up for what now looks like a long-planned and orchestrated war. Whereas the explicit war aims were to shut down Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction," and thus enforce UN resolutions that mandated that Iraq eliminate its offensive weapons, there were many hidden agendas in the Bush administration offensive against Iraq. To be re-elected Bush needed a major victory and symbolic triumph over terrorism in order to deflect from the failings of his regime both domestically and in the realm of foreign policy.

Moreover, ideologues within the Bush administration wanted to legitimate the doctrine of preemptive strikes and a successful attack on Iraq could inaugurate and normalize this policy. Some of the same militarist unilateralists in the Bush administration envisage U.S. world hegemony, the elder Bush's "New World Order," with the U.S. as the reigning military power and world's policeman. Increased control of the world's oil supplies provided a tempting prize for the former oil executives who maintain key roles in the Bush administration. And, finally, one might note the Oedipus Tex drama, where George W. Bush's desires to conclude his father's unfinished business with Saddam Hussein and simultaneously defeat Evil to constitute himself as Good helped drive Bush to war against Iraq with the fervor of a religious Crusade.

With all these agendas in play, a war on Iraq appears to have been inevitable. Bush's March 6, 2003 press conference made it evident that he was ready to go to war against Iraq. His handlers told him to speak slowly and keep his big stick and Texas macho out of view, but he constantly threatened Iraq and evoked the rhetoric of good and evil that he used to justify his crusade against bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Bush repeated the words "Saddam Hussein" and "terrorism" incessantly, mentioning Iraq as a "threat" at least sixteen times, which he attempted to link with the September 11 attacks and terrorism. He used the word "I" as in "I believe" countless times, and talked of "my government" as if he owned it, depicting a man lost in words and self-importance, positioning himself against the "evil" that he was preparing to wage war against. Unable to make an intelligent and objective case for a war against Iraq, Bush could only invoke fear and a moralistic rhetoric, attempting to present himself as a strong nationalist leader.

Bush's rhetoric, like that of fascism, deploys a mistrust and hatred of language, reducing it to manipulative speechifying, speaking in codes, repeating the same phrases over and over. This is grounded in anti-intellectualism and hatred of democracy and intellectuals. It is clearly evident in Bush's press conferences and snitty responses to questions and general contempt for the whole procedure. It plays to anti-intellectual proclivities and tendencies in the extreme conservative and fundamentalist Christian constituencies who support him. It appears that Bush's press conference was orchestrated to shore up his base and prepare his supporters for a major political struggle rather then to marshal arguments to convince those opposed to go to war with Iraq that it was a good idea. He displayed, against his will, the complete poverty of his case to go to war against Iraq, he had no convincing arguments, nothing new to communicate, and just repeated the same tired cliches over and over.

Bush's discourse also displayed Orwellian features of Doublespeak where war against Iraq is for peace, the occupation of Iraq is its liberation, destroying its food and water supplies enables "humanitarian" action, and where the murder of countless Iraqis and destruction of the country will produce "freedom" and "democracy." In a pre-war summit with Tony Blair in the Azores and in his first talk after the bombing began on March 19, Bush went on and on about the "coalition of the willing" and how many countries were supporting and participating in the "allied" effort. In fact, however, it was a Coalition of Two, with the U.S. and UK doing most of the fighting and with many of the countries that Bush claimed supported his war quickly backtracking and expressing reservations about the highly unpopular assault that was strongly opposed by most people and countries in the world.

Moreover, it is by now well known and documented that Bush's policy of launching a preemptive strike on Iraq was based on deception and lies. Bush and others in his administration constantly made false claims about alleged Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" and the threat that the Iraqis posed to the U.S. and the entire world. The failure to find such threatening weapons and media exposure of claims that U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies were skeptical of these claims have led to critical scrutiny of the case for war offered by the U.S. and Britain. In the latter country, a major inquiry is now going on presided by Lord Hutton into government deception over Iraq.

Robert Greenwald's remarkable 2003 documentary Uncovered contrasts statements by members of the Bush administration including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice with critique by former members of the US intelligence and political establishment demonstrating that Bush administration claims were utterly bogus. Former intelligence analysts dissect Colin Powell's address to the United Nations claiming to document Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction and show in detail how key statistics Powell appealed to were simply false, his satellite imagery pictures claiming to present Iraqi weapons were appallingly misinterpreted, and his major claims concerning the immediate threat of Iraqi weapons were utterly fictitious in what has to be the nadir of US diplomatic argumentation before an international audience. The documentary also presents critics such as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson convincingly arguing that Bush administration claims concerning ties between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime are completely unproven, while a variety of critics argue that the Iraq occupation has created new terrorist enemies for the US and has not made the US safer, as Bush administration officials continually claim.[11]

After the collapse of the Baath regime in April 2003, the Bush administration began threatening Syria and there have been reports that the neo-conservatives in the administration have planned five more wars (see Clark 2003). The Bush administration policy of Terror War raises the possibility that Orwell's 1984 might provide the template for the new millennium, as the world is plunged into endless wars, as freedom and democracy are being snuffed out in the name of freedom, as language loses meaning, and as history is constantly revised (just as Bush and his scribes constantly rewrote his own personal history). There is thus the danger that Orwell's dark grim dystopia may replace the (ideological) utopia of the "information society," the "new economy," and a prosperous and democratic globalization that had been the dominant ideology and vision of the past decade. Questions arise: Will the Bush administration Terror War lead the world to apocalypse and ruin through constant war and the erection of totalitarian police states over the faÁade of fragile democracy? Or can more multilateral and global solutions be found to the dangers of terrorism that will strengthen democracy and increase the chances for peace and security?

There is indeed a danger that Terror War will be a force of historical regression, and the motor of destruction of the global economy, liberal polity, and democracy itself, all to be replaced by an aggressive militarism and totalitarian police state. It could well be that Orwell will be the prophet of a coming New Barbarism with endless war, state repression, and enforced control of thought and discourse, and that George W. Bush and his minions are the architects of an Orwellian future.

It could also be the case, however, that the Taliban, bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, and the Bush administration represent obsolete and reactionary forces that will be swept away by the inexorable forces of globalization and liberal democracy. The opposing sides in the current Terror War of the Bush administration reactionaries and Al Qaeda could be perceived as representing complementary poles of an atavistic and premodern version of Islam and nihilistic terrorism confronted by reactionary rightwing conservatism and militarism.[12] In this scenario, both poles can be perceived as disruptive and regressive forces in a global world that need to be overcome to create genuine historical progress. If this is the case, Terror War would be a momentary interlude in which two obsolete historical forces battle it out, ultimately to be replaced by more sane and democratic globalizing forces.

This is, of course, an optimistic scenario and probably, for the foreseeable future, progressive forces will be forced to confront intense battles between the opposing forces of Islamic terrorism and rightwing militarism. Yet if democracy and the human species are to survive, global movements against militarism and for social justice, ecology, and peace must emerge to combat and replace the atavistic forces of the present. As a new millennium unfolds, the human race has regressed into a New Barbarism unforeseeable prior to September 11. If civilization is to survive, individuals must perceive their enemies and organize to fight for a better future. And now is the time for liberals, conservatives and those who believe in truth in politics to demand straight talk from the Bush administration and other politicians, and for the media and critics of the politics of lying to take the Bush administration to task for its Big Lies. As the history of recent totalitarian regimes demonstrates, systematic deception and lying rots the very fabric of a political society, and if U.S. democracy is to find new life and a vigorous future there must be public commitments to truth and public rejection of the politics of lying.

To conclude: as a response to the September 11 terror attacks, the Bush administration has answered with an intensified militarism that threatens to generate an era of Terror War, a new arms race, accelerated military violence, U.S. support of authoritarian regimes, an assault on human rights, constant threats to democracy, and destabilizing of the world economy. The Bush regime also provides political favors to its largest corporate and other supporters, unleashing unrestrained Wild West capitalism, exemplified in the Enron scandals, and a form of capitalist cronyism whereby Bush administration family and friends are provided with government favors, while social welfare programs, environmental legislation, and protection of rights and freedoms are curtailed.

Consequently, I would argue that Bush administration unilateralist militarism is not the way to fight international terrorism, but is rather the road to an Orwellian nightmare in which democracy and freedom will be in dire peril and the future of the human species will be in question. These are frightening times and it is essential that all citizens become informed about the fateful conflicts of the present, gain clear understanding of what is at stake, and realize that they must oppose at once international terrorism, Bushian militarism, and an Orwellian police-state in order to preserve democracy and a life worthy of a human being.

Cole, David. Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism. New York: New Press.

Johnson, Chalmers (2000) Blowback. The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. New York: Henry Holt.

Kellner, Douglas (1990) "From 1984 to One-Dimensional Man: Reflections on Orwell and Marcuse," Current Perspectives in Social Theory: 223-252.

________________ (2001) Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.

_________________(2003) From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.

Orwell, George (1961 [1948]) 1984. New York: Signet.

Prestowitz, Clyde (2003) Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Future of Good Intentions. New York: Basic Books.

[2] For a discussion of Orwell's prophetic novel, see Kellner 1990; in the light of the Bush administration projected Terror War, however, it could well be Orwell and not Huxley and Marcuse, as I argue in the article cited here, who provide the most prescient templates of the future present.

[3] See Jonathan Turley, "Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision." Los Angeles Times (Aug. 14, 2002). U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was awarded the annual 1984 award for "Worst Government Official" by Privacy International. The watchdog group said the top U.S. law enforcement officer "is responsible for a massive increase in wiretapping of phones and other electronics and for the imprisonment without charge of as many as 1,200 people in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks on America." See Reuters (April 19, 2002).

[5] See Human Rights Watch report, "Presumption of Guilt: Human Rights Abuses of Post-September 11 Detainees," at http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/08/usdetainess081502.htm.

[8] See William Saletan, "Shoot First. Bush's whitewashed national security manifesto," Slate (Sept. 20, 2002); Peter Slevin, "Analysts: New Strategy Courts Unseen Dangers. First Strike Could Be Precedent for Other Nations," Washington Post (Sept 22, 2002); and Paul Krugman, "White Man's Burden," New York Times (Sept. 24, 2002).

[10] An article by Neil Mackay, "Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming president" (The Sunday Herald, Sept. 15, 2002), widely circulated through the Internet, called attention to the sort of militarist global strategic vision that informed Bush administration policy. The 2000 plan is available at http://www.newamericancentury.org/ RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf.

[12] Tariq Ali captures this dialectic in his book The Clash of Fundamentalisms (2002), whose cover pictures George W. Bush shading into the visage of Osama bin Laden, two fundamentalists whose families had long been linked in shady business practices (see Chapter 1) and who personally represented the competing fundamentalisms of the ongoing Terror War.

References