“I realized how little understanding any of us had of what was actually going on at the time,” Vidal wrote in 1995. “We had been carefully conditioned to believe that the gallant, lonely usa was, on every side, beleaguered by the Soviet Union, a monolithic Omnipotency; we now know that they were weak and reactive while we were strong and provocative. Once Jack had inherited the make-believe war against communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular, he proceeded, unknown to all but a few, to change the rules of the game. He was about to turn Truman’s pseudo-war into a real war.”
With the Cold War and Kennedy mythologies now shattered in his own mind, Vidal began breaking the limits of what American media, particularly television, defined as acceptable criticism.
In a piece on Timothy McVeigh, published in September 2001 by Vanity Fair, Vidal explored the American Patriot movement. He insisted that the Oklahoma bomber could not be written off as an evil madman, arguing instead that big government and big business indeed extended their influence too far into people’s lives. Vidal condemned the bombings, but expressed some sympathy for McVeigh’s willingness to sacrifice his life for his beliefs. He was subsequently denounced for his views. A Salon artical accused him of having “gone postal.”
After 9 /11, he was increasingly marginalized by the U.S. media. Vanity Fair, long a favoured home for Vidal’s essays, pulled a piece he wrote in the weeks following the attacks. In it, he asserted that fifty years of imperial U.S. foreign policy contributed to the attack on the World Trade Center. It was later published in a book of essays in Italy, and eventually became part of an American bestseller titled Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got To Be So Hated.
In Dreaming War: Blood For Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, and in his most recent collection of essays, Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, Vidal elaborates on his critique of the National Security State. As with McVeigh, he argues that we cannot write off Osama bin Laden as an evil fanatic. We must understand the alienation that created al Qaeda.
He also suggested that the Bush administration might have knowingly allowed the terrorist attacks to take place to gain political advantage, both domestically and internationally. Writing before the war in Iraq, he theorized one motive might have been to overthrow the Taliban to secure a contract for a U.S.-built oil pipeline.
For such heresy, Vidal has been denounced as a conspiracy theorist, and even, cryptically, compared to believers in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It’s now around 3 a.m., and we are the last ones in the bar. Vidal is getting angry. “I’ve been accused of saying Bush organized a grand conspiracy to bring about the attacks. I’ve never said that.” But he clearly believes the White House might have been able to prevent the attacks if they had wanted to, and he believes they didn’t want to. “What else is one to think? And there is no question they used 9 /11 as a false pretext to attack Iraq.”
We part company around 4 a.m. I’m ready for sleep; Vidal looks like he could talk all night. The next day, I return to the villa. Vidal is reading a newspaper, leaning back on a couch so deep it’s impossible to sit up straight.
As he plans his final return to the U.S. to join the battle against Bush, he is uncertain of his reception and doubtful of his abilities. And this time, there’s no Howard in his corner. “How important is this election? ” I ask him.
