Quelques paroles (de Andrew Bacevich) méritant attention et réflexion

Andrew Bacevich est un auteur et un professeur d’université (Boston University Department of International Relations) ; c’est aussi un ancien militaire (du Viet-nâm jusqu’en 1992), un ancien faucon de la Guerre froide devenu critique fondamental du système américaniste. Bacevich rassemble sur sa personne des particularités remarquables qui en font un critique à la fois informé et profond de l’artefact américaniste, — un critique comme seul le “système” US est paradoxalement capable de fournir, on dirait presque par antidote naturel.

La longue interview de Bacevich dans TomDispatch.com (le site de l'excellent Tom Engelhardt), publiée en deux parties, le 24 mai et le 25 mai, est une belle occasion de réflexions fondamentales sur le phénomène américaniste.

Au contraire des pâles critiques européens, Bacevich va au plus fondamental. Il ne se berce d’aucune illusion sur ce que peut produire le système en cas d’alternance (« If we just toss Bush out and bring in... Who? Senator Clinton or John McCain? Will things be different? Somehow, I don't think so. Of course, there is something to be said for competence even in implementing a bad policy. Right now, we have incompetents implementing a bad policy, but the essence of the problem is the policy — not just the Iraq War but this paradigm of a Global War on Terror, this notion of unconstraining American power. That's what we have to rethink. »)

Quant aux causes fondamentales, Bacevich propose justement une réflexion qui lie fortement les faits les plus techniques, les plus concrets, ceux qui sont en général dissimulés derrière la rationalité technicienne et stratégique, aux élans et aux penchants de la psychologie américaniste, celle qui répond le plus à une irrationalité mystérieuse. C’est le cas dans ce passage où il s’interroge sur l’importance de la technologie, de l’avion perçu comme « the technological artifact that defines the last century », et qui implique également un type de guerre de destruction massive, dans la psychologie américaniste.

» TD: You've used the word “crusade” and spoken of this administration as “intoxicated with the mission of salvation.” I was wondering what kind of ‘ism’ you think we've been living with in these years?

» Bacevich: That's a great question, and it's not enough to say that it's democratic capitalism. Certainly, our ‘ism’ incorporates a religious dimension — in the sense of believing that God created this nation for a purpose that has to do with universal values.

» We have not as a people come to terms with our relationship to military power and to the wars we've engaged in and the ways we've engaged in them. Now, James Carroll in his new book, House of War, is very much preoccupied with strategic bombing in World War II and since, and especially with our use of, and attitude toward, nuclear weapons. His preoccupation is understandable because those are the things we can't digest and we can't cough up. You know, at the end of the day, we, the missionary nation, the crusader state, certain of our righteousness, remain the only people to have used nuclear weapons in anger — indeed, to have used them as a weapon of terror.

» TD: Air power, even though hardly covered in our media in Iraq, has been the American way of war since World War II, hasn't it?

» Bacevich: Certainly that ‘ism’ that defines us has a large technological component, doesn't it? I mean, we are the people of technology. We see the future as a technological one and can't imagine a problem that doesn't have technological solutions...

» TD: ...except when it comes to oil.

» Bacevich: Quite true. In many respects, the technological artifact that defines the last century is the airplane. With the airplane came a distinctive style of warfare. The Italians dropped the first bomb in North Africa; the Japanese killed their share of civilians from the air as did the Germans, but we and our British cousins outdid them all. I've been thinking more and more that our record of strategic bombing is not simply an issue of historical interest. »

Mis en ligne le 29 mai à 13H18