Wag the Dog (2 page)

About Larry Beinhart

 

 

 

 

T
HANKS TO THE
Woodstock Library and its librarians—especially Judy Fischetti—who got me the great majority of the books, films, and videos that went into the making of this book.

We get most of our information in shallow, predigested sound bites and headlines. Whenever we want, or need, to look a little deeper, to think a little more seriously, our libraries are our most effective resource. Frequently, our only resource. Certainly, for the average person, the only affordable one. They deserve our support.

Also to Lt. Col. Ky L. Thompson (USMC ret.), who was kind enough to read the manuscript and correct my more egregious Marine errors.

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Many public figures appear in the text. Their speech and actions as depicted here are figments of the author's imagination except where supported by the public record.

There are those who feel that fact and fiction are significantly less distinguishable than they used to seem to be. They might say, as ABC Television did in its introduction to
The Heroes of Desert Storm:
“Tonight's film is based on true stories and interweaves news footage and dramatizations with actors and actual participants. To achieve realism no distinction is made among these elements.”

 

 

 

W
AG THE
D
OG
is about reality as fiction.

First there was a war.

I was watching it on television. I said to someone, “That's a made for TV movie.” I didn't get the response I wanted, which would have either been a burst of laughter or a sense of sudden recognition. I suspect they thought that I meant that it was
like
a mini-series or that the broadcasters were
treating it like
one.

That wasn't what I meant. I meant it was scripted and directed and being played for an audience, us, the voters in the apparent democracy of America.

In order to explain it, to demonstrate it, to prove it, I wrote this book. It was originally called
American Hero.

In it, a motion picture director, who is like Spielberg or Lucas or any one of a number of others, is hired to create the war that we saw as
Desert Storm.
I do not claim that story is literally true. It is, however, a literalization of what is really true. And, although it is a far out conspiracy tale, if you sit down and compare it, side by side,
to the fakery that the networks told us was the reality, you'd have to choose the one that is officially labeled fiction.

That's my claim. I invite you to make your own judgment, which is the real point of the enterprise. You're free to talk to me about it at WagtheDog.biz.

Then there was the movie.

I am always asked if I, as the writer of the book, liked the movie. I loved the movie. It's a brilliant film.

The next question is, was it faithful to the book. The answer is yes, the movie is exactly like the book, all they changed was the characters and the plot.

The book is about a real president, George Bush the First, and a real war, Gulf War One, with real bombs, blood, and dead people.

The movie is about an imaginary president—all we know of him is that he has a sex scandal with a young girl, which is enough to make everyone think it's Bill Clinton—and an imaginary war—no bombs, no bullets, no bodies—just press releases and staged video clips. And a theme song and memorabilia.

If the film had tried to be faithful to the book, I think it would have failed. It made cinematic choices. One of my favorite parts is when Willie Nelson creates theme music for the war in a perfect satire of the then ubiquitous video of “We Are the World.” That was pure movie-making, beyond the reach of literature.

The novel, on the other hand, makes book choices. Like using footnotes.

I happen to love footnotes. They're frequently the stuff that doesn't fit into a book but that the author found
so interesting, he couldn't let them go. They're also the place where you find out where the information came from. Which is hugely significant in judging its quality. In this particular book, the footnotes show the play in the business of creating reality, which is the same thing, in essence, that the Willie Nelson/theme song scenes were about.

The movie had far more currency than the book. Movies do that.
Wag the Dog
became an international byword for fake wars staged to distract from domestic political problems. Without a doubt, it raised the level of cynicism, which is to say it raised the level of awareness that real events are directed and staged for their political impact.

Did that awaken our media and make them sharper in their questions and evaluations? Did it shame our leaders and make them hesitate before making clearly bogus claims and unsupportable allegations? Did that raise the level of our national dialogue?

The answer to all three questions is a resounding, “No!”

In the ten years since the book and the seven years since the film the gullibility and credulity of the media have only grown. The current president, George Bush the Younger, or the Lesser, called the 9/11 terrorists “cowards.” Bill Maher, on a program called
Politically Incorrect
said “lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building—say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.” Maher was fired and the program was terminated. Some portion of the media should have risen up in outrage, not necessarily to defend Maher and get him his job back, but in defense of speaking the truth. They did not.

That silence signaled to all concerned that other more dangerous fictions would be allowed to stand unchallenged: “they hate us because of our freedoms,” that Saddam Hussein was connected to the 9/11 terrorists, that he had weapons of mass destruction and if we waited for certainty “the smoking gun” might be “a mushroom cloud,” to name but a few. And that there would never, ever be any serious debate on what a War on Terror would consist of or should consist of.

I read this book for the first time in almost ten years to prepare this introduction. On one level I am pleased to see that it holds up. On another level, I was appalled. I found myself wondering if the current administration had read it and used it as an instruction manual.

On the way to scripting Gulf War I, the novel has the director considering other wars. One of them is:

First there was a book.

Then there was a war.

The War on Terror that you watched on TV today is about fiction as reality.

H
E BELIEVED THAT
he was Machiavelli incarnate. Political theoretician. Master intriguer. The most clever and the most ruthless man in the empire.

It was certainly true that it was an empire. In many ways the greatest the world had ever known though there was a prohibition against saying so in polite political society. In any case, it so far exceeded the sort of minor realm ruled by the Borgias, the meager reach of the Medici, the influence of any Italian city-state, that any such comparison was like comparing an elephant to an ant. It could only be compared, de facto, no matter what political-speak required people to say, to Rome when Rome was the very definition of empire.

And he was the kingmaker. The king might be crownless, but he was still the first in the land, armies at his command, billions to dispense, the power to create wealth or destroy life. The dreamer on the bed was the man who was advisor to the king. Which, in point of fact, was better than Master Niccolò Machiavelli, the man himself, had ever actually done.
¹

Although he was delirious—the effects of deadly disease, powerful drugs both violent and soporific, and fear: death was, after
all, imminent and known to be imminent—there was nothing untrue about his thoughts. Though perhaps highly colored, a fancy-dress version of reality, they were verifiable, accurate, real. He would have had, and would have been entitled to have had, the exact same thoughts at home, healthy, surrounded by family, friends, sycophants, connivers, special pleaders, intriguers, followers, imitators, wannabes, power merchants, billionaires, at an all-American Fourth-of-July-type barbecue—chicken and ribs and watermelon, booze on ice and beer in the bucket.

“He's sleeping,” the nurse said softly. She was not a pretty nurse, but she was very clean and she was white. “He may wake soon.”