Empire of Stupidity

[Note for Tomdispatch readers: In the weeks when the first Gulf War was underway -- it seems a lifetime ago -- I began researching a book on the history of American triumphalism (which I came to call "victory culture"), especially as I had experienced it in my 1950s childhood. By the time I began writing, that war was years past; the General Schwarzkopf dolls had long disappeared from the toy store remainder tables, and the book seemed like little short of an autopsy of a once vital American myth -- the cherished belief that triumph over a less-than-human enemy was in the American grain, a birthright and a national destiny. It was published in 1995 as The End of Victory Culture and then I went about my business; but over the years, the book made its modest mark in the world (and in college courses).

I freely admit that I was taken off-guard when, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, victory culture came roaring back with a literal vengeance. Even then, as I started working on the project that became Tomdispatch, I never doubted that the half-life of this version of victory culture would be short or, when the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq became obvious in 2002, that it would crash and burn in that country.