4 THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE APOCALYPSE

1. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Appendix to the Third Edition, www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/sense6.htm

2. Herman Melville, White Jacket, London and New York, Oxford University Press World’s Classics, 1924, p.142.

3. See http://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html

4. See Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy and Belief in Modern American Culture, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 68–70.

5. John Galt, The Life and Studies of Benjamin West, London, 1819, p. 92; cited by Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1968, pp. 95–6.

6. For the theological context and content of Locke’s thought, see John Dunn’s pioneering The Political Thought of John Locke, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969 and 1982.

7. Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, London, HarperCollins, 2004, p.51.

8. For a discussion of de Tocqueville on American exceptionalism, see Hugh Brogan’s definitive biography, Alexis de Tocqueville, London, Profile, 2006, p.270.

9. Woodrow Wilson speaking at Pueblo, 25 September 1919, www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/wilsonleagueofnations.htm

10. Edmund Stillman and William Pfaff, Power and Impotence: The Futility of American Foreign Policy, London, Victor Gollancz, 1966, p. 15.

11. Conrad Cherry (ed.), God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny, Chapel Hill NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1998, p. 11. I am indebted to Kevin Phillips’s American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, New York, Viking, 2006, where Cherry’s statement in cited on p. 129.

12. For a discussion of the role of ideas of divine covenant in modern nationalism, see Anthony Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2002.

13. See Lisa Myers and NBC team, ‘Top Terrorist Hunter’s Divisive Views’, NBC Nightly News, 15 October 2003. For an analysis of Boykin’s role in the Bush administration and fundamentalist support for the war, see Paul Vallely, ‘The fifth crusade: George Bush and the Christianisation of the war in Iraq’, in Re-Imagining Security, London, British Council, 2004, pp. 42–68.

14. Bush’s use of biblical phrases in the speeches has been analysed by the American theologian Bruce Lincoln in Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion After 9/11, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006.

15. Haaretz, 26 June 2003.

16. Statement cited in Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More, p. 305.

17. See David Kuo, Tempted by Faith: An Insider Story of Political Seduction, New York, Free Press, 2006.

18. ‘Bush: Intelligent Design should be taught’, SF Gate, 2 August 2005.

19. ‘Bush tells group he sees a “Third Awakening” ’, Washington Post, 13 September 2006.

20. For further details of the Newsweek poll, see Michael Lind, Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics, New York, Basic Books, 2003, p.108.

21. The Homeland Security document can be viewed at www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2004.hsc-planning-scenarios-jul2004–intro.htm

22. Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, New York and London, Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2004, p. 264.

23. Lind, Made in Texas, p.144.

24. Time/CNN poll, Time, July 2002. Cited in Phillips, American Theocracy, p. 96.

25. Lind, Made in Texas, p.112.

26. For an account of the far-reaching character of Bush’s push to faith-based government, see Gary Wills, ‘A country ruled by faith’, New York Review of Books, vol. 53, no. 16, November 2006.

27. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, London, Routledge, 1960, p. 192.

28. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics, New York, American Enterprise Institute/Simon and Schuster, 1982, p. 18.

29. Michael Novak, ‘Neocon: some memories’, www.michaelnovak.net.

30. See Irving Kristol, ‘Memoirs of a Trotskyist’, New York Times Magazine, 23 January 1977, reprinted in Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neocon-servative: Looking Back, Looking Forward, New York, Basic Books, 1986.

31. Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, National Interest, summer 1989. Fukuyama developed the views presented in this article in The End of History and the Last Man, New York, Free Press, 1992.

32. Criticizing Fukuyama’s original article in October 1989, I wrote: ‘Ours is an era in which political ideology, liberal as much as Marxist, has a dwindling leverage on events, and more ancient, more primordial forces, nationalist and religious, fundamentalist and soon, perhaps, Malthusian, are contesting with each other …If the Soviet Union does indeed fall apart, that beneficent catastrophe will not inaugurate a new era of post-historical harmony, but instead a return to the classical terrain of history, a terrain of great-power rivalries, secret diplomacies, and irredentist claims and wars.’ See John Gray, ‘The End of History – or of Liberalism?’, in National Review, 27 October 1989, pp. 33–5. This article is reprinted in my Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought, London and New York, Rout-ledge, 1993, pp. 245–50.

33. See ‘Neo-cons turn on Bush for incompetence over Iraq war’, Guardian, 4 November 2006, and David Rose, ‘Neo Culpa’, Vanity Fair, 3 November 2006.

34. See Francis Fukuyama, After the Neocons: America at the Crossroads, London, Profile, 2006, p. 55. The scholar who identified Fukuyama’s ‘passive “Marxist” social teleology’ is Ken Jowitt, author of the interesting Study, New World Disorder: The Leninist Extinction, Berkeley and Oxford, University of California Press, 1992.

35. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards, pp. 11, 17–18.

36. See M. Oakeshott, Rationalismin Politics and Other Essays, ed. Tim Fuller, Indianapolis, Liberty Press, 1991. I have criticized Oakeshott’s philosophy in my ‘Reply to Critics’ in John Horton and Glen Newey (eds.), The Political Theory of John Gray, London, Routledge, 2006.

37. For a discussion of Kojeve and Schmitt, see Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics, New York, New York Review of Books, 2003.

38. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1953, pp. 181–2.

39. ibid., p. 164.

40. For the claim that Strauss’s thought condoned deception in politics, see Shadia B. Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.

41. Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, New York, Free Press, 1959, pp. 115–16.

42. For a careful discussion of Strauss and neo-conservatism, see Stephen B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006.

43. See, for example, M. F. Burnyeat, ‘Sphinx without a secret’, New York Review of Books, 30 May 1985.

44. F. Dostoyevsky, The Devils, London, Penguin, 2004, p.404.

45. For an account of Khalilzad’s early days as a student in Chicago, see Anne Norton’s excellent Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 185–6.

46. Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Is there a strategic arms race?’, Foreign Policy, no. 15, summer 1974, pp. 3–20.

47. For Angleton’s life and career, see Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s Master Spy Hunter, London and New York, Simon and Schuster, 1991.

48. For an authoritative analysis of the methods and errors of the B Team, see Anne H. Cahn, Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA, University Park PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. See also her article, ‘Team B: the trillion dollar experiment’, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, vol. 49, no. 3, April 1993.

49. Gary Schmitt and Abram Shulsky, ‘Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)’, in Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley (eds.), Leo Strauss, the Straussians and the American Regime, New York, Rowman and Littlefield, 1999, p. 410 et seq.

50. Schmitt and Shulsky developed their view of intelligence methods more systematically in Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, 3rd edn, Washington DC, Brassey’s, 2002.

51. For the remarks of the Bush aide, see Ron Suskind, ‘Without a doubt’, New York Times, 17 October 2004.

52. Bob Woodward has provided an account of the deception and delusion surrounding the war in the White House in his brilliant exposé, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2006.

53. George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, p. 105.

54. For a report on the ‘Iranian Directorate’, see Laura Rozen, ‘US moves to weaken Iran’, Los Angeles Times, 19 May 2006.

55. For a well-sourced account of the formation and operations of the OSP, see Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command, London and New York, Allen Lane and HarperCollins, 2004, pp. 207–24.

56. Joan Didion, ‘Cheney: the fatal touch’, New York Review of Books, 5 October 2006, p. 54.

57. Schmitt and Shulsky, Silent Warfare, p.176.

58. For a report suggesting intelligence analysts feared émigré claims of Iraqi WMD may have been disinformation, see Bob Drogin, ‘US suspects it received false arms tips’, Los Angeles Times, 28 August 2003.

59. ‘Bush and Putin: best of friends’, BBC News, 16 June 2001.

60. David Brooks, ‘The CIA: method or madness?’, New York Times, 3 February 2004.

61. Michael Ledeen, ‘Creative destruction’, National Review Online, 20 September 2001.

62. Czeslaw Milosz, ‘Dostoyevsky’, in To Begin Where I Am: Selected Essays, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, pp. 281–2.