Al Qaeda Alchemy

How Bush went from bumbler to statesman.

"Those of us who have lived through these challenging times have been changed by them," said President George W. Bush in his State of the Union message on Tuesday. Surely few people have been changed more than Bush himself. Having entered the presidency only after a bitter and divisive recount farce that undermined the authority he brought to the office; having arrived in Washington perceived as inarticulate and barely informed about world affairs, the president one year later stood before a joint session of Congress and, in a few words, reshuffled the world.

"Evil is real," he said in what has become the foundational thesis of his presidency, "and it must be opposed." In the heart of his address, Bush identified an "axis of evil" to which the U.S. will now oppose itself. That Axis includes Iraq, which has been the subject of a continuous din of threat since September 11. But it also includes Iran and North Korea, about which the administration had been circumspect. Indeed, in the weeks preceding the military action in Afghanistan, the U.S. had appeared to seek some common ground of cooperation with Teheran. Now, Iran and North Korea emerge as regimes that are "arming to threaten the peace of the world" and that "pose a grave and growing danger." Bush said that the U.S. "will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." What will the U.S. do? "America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security."

That obviously leaves a lot of room, but at the same time it defines an unexpectedly hard global position, and it sets the apparent next stage in a now open and largely unilateral program of Pax Americana. It is not merely terror organizations such as Al Qaeda that the U.S. perceives as threats; it is now specific nation-states as well. (Indeed, the list of terror groups itself has grown to include such anti-Israel movements as Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah, among others, groups that until Tuesday the U.S. had avoided citing publicly as targets of its anti-terror campaign.)

Who is the alchemist responsible for such a sweeping transformation, of Bush if not of the U.S and of the entire globe? It is of course the missing Osama bin Laden, who went unmentioned in the president's address. Yet, that bin Laden's attack would result in something like Bush's strategic vision was actually foreseeable; it was certainly foreseen last November in a remarkably prescient essay by Tim Hames that appeared in The Times of London. Hames predicted that the attacks on the U.S. would make it a far more muscular nation than it had been in recent decades, especially under Bill Clinton, and that the attacks would result in "an unambiguous version of Pax Americana."

"This is then the paradoxical achievement of bin Laden and his network," wrote Hames. "They spent many years planning the attacks on New York and Washington in the belief that they would humiliate the United States, drive all aspects of American influence out of the Middle East and then trigger a global economic meltdown.

"It is instead far more probable that the end result of their foul endeavours will be a vast reassertion of American power, the humiliation of radical Islam and a stronger economy than would have occurred if al-Qaeda had stayed in its caves. With enemies like this, who needs friends?"

Yet there is a paradox of sorts in Hames' prediction of the American response to challenge. While Bush bases his argument on a supposed national transformation brought on by the attacks, observers like Hames were able to foresee the likely strategic result precisely because they accurately perceived the American character in advance of the attacks. That is, they well understood how Americans have responded historically to challenge, and that Americans would likely support an assertion of national power as a result.

Bush's claim of national transformation was not only the basis of his global strategy, it was also the foundation of his concluding call to domestic action, especially a vast program of federally organized volunteerism. "After America was attacked," he said near the end of his remarks, "it was as if our entire country looked into a mirror and saw our better selves. We were reminded that we are citizens with obligations to each other, to our country, and to history. We began to think less of the goods we can accumulate, and more about the good we can do."

Yet American strength emerges from the system Americans had built before the attack, a system they understood as the basis of their commonality of values, their prosperity, and their opportunity. It is precisely in defense of the existing system and its values that Americans have exerted themselves when under threat, and not because of any transmogrification.

Bush's rhetoric of change appears to emerge from his politics of compassion; it may well be in his interest to portray the nation in change. The nation, however, has an agenda impelled by its own history and tradition. It has changed less than he suggests, and he has changed more.