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January
22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Progressive
Pols for Enron?
Judith
Resnik
Invading
the Courts?
Kevin
Alexander Gray
The
Crisis in Black Leadership
January
21, 2002
Marjorie
Cohn
Will
Walker's Words
Be Used Against Him?
Ahmad
Faruqui
MLK
Jr. and the Palestinians
January
19. 2002
Jordan
Green
Enron
Stole Our Future
January
18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
The
Enron Model
Walt Brasch
Enron
at the White House
CounterPunch
Wire
Human
Rights Groups Says Guantanamo Prisoners Must
Be Treated as POWs
January
17, 2002
Gideon
Levy
Bulldozing
Rafah
Uri Avnery
That
Weapons Shipment
January
16, 2002
John Chuckman
The
Angel and the Pretzel
Lawrence
McGuire
Subverting
the
Geneva Convention
Kathy
Kelly
An
Open Letter to
Richard Perle on Iraq
January
15, 2002
George
Monbiot
Greenpeace,
Lord Melchett
and the Business of Betrayal
Jack McCarthy
Follow
the Pretzel
William
Blum
Atta
and the Times:
Follow the Changing Story
Edward
Said
Emerging
Alternatives
in Palestine
January
14, 2002
David
Vest
Open
Bag. Eat Pretzels.
Patrick
Cockburn
Collapse
of Georgia
Ignored by the World
Mokhiber/Weissman
Enron's
Accountants:
When In Doubt, Shred It
January
13, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
Why
We Kill People
January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponek
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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The Memphis Blues Again:
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Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
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January
22, 2002
Moby-Dick and the
War on Al-Qaeda
Remember the Pequod!
By Brendan Cooney
But wherefore it was that after
having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should
now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the
invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance
of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable
way-- he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless,
my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme
of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as
a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances.
I take it that this part of the bill must have run something
like this:
"Grand Contested Election
for the Presidency of the United States.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
Though I cannot tell why it was
exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for
this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down
for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts
in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces- though I cannot
tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances,
I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which
being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced
me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me
into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own
unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
Chapter One
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
As a species that has evolved for millions of
years in hunting-and-gathering environments, our adrenalin starts
to run whenever we sniff a hunt. U.S. officials may not be trained
in anthropology, but they understood this instinct well enough
to know that their action in Afghanistan would sell better if
they put a picture in the sights. Better a face than a group;
better the name of a group than an idea, better an idea than
blind attacks. If "terror" is too diffuse, then make
it bin Laden. But bin Laden might get killed, so broaden it to
Al Qaeda, no the Taliban. Once they are defeated, extend it back
to Terror.
One hundred fifty years before the U.S.
went hunting in Afghanistan, Herman Melville published the most
famous American hunt story, a novel that might be seen today
as a cautionary tale against foolish chases-Moby Dick.
Captain Ahab uses the same psychological strategy as President
Bush's "dead or alive" rhetoric when he announces to
the crew of the Pequod that the ship now has but one mission:
to kill Moby Dick, the horrible White Whale who bit off his leg
years before. No longer is the voyage about making money from
commercial whaling. It is now a quest for retribution. Ahab must
know that if he presents the challenge of a hunt-especially for
revenge-the men will forget why they came along in the first
place, and that their human urge for the hunt would take over.
The gauntlet Ahab throws down to his crew is precisely the one
Bush flung upon the world: you're either with us or against us.
Adrenalin seizes the crew. They take an oath to hunt the whale.
The ship sinks. Everyone dies except Ishmael, the narrator.
The narratives bear other striking similarities.
Like the United States suffering the loss of its towers and the
people in them, Ahab's body and pride were wounded when the White
Whale "dismasted" him in its ivory jaws (Chapter 36).
In a mad rage Ahab redirects his crew, which hails from all over
the world and is joined in the ship on the economic mission of
hunting whales for profit, to a course of violent revenge, just
as the United States has redirected a group of countries already
joined under its economic stewardship onto a quest to restore
its pride.
Both missions, of course, are doomed.
Ahab never has a chance against Moby Dick, a force of nature
that most sea captains know it is not their business to mess
with. Similarly, the United States has no hope in its stated
goal of eliminating terrorism. Whoever hates America can always
find a way to attack it. To eradicate terrorism therefore would
be to wipe out antipathy against America, a human sentiment that
most leaders would recognize cannot be controlled. America's
means of effecting that change-dropping bombs on innocent people
in one of the world's most destitute countries-can hardly be
more effective than having done nothing at all.
It is obvious to the other sea captains
that Ahab's hunt is lunacy. Ahab asks an English captain who
has lost his arm to Moby Dick if he harpooned him the next two
times he saw him. "Didn't want to try to," the captain
answers. "Ain't one limb enough? What should I do without
this other arm?" He continues: "No more White Whales
for me. [H]e's best let alone; don't you think so, Captain?"
"He is," answers Ahab. "But
he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone,
that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He's all
a magnet!" (Chapter 100). The English captain then asks
a Pequod crewmember if Ahab is crazy.
If Ahab can be seen as the United States,
and Ahab's crew as the countries allied with the U.S. in its
war, Starbuck can be seen as Pakistan and anyone else wrestling
with the wisdom of that alliance. Starbuck, the first mate, is
the only crewmember to protest the hunt: "I came here to
hunt whales," he tells Ahab, "not my commander's vengeance.
How many barrels will thy vengeance yield?" (Chapter 36).
To hell with money, Ahab says. "[M]y
vengeance will fetch a great premium here!" he says,
pounding his chest.
"Vengeance on a dumb brute!"
cries Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct!
Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems
blasphemous."
Starbuck is horrified by Ahab's sense
of himself in relation to the natural world.
But Ahab's thinking springs from a bedrock
ideology in America that man can and should control nature, an
idea growing out of The Bible and the frontier mentality and
continuing all the way up to George Bush suggesting that he can
eliminate from the world all the people who hate America enough
to hurt it.
Even after he protests, however, Starbuck
goes along with the hunt. Starbuck, Melville wrote elsewhere,
represents "the moderate man, the invaluable understrapper
of the wicked man." In this, Starbuck is similar to all
the moderate people in the world who are just going along with
the Bush Administration's action because they either don't care
strongly enough about stopping it or they're scared to stand
up to the United States, since it is the skipper of the global
economic ship. Moderate followers are crucial to the success
of any big hunt or any evil man, Melville suggests.
Under a magnifying glass, the analogy
starts to fall apart, of course. Ahab may be doomed, but at least
the quarry he is hunting is the same who bit off his leg. The
United States has killed many people who have nothing to do with
its injury. Another difference is that the U.S. has enemies who
hate it, and the September attack was predatory. Moby Dick is
just a whale minding his own business who chews up ships in self-defense.
Why we are going along with this hunt
is both harder and easier to understand than why the crew of
the Pequod goes along with Ahab. We are not in a savage
environment like a ship in the middle of the ocean. We have more
access to our rational minds and thus should be able to see the
absurdity of attacking Afghanistan. On the other hand, Ahab's
crew wasn't injured, in the way that U.S. citizens feel violated
and hurt by the September attack. For the Pequod crew,
it is a hunt for hunt's sake, and the retribution is imaginary,
through identification with Ahab's injury. The U.S. public, on
the other hand, felt injured, and they joined the hunt with a
sense of retribution. (The extent to which the injury was imagined
and the whole idea of a nation is imagined are separate questions.)
We are never so blind as when our pride is battered and we feel
compelled to save face.
Why do we embark on preposterous hunts?
Clearly we haven't evolved a gene for engaging in foolish battles.
That gene would have sunk with ships like the Pequod.
We must also have some mechanism for self-correction, an instinct
that tells us to walk away when the fight is unwise. After all,
the other captains on the high seas know enough to leave Moby
Dick alone. But perhaps the self-correction mechanism walks the
plank when the hunt is about saving face. A simple hunt is alluring
enough. When you add revenge, the quarry becomes "all a
magnet," overpowering whatever rationality we've evolved
to counteract our savage impulses. From a sociobiological perspective,
the U.S. response to the Sept. 11 attack suggests is either the
predominance of the face-saving urge among humans or, more gravely,
that those without good self-monitoring will eventually be selected
out of the population. That is, unless the United States snaps
out of its sense of indomitability, it may be doomed to follow
the Pequod to the bottom of the indifferent sea.
William Faulkner wrote in the Chicago
Tribune in 1927 that his fascination with Moby Dick was
that it showed a man "bent on his own destruction and dragging
his immediate world down with him with a despotic and utter disregard
of [its people] as individuals."
To some extent, any war necessitates
a blindness to the individuality of the people being attacked.
The U.S. would not have bombed Timothy McVeigh's neighborhood
to get him the way it bombs Afghan villages to get bin Laden.
It is easier to ignore humanity on foreign soil. But, as Faulkner
points out, Ahab is disregarding his own people in taking
his ship down with him. Likewise, as hatred of America surely
will intensify around the world in reaction to U.S. terrorist-hunting,
Bush is taking all of us down with him.
Brendan Cooney
is a writer from Boston. He has a master's degree in cultural
anthropology and can be reached at: itmighthavehappened@yahoo.com
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