Dreaming War: Blood For Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta – Gore Vidal

Dreaming War: Blood For Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta – Gore Vidal, Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002, 197pp. (S) ***

If there is anyone who can claim vindication, surely it is Gore Vidal. In Dreaming War, he comes out swinging as in the following, written in January 2001:

“What will the next four years bring? . . . With bad luck (and adventures), Chancellor Cheney will rule. A former secretary of defense, he has said that too little money now goes to the Pentagon. Even though last year it received 51 percent of the discretionary budget. Expect a small war or two in order to keep military appropriations flowing. There will also be tax relief for the very rich. . . . The military – Cheney, Powell, et al. – will be calling the tune, and the whole nation will be on constant alert, for, James Baker has already warned us, Terrorism is everywhere on the march. We can not be too vigilant.”(p.7-8)

Clearly Vidal has hit the nail squarely on the head. It is too bad then that he only sticks with his post 9/11/01 analysis fro only a third of what he calls his “pamphlet.” The rest he fills with his historical musings of the post World War II national security state. He devotes much of his attention to challenging what he calls three myths of RO (received opinion) that include: 1) Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack, 2) the dropping of the atomic bombs was necessary in forcing Japan to concede, and 3) Stalin was the aggressor in Eastern Europe at the end of WW II. Later he analyzes the role of an expanded NATO into Eastern Europe in the 1990s. As always, there’s plenty of the wry, sardonic wit, which borders on the outright cynical, leading some readers to perhaps find some of Vidal’s style off putting or tedious. Like him or not, his is a voice that can not be ignored, especially given the accuracy of some of his prognostications. At one point Vidal claims simply that “[Bush] will leave office the most unpopular president in history.”(p.142) We can only hope that should that day come, he won’t be leaving behind the most hated nation in history.