Imperial Fantasies

The key to understanding the true import of David Hare’s theatrical screed on Iraq is found halfway through Act II, when a character identified as the Brit in New York announces: “On September 11, America changed. Yes. It got much stupider.” Although dressed up as an expose of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair going to war, this play is really about the British intelligentsia’s by-now chronic contempt for all things Yank.Anybody who has been to Britain recently, or even read an English book, knows how deeply the current runs. This reviewer was particularly struck by how the novelist Ian McEwan was at such pains in his best seller “Saturday” to establish his anti-American bona fides before allowing his hero to express cautious ambivalence toward the Iraq war. But it’s everywhere in British culture today – left and center certainly, and even, occasionally, on the right.What the British and other Europeans seldom acknowledge in all their talk about the alleged American Empire is how recently they have developed imperial qualms. When Brits were in charge of the world, their culture offered support that ranged from mild (Somerset Maugham) to rabid (Rudyard Kipling). And even authors who raised serious questions, like George Bernard Shaw, did so in more universal political terms – portraying imperialism, not England, as the problem. The Americans, meanwhile, are not merely the invaders of Iraq, but the purveyors of hamburgers, the polluters of air and sea, the enemies of Darwin, and, more to the point, screw-ups extraordinaire. One of the earlier developers of this last theme was the novelist Graham Greene, with “The Quiet American.” The current world champion is John le Carre.If ever there was a cliche worth repeating, it is this: If we have been so stupid and naive all these years, how did we manage to bail these people out over and over again?Mr. Hare seems intent mainly on conflating information gleaned from newspaper headlines with imagined conversation between the principals, and the effect can be both dizzying and paranoid. Thus, in the first act, Mr. Blair questions Mr. Bush on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden:Blair: As you know, British special forces have been working on the Pakistani border, around Tora Bora …Bush: I know that.Blair: Seeking out bin Laden. I’m sure you’ve also been told that just a few days ago, we found him. We tracked him.Bush: I got those reports.Blair: The point is this: When we found him, our special forces received a request from the U.S. special forces. We were ordered to pull out. (There’s another silence. Rice looks to Cheney.) Blair: Now I don’t know where that particular order came from …After more back and forth on this, it becomes “clear” that the Americans have no intention of telling the British who gave the order to pull out. There is a strong suggestion that Vice President Cheney may have had something to do with it, but the larger point is that the president has already moved beyond Mr. bin Laden and Tora Bora with plans for Iraq. The scene closes with the President telling Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to develop a war plan for Iraq, and “don’t tell anyone else.”This not only strains credulity, it shows a painfully incomplete understanding of how governments develop contingency plans for warfare and/or anything else. Scenarios are developed in part to test theories and judgments, and they are always compiled by teams. Mr. Rumsfeld would have a better shot at getting a favorable editorial in the New York Times than he would in developing a war plan without telling anyone. The play is filled with such lame fantasies.One of the most annoying figures in Mr. Hare’s play is the truly loathsome Frenchman, Dominique de Villepin, whose anti-American antics at the United Nations brought us “freedom fries” and much additional silliness. Judging from the way Mr. Villepin is portrayed here, he seems to give even Mr. Hare heartburn. But what’s most breathtaking about this dandified diplomat’s anti-war stance goes unmentioned: his proud authorship of a paean to Napoleon Bonaparte! As noted at the time in the New Republic, Bonaparte launched a pre-emptive strike against another Islamic nation when he invaded Egypt in 1798. But to the Frenchman, Bonaparte was a tragic hero; as the New Republic further noted, he even titled a section of the book “Waterloo, or the Crucifixion.” Oh, well: other empires, other times.

Imperial Fantasies

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