Posted on 13-3-2003
Democracy
First Victim Of Terrorism
by Edward Said* Published on Saturday, March 8, 2003 by the
Al-Ahram Weekly
Ed. note: PlaNet TV's next programme aims to do for New Zealand
what Edward Said is trying to do for the USA, point out that
Democracy is already a victim of the current manipulated climate
of fear, only informed and active individuals can bring
it back to life.
The Bush administration's relentless unilateral march towards
war is profoundly disturbing for many reasons, but so far as
American citizens are concerned the whole grotesque show is
a tremendous failure in democracy. An immensely wealthy an powerful
republic has been hijacked by a small cabal of individuals,
all of them unelected and therefore unresponsive to public pressure,
and simply turned on its head. It is no exaggeration to say
that this war is the most unpopular in modern history. Before
the war has begun there have been more people protesting it
in this country alone than was the case at the height of the
anti- Vietnam war demonstrations during the 60s and 70s. Note
also that those rallies took place after the war had been going
on for several years: this one has yet to begin, even though
a large number of overtly aggressive and belligerent steps have
already been taken by the US and its loyal puppy, the UK government
of the increasingly ridiculous Tony Blair.
I have been criticized recently for my anti-war position by
illiterates who claim that what I say is an implied defense
of Saddam Hussein and his appalling regime. To my Kuwaiti critics,
do I need to remind them that I publicly opposed Ba'athi Iraq
during the only visit I made to Kuwait in 1985, when in an open
conversation with the then Minister of Education Hassan Al-Ibrahim
I accused him and his regime of aiding and abetting Arab fascism
in their financial support of Saddam Hussein? I was told then
that Kuwait was proud to have committed billions of dollars
to Saddam's war against "the Persians", as they were
then contemptuously called, and that it was a more important
struggle than someone like me could comprehend. I remember clearly
warning those Kuwaiti acolytes of Saddam Hussein about him and
his ill will against Kuwait, but to no avail. I have been a
public opponent of the Iraqi regime since it came to power in
the 70s: I never visited the place, never was fooled by its
claims to secularism and modernization (even when many of my
contemporaries either worked for or celebrated Iraq as the main
gun in the Arab arsenal against Zionism, a stupid idea, I thought),
never concealed my contempt for its methods of rule and fascist
behavior. And now when I speak my mind about the ridiculous
posturing of certain members of the Iraqi opposition as hapless
strutting tools of US imperialism, I am told that I know nothing
about life without democracy (about which more later), and am
therefore unable to appreciate their nobility of soul. Little
notice is taken of the fact that barely a week after extolling
President Bush's commitment to democracy Professor Makiya is
now denouncing the US and its plans for a post-Saddam military-Ba'athi
government in Iraq. When individuals get in the habit of switching
the gods whom they worship politically there's no end to the
number of changes they make before they finally come to rest
in utter disgrace and well deserved oblivion.
But to return to the US and its current actions. In all my encounters
and travels I have yet to meet a person who is for the war.
Even worse, most Americans now feel that this mobilization has
already gone too far to stop, and that we are on the verge of
a disaster for the country. Consider first of all that the Democratic
Party, with few exceptions, has simply gone over to the president's
side in a gutless display of false patriotism. Wherever you
look in the Congress there are the tell-tale signs either of
the Zionist lobby, the right-wing Christians, or the military-industrial
complex, three inordinately influential minority groups who
share hostility to the Arab world, unbridled support for extremist
Zionism, and an insensate conviction that they are on the side
of the angels. Every one of the 500 congressional districts
in this country has a defense industry in it, so that war has
been turned into a matter of jobs, not of security. But, one
might well ask, how does running an unbelievably expensive war
remedy, for instance, economic recession, the almost certain
bankruptcy of the social security system, a mounting national
debt, and a massive failure in public education? Demonstrations
are looked at simply as a kind of degraded mob action, while
the most hypocritical lies pass for absolute truth, without
criticism and without objection.
The media has simply become a branch of the war effort. What
has entirely disappeared from television is anything remotely
resembling a consistently dissenting voice. Every major channel
now employs retired generals, former CIA agents, terrorism experts
and known neoconservatives as "consultants" who speak
a revolting jargon designed to sound authoritative but in effect
supporting everything done by the US, from the UN to the sands
of Arabia. Only one major daily newspaper (in Baltimore) has
published anything about US eavesdropping, telephone tapping
and message interception of the six small countries that are
members of the Security Council and whose votes are undecided.
There are no antiwar voices to read or hear in any of the major
medias of this country, no Arabs or Muslims (who have been consigned
en masse to the ranks of the fanatics and terrorists of this
world), no critics of Israel, not on Public Broadcasting, not
in The New York Times, the New Yorker, US News and World Report,
CNN and the rest. When these organizations mention Iraq's flouting
of 17 UN resolutions as a pretext for war, the 64 resolutions
flouted by Israel (with US support) are never mentioned. Nor
is the enormous human suffering of the Iraqi people during the
past 12 years mentioned. Whatever the dreaded Saddam has done
Israel and Sharon have also done with American support, yet
no one says anything about the latter while fulminating about
the former. This makes a total mockery of taunts by Bush and
others that the UN should abide by its own resolutions.
The American people have thus been deliberately lied to, their
interests cynically misrepresented and misreported, the real
aims and intentions of this private war of Bush the son and
his junta concealed with complete arrogance. Never mind that
Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle, all of them unelected officials
who work for unelected Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, have
for some time openly advocated Israeli annexation of the West
Bank and Gaza and the cessation of the Oslo process, have called
for war against Iraq (and later Iran), and the building of more
illegal Israeli settlements in their capacity (during Netanyahu's
successful campaign for prime minister in 1996) as private consultants
to him, and that that has become US policy now.
Never mind that Israel's iniquitous policies against Palestinians,
which are reported only at the ends of articles (when they are
reported at all) as so many miscellaneous civilian deaths, are
never compared with Saddam's crimes, which they match or in
some cases exceed, all of them, in the final analysis, paid
for by the US taxpayer without consultation or approval. Over
40,000 Palestinians have been wounded seriously in the last
two years, and about 2,500 killed wantonly by Israeli soldiers
who are instructed to humiliate and punish an entire people
during what has become the longest military occupation in modern
history.
Never mind that not a single critical Arab or Muslim voice has
been seen or heard on the major American media, liberal, moderate,
or reactionary, with any regularity at all since the preparations
for war have gone into their final phase. Consider also that
none of the major planners of this war, certainly not the so-called
experts like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, neither of whom
has so much as lived in or come near the Arab world in decades,
nor the military and political people like Powell, Rice, Cheney,
or the great god Bush himself, know anything about the Muslim
or Arab worlds beyond what they see through Israeli or oil company
or military lenses, and therefore have no idea what a war of
this magnitude against Iraq will produce for the people actually
living there.
And consider too the sheer, unadorned hubris of men like Wolfowitz
and his assistants. Asked to testify to a largely somnolent
Congress about the war's consequences and costs they are allowed
to escape without giving any concrete answers, which effectively
dismisses the evidence of the army chief of staff who has spoken
of a military occupation force of 400,000 troops for 10 years
at a cost of almost a trillion dollars.
Democracy traduced and betrayed, democracy celebrated but in
fact humiliated and trampled on by a tiny group of men who have
simply taken charge of this republic as if it were nothing more
than, what, an Arab country? It is right to ask who is in charge
since clearly the people of the United States are not properly
represented by the war this administration is about to loose
on a world already beleaguered by too much misery and poverty
to endure more. And Americans have been badly served by a media
controlled essentially by a tiny group of men who edit out anything
that might cause the government the slightest concern or worry.
As for the demagogues and servile intellectuals who talk about
war from the privacy of their fantasy worlds, who gave them
the right to connive in the immiseration of millions of people
whose major crime seems to be that they are Muslims and Arabs?
What American, except for this small unrepresentative group,is
seriously interested in increasing the world's already ample
stores of anti-Americanism? Hardly any I would suppose.
* Professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia
University, New York
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