Posted on 19-5-2003
Instant-Mix
Imperial Democracy
By Arundhati Roy, presented in New York City at The Riverside
Church May
13, 2003
In these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the
speed at which
our freedoms are being snatched from us, and when few can afford
the luxury
of retreating from the streets for a while in order to return
with an
exquisite, fully formed political thesis replete with footnotes
and
references, what profound gift can I offer you tonight?
As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our
brains by
satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the move. We
enter histories
through the rubble of war. Ruined cities, parched fields, shrinking
forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Craters left by
daisy cutters,
our libraries.
So what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts
about money,
war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit around
my brain
like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake at night.
Some of you will think it bad manners for a person like me,
officially
entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an "Indian citizen,"
to come
here and criticize the U.S. government. Speaking for myself,
I'm no
flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality,
and
hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But
when a
country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire,
then the scale
of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight
I speak
as a subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who
presumes to
criticize her king.
Since lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called:
Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free).
Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes,
a missile
cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down
an Iranian
airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the
First, who was
at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment
on the
incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize for
the United
States. I don't care what the facts are."
I don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the
New American
Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more
apposite: The
facts can be whatever we want them to be.
When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News
survey
estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that
Saddam
Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks
on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said
that 55
percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported
Al
Qaida. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there
isn't any).
All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion, and outright
lies
circulated by the U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the
"Free
Press," that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy
rests.
Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded
on a
multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by
the U.S.
government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.
Apart from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaida, we
had the
manufactured frenzy about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction.
George Bush
the Lesser went to the extent of saying it would be "suicidal"
for the U.S.
not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that
a starved,
bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America.
(Iraq
was only the latest in a succession of countries - earlier there
was Cuba,
Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, and Panama.) But this time it wasn't
just your
ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was Frenzy
with a
Purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the
Doctrine of
Pre-emptive Strike, a.k.a. The United States Can Do Whatever
The Hell It
Wants, And That's Official.
The war against Iraq has been fought and won and no Weapons
of Mass
Destruction have been found. Not even a little one. Perhaps
they'll have to
be planted before they're discovered. And then, the more troublesome
amongst us will need an explanation for why Saddam Hussein didn't
use them
when his country was being invaded.
Of course, there'll be no answers. True Believers will make
do with those
fuzzy TV reports about the discovery of a few barrels of banned
chemicals
in an old shed. There seems to be no consensus yet about whether
they're
really chemicals, whether they're actually banned and whether
the vessels
they're contained in can technically be called barrels. (There
were
unconfirmed rumours that a teaspoonful of potassium permanganate
and an old
harmonica were found there too.)
Meanwhile, in passing, an ancient civilization has been casually
decimated
by a very recent, casually brutal nation.
Then there are those who say, so what if Iraq had no chemical
and nuclear
weapons? So what if there is no Al Qaida connection? So what
if Osama bin
Laden hates Saddam Hussein as much as he hates the United States?
Bush the
Lesser has said Saddam Hussein was a "Homicidal Dictator." And
so, the
reasoning goes, Iraq needed a "regime change."
Never mind that forty years ago, the CIA, under President John
F. Kennedy,
orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad. In 1963, after a successful
coup,
the Ba'ath party came to power in Iraq. Using lists provided
by the CIA,
the new Ba'ath regime systematically eliminated hundreds of
doctors,
teachers, lawyers, and political figures known to be leftists.
An entire
intellectual community was slaughtered. (The same technique
was used to
massacre hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia and East
Timor.) The
young Saddam Hussein was said to have had a hand in supervising
the
bloodbath. In 1979, after factional infighting within the Ba'ath
Party,
Saddam Hussein became the President of Iraq. In April 1980,
while he was
massacring Shias, the U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinksi
declared, "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests
between the
United States and Iraq." Washington and London overtly and covertly
supported Saddam Hussein. They financed him, equipped him, armed
him, and
provided him with dual-use materials to manufacture weapons
of mass
destruction. They supported his worst excesses financially,
materially, and
morally. They supported the eight-year war against Iran and
the 1988
gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which 14 years
later were
re-heated and served up as reasons to justify invading Iraq.
After the
first Gulf War, the "Allies" fomented an uprising of Shias in
Basra and
then looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and
slaughtered
thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal.
The point is, if Saddam Hussein was evil enough to merit the
most
elaborate, openly declared assassination attempt in history
(the opening
move of Operation Shock and Awe), then surely those who supported
him ought
at least to be tried for war crimes? Why aren't the faces of
U.S. and U.K.
government officials on the infamous pack of cards of wanted
men and women?
Because when it comes to Empire, facts don't matter.
Yes, but all that's in the past we're told. Saddam Hussein is
a monster who
must be stopped now. And only the U.S. can stop him. It's an
effective
technique, this use of the urgent morality of the present to
obscure the
diabolical sins of the past and the malevolent plans for the
future.
Indonesia, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan - the list goes
on and on.
Right now there are brutal regimes being groomed for the future
- Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, the Central Asian Republics.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently declared that U.S.
freedoms
are "not the grant of any government or document, but….our endowment
from
God." (Why bother with the United Nations when God himself is
on hand?)
So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an
Empire armed
with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most
formidable
arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we
are, confronted
with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go
to war at
will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies,
from
religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by
the age-old,
tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the
move, and
Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered
to your
doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people
to pay for the
privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial
Democracy
(bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb).
But then perhaps chinks, negroes, dinks, gooks, and wogs don't
really
qualify as real people. Perhaps our deaths don't qualify as
real deaths.
Our histories don't qualify as history. They never have.
Speaking of history, in these past months, while the world watched,
the
U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was broadcast on live TV.
Like Osama
bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the regime of Saddam
Hussein
simply disappeared. This was followed by what analysts called
a "power
vacuum." Cities that had been under siege, without food, water,
and
electricity for days, cities that had been bombed relentlessly,
people who
had been starved and systematically impoverished by the UN sanctions
regime
for more than a decade, were suddenly left with no semblance
of urban
administration. A seven-thousand-year-old civilization slid
into anarchy.
On live TV.
Vandals plundered shops, offices, hotels, and hospitals. American
and
British soldiers stood by and watched. They said they had no
orders to act.
In effect, they had orders to kill people, but not to protect
them. Their
priorities were clear. The safety and security of Iraqi people
was not
their business. The security of whatever little remained of
Iraq's
infrastructure was not their business. But the security and
safety of
Iraq's oil fields were. Of course they were. The oil fields
were "secured"
almost before the invasion began.
On CNN and BBC the scenes of the rampage were played and replayed.
TV
commentators, army and government spokespersons portrayed it
as a
"liberated people" venting their rage at a despotic regime.
U.S. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "It's untidy. Freedom's untidy
and free
people are free to commit crimes and make mistakes and do bad
things." Did
anybody know that Donald Rumsfeld was an anarchist? I wonder
- did he hold
the same view during the riots in Los Angeles following the
beating of
Rodney King? Would he care to share his thesis about the Untidiness
of
Freedom with the two million people being held in U.S. prisons
right now?
(The world's "freest" country has the highest number of prisoners
in the
world.) Would he discuss its merits with young African American
men, 28
percent of whom will spend some part of their adult lives in
jail? Could he
explain why he serves under a president who oversaw 152 executions
when he
was governor of Texas?
Before the war on Iraq began, the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian
Assistance (ORHA) sent the Pentagon a list of 16 crucial sites
to protect.
The National Museum was second on that list. Yet the Museum
was not just
looted, it was desecrated. It was a repository of an ancient
cultural
heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of the river valley
of
Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew along the banks of the
Tigris and
the Euphrates produced the world's first writing, first calendar,
first
library, first city, and, yes, the world's first democracy.
King Hammurabi
of Babylon was the first to codify laws governing the social
life of
citizens. It was a code in which abandoned women, prostitutes,
slaves, and
even animals had rights. The Hammurabi code is acknowledged
not just as the
birth of legality, but the beginning of an understanding of
the concept of
social justice. The U.S. government could not have chosen a
more
inappropriate land in which to stage its illegal war and display
its
grotesque disregard for justice.
At a Pentagon briefing during the days of looting, Secretary
Rumsfeld,
Prince of Darkness, turned on his media cohorts who had served
him so
loyally through the war. "The images you are seeing on television,
you are
seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture, of
some person
walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty
times and
you say, 'My god, were there that many vases? Is it possible
that there
were that many vases in the whole country?'"
Laughter rippled through the press room. Would it be alright
for the poor
of Harlem to loot the Metropolitan Museum? Would it be greeted
with similar
mirth?
The last building on the ORHA list of 16 sites to be protected
was the
Ministry of Oil. It was the only one that was given protection.
Perhaps the
occupying army thought that in Muslim countries lists are read
upside down?
Television tells us that Iraq has been "liberated" and that
Afghanistan is
well on its way to becoming a paradise for women-thanks to Bush
and Blair,
the 21st century's leading feminists. In reality, Iraq's infrastructure
has
been destroyed. Its people brought to the brink of starvation.
Its food
stocks depleted. And its cities devastated by a complete administrative
breakdown. Iraq is being ushered in the direction of a civil
war between
Shias and Sunnis. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has lapsed back into
the
pre-Taliban era of anarchy, and its territory has been carved
up into
fiefdoms by hostile warlords.
Undaunted by all this, on the 2nd of May Bush the Lesser launched
his 2004
campaign hoping to be finally elected U.S. President. In what
probably
constitutes the shortest flight in history, a military jet landed
on an
aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which was so close
to shore
that, according to the Associated Press, administration officials
acknowledged "positioning the massive ship to provide the best
TV angle for
Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the
San Diego
coastline." President Bush, who never served his term in the
military,
emerged from the cockpit in fancy dress - a U.S. military bomber
jacket,
combat boots, flying goggles, helmet. Waving to his cheering
troops, he
officially proclaimed victory over Iraq. He was careful to say
that it was
"just one victory in a war on terror … [which] still goes on."
It was important to avoid making a straightforward victory announcement,
because under the Geneva Convention a victorious army is bound
by the legal
obligations of an occupying force, a responsibility that the
Bush
administration does not want to burden itself with. Also, closer
to the
2004 elections, in order to woo wavering voters, another victory
in the
"War on Terror" might become necessary. Syria is being fattened
for the kill.
It was Herman Goering, that old Nazi, who said, "People can
always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders.… All you have to do is
tell them
they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack
of patriotism
and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in
any country."
He's right. It's dead easy. That's what the Bush regime banks
on. The
distinction between election campaigns and war, between democracy
and
oligarchy, seems to be closing fast.
The only caveat in these campaign wars is that U.S. lives must
not be lost.
It shakes voter confidence. But the problem of U.S. soldiers
being killed
in combat has been licked. More or less.
At a media briefing before Operation Shock and Awe was unleashed,
General
Tommy Franks announced, "This campaign will be like no other
in history."
Maybe he's right.
I'm no military historian, but when was the last time a war
was fought like
this?
After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions
and
weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its
knees, its
people starved, half a million children dead, its infrastructure
severely
damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons had been
destroyed, in
an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history,
the
"Coalition of the Willing" (better known as the Coalition of
the Bullied
and Bought) - sent in an invading army!
Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It was more like
Operation Let's
Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees.
As soon as the war began, the governments of France, Germany,
and Russia,
which refused to allow a final resolution legitimizing the war
to be passed
in the UN Security Council, fell over each other to say how
much they
wanted the United States to win. President Jacques Chirac offered
French
airspace to the Anglo-American air force. U.S. military bases
in Germany
were open for business. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
publicly
hoped for the "rapid collapse" of the Saddam Hussein regime.
Vladimir Putin
publicly hoped for the same. These are governments that colluded
in the
enforced disarming of Iraq before their dastardly rush to take
the side of
those who attacked it. Apart from hoping to share the spoils,
they hoped
Empire would honor their pre-war oil contracts with Iraq. Only
the very
naïve could expect old Imperialists to behave otherwise.
Leaving aside the cheap thrills and the lofty moral speeches
made in the UN
during the run up to the war, eventually, at the moment of crisis,
the
unity of Western governments - despite the opposition from the
majority of
their people - was overwhelming.
When the Turkish government temporarily bowed to the views of
90 percent of
its population, and turned down the U.S. government's offer
of billions of
dollars of blood money for the use of Turkish soil, it was accused
of
lacking "democratic principles." According to a Gallup International
poll,
in no European country was support for a war carried out "unilaterally
by
America and its allies" higher than 11 percent. But the governments
of
England, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and other countries of Eastern
Europe were
praised for disregarding the views of the majority of their
people and
supporting the illegal invasion. That, presumably, was fully
in keeping
with democratic principles. What's it called? New Democracy?
(Like
Britain's New Labour?)
In stark contrast to the venality displayed by their governments,
on the
15th of February, weeks before the invasion, in the most spectacular
display of public morality the world has ever seen, more than
10 million
people marched against the war on 5 continents. Many of you,
I'm sure, were
among them. They - we - were disregarded with utter disdain.
When asked to
react to the anti-war demonstrations, President Bush said, "It's
like
deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus
group. The
role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security,
in this case
the security of the people."
Democracy, the modern world's holy cow, is in crisis. And the
crisis is a
profound one. Every kind of outrage is being committed in the
name of
democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a pretty
shell,
emptied of all content or meaning. It can be whatever you want
it to be.
Democracy is the Free World's whore, willing to dress up, dress
down,
willing to satisfy a whole range of taste, available to be used
and abused
at will.
Until quite recently, right up to the 1980's, democracy did
seem as though
it might actually succeed in delivering a degree of real social
justice.
But modern democracies have been around for long enough for
neo-liberal
capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered
the technique
of infiltrating the instruments of democracy - the "independent"
judiciary,
the "free" press, the parliament - and molding them to their
purpose. The
project of corporate globalization has cracked the code. Free
elections, a
free press, and an independent judiciary mean little when the
free market
has reduced them to commodities on sale to the highest bidder.
To fully comprehend the extent to which Democracy is under siege,
it might
be an idea to look at what goes on in some of our contemporary
democracies.
The World's Largest: India, (which I have written about at some
length and
therefore will not speak about tonight). The World's Most Interesting:
South Africa. The world's most powerful: the U.S.A. And, most
instructive
of all, the plans that are being made to usher in the world's
newest: Iraq.
In South Africa, after 300 years of brutal domination of the
black majority
by a white minority through colonialism and apartheid, a non-racial,
multi-party democracy came to power in 1994. It was a phenomenal
achievement. Within two years of coming to power, the African
National
Congress had genuflected with no caveats to the Market God.
Its massive
program of structural adjustment, privatization, and liberalization
has
only increased the hideous disparities between the rich and
the poor. More
than a million people have lost their jobs. The corporatization
of basic
services - electricity, water, and housing-has meant that 10
million South
Africans, almost a quarter of the population, have been disconnected
from
water and electricity. 2 million have been evicted from their
homes.
Meanwhile, a small white minority that has been historically
privileged by
centuries of brutal exploitation is more secure than ever before.
They
continue to control the land, the farms, the factories, and
the abundant
natural resources of that country. For them the transition from
apartheid
to neo-liberalism barely disturbed the grass. It's apartheid
with a clean
conscience. And it goes by the name of Democracy.
Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism.
In countries of the first world, too, the machinery of democracy
has been
effectively subverted. Politicians, media barons, judges, powerful
corporate lobbies, and government officials are imbricated in
an elaborate
underhand configuration that completely undermines the lateral
arrangement
of checks and balances between the constitution, courts of law,
parliament,
the administration and, perhaps most important of all, the independent
media that form the structural basis of a parliamentary democracy.
Increasingly, the imbrication is neither subtle nor elaborate.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for instance, has
a controlling
interest in major Italian newspapers, magazines, television
channels, and
publishing houses. The Financial Times reported that he controls
about 90
percent of Italy's TV viewership. Recently, during a trial on
bribery
charges, while insisting he was the only person who could save
Italy from
the left, he said, "How much longer do I have to keep living
this life of
sacrifices?" That bodes ill for the remaining 10 percent of
Italy's TV
viewership. What price Free Speech? Free Speech for whom?
In the United States, the arrangement is more complex. Clear
Channel
Worldwide Incorporated is the largest radio station owner in
the country.
It runs more than 1,200 channels, which together account for
9 percent of
the market. Its CEO contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars
to Bush's
election campaign. When hundreds of thousands of American citizens
took to
the streets to protest against the war on Iraq, Clear Channel
organized
pro-war patriotic "Rallies for America" across the country.
It used its
radio stations to advertise the events and then sent correspondents
to
cover them as though they were breaking news. The era of manufacturing
consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon
media
newsrooms will drop the pretense, and start hiring theatre directors
instead of journalists.
As America's show business gets more and more violent and war-like,
and
America's wars get more and more like show business, some interesting
cross-overs are taking place. The designer who built the 250,000
dollar set
in Qatar from which General Tommy Franks stage-managed news
coverage of
Operation Shock and Awe also built sets for Disney, MGM, and
"Good Morning
America."
It is a cruel irony that the U.S., which has the most ardent,
vociferous
defenders of the idea of Free Speech, and (until recently) the
most
elaborate legislation to protect it, has so circumscribed the
space in
which that freedom can be expressed. In a strange, convoluted
way, the
sound and fury that accompanies the legal and conceptual defense
of Free
Speech in America serves to mask the process of the rapid erosion
of the
possibilities of actually exercising that freedom.
The news and entertainment industry in the U.S. is for the most
part
controlled by a few major corporations - AOL-Time Warner, Disney,
Viacom,
News Corporation. Each of these corporations owns and controls
TV stations,
film studios, record companies, and publishing ventures. Effectively,
the
exits are sealed.
America's media empire is controlled by a tiny coterie of people.
Chairman
of the Federal Communications Commission Michael Powell, the
son of
Secretary of State Colin Powell, has proposed even further deregulation
of
the communication industry, which will lead to even greater
consolidation.
So here it is - the World's Greatest Democracy, led by a man
who was not
legally elected. America's Supreme Court gifted him his job.
What price
have American people paid for this spurious presidency?
In the three years of George Bush the Lesser's term, the American
economy
has lost more than two million jobs. Outlandish military expenses,
corporate welfare, and tax giveaways to the rich have created
a financial
crisis for the U.S. educational system. According to a survey
by the
National Council of State Legislatures, U.S. states cut 49 billion
dollars
in public services, health, welfare benefits, and education
in 2002. They
plan to cut another 25.7 billion dollars this year. That makes
a total of
75 billion dollars. Bush's initial budget request to Congress
to finance
the war in Iraq was 80 billion dollars.
So who's paying for the war? America's poor. Its students, its
unemployed,
its single mothers, its hospital and home-care patients, its
teachers, and
health workers.
And who's actually fighting the war?
Once again, America's poor. The soldiers who are baking in Iraq's
desert
sun are not the children of the rich. Only one of all the representatives
in the House of Representatives and the Senate has a child fighting
in
Iraq. America's "volunteer" army in fact depends on a poverty
draft of poor
whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians looking for a way to earn
a living and
get an education. Federal statistics show that African Americans
make up 21
percent of the total armed forces and 29 percent of the U.S.
army. They
count for only 12 percent of the general population. It's ironic,
isn't it
- the disproportionately high representation of African Americans
in the
army and prison? Perhaps we should take a positive view, and
look at this
as affirmative action at its most effective. Nearly 4 million
Americans (2
percent of the population) have lost the right to vote because
of felony
convictions. Of that number, 1.4 million are African Americans,
which means
that 13 percent of all voting-age Black people have been disenfranchised.
For African Americans there's also affirmative action in death.
A study by
the economist Amartya Sen shows that African Americans as a
group have a
lower life expectancy than people born in China, in the Indian
State of
Kerala (where I come from), Sri Lanka, or Costa Rica. Bangladeshi
men have
a better chance of making it to the age of forty than African
American men
from here in Harlem.
This year, on what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
74th
birthday, President Bush denounced the University of Michigan's
affirmative
action program favouring Blacks and Latinos. He called it "divisive,"
"unfair," and "unconstitutional." The successful effort to keep
Blacks off
the voting rolls in the State of Florida in order that George
Bush be
elected was of course neither unfair nor unconstitutional. I
don't suppose
affirmative action for White Boys From Yale ever is.
So we know who's paying for the war. We know who's fighting
it. But who
will benefit from it? Who is homing in on the reconstruction
contracts
estimated to be worth up to one hundred billon dollars? Could
it be
America's poor and unemployed and sick? Could it be America's
single
mothers? Or America's Black and Latino minorities?
Operation Iraqi Freedom, George Bush assures us, is about returning
Iraqi
oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the
Iraqi people
via Corporate Multinationals. Like Bechtel, like Chevron, like
Halliburton.
Once again, it is a small, tight circle that connects corporate,
military,
and government leadership to one another. The promiscuousness,
the
cross-pollination is outrageous.
Consider this: the Defense Policy Board is a government-appointed
group
that advises the Pentagon. Its members are appointed by the
under secretary
of defense and approved by Donald Rumsfeld. Its meetings are
classified. No
information is available for public scrutiny.
The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity found that
9 out of the 30
members of the Defense Policy Board are connected to companies
that were
awarded defense contracts worth 76 billion dollars between the
years 2001
and 2002. One of them, Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps
general, is a
senior vice president at Bechtel, the giant international engineering
outfit. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman, is on the President's
Export
Council. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is also
on the Board
of Directors of the Bechtel Group, is the chairman of the advisory
board of
the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. When asked by the
New York Times
whether he was concerned about the appearance of a conflict
of interest, he
said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit
from it. But if
there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that
could do it."
Bechtel has been awarded a 680 million dollar reconstruction
contract in
Iraq. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel
contributed
hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaign efforts.
Arcing across this subterfuge, dwarfing it by the sheer magnitude
of its
malevolence, is America's anti-terrorism legislation. The U.S.A.
Patriot
Act, passed in October 2001, has become the blueprint for similar
anti-terrorism bills in countries across the world. It was passed
in the
House of Representatives by a majority vote of 337 to 79. According
to the
New York Times, "Many lawmakers said it had been impossible
to truly debate
or even read the legislation."
The Patriot Act ushers in an era of systemic automated surveillance.
It
gives the government the authority to monitor phones and computers
and spy
on people in ways that would have seemed completely unacceptable
a few
years ago. It gives the FBI the power to seize all of the circulation,
purchasing, and other records of library users and bookstore
customers on
the suspicion that they are part of a terrorist network. It
blurs the
boundaries between speech and criminal activity creating the
space to
construe acts of civil disobedience as violating the law.
Already hundreds of people are being held indefinitely as "unlawful
combatants." (In India, the number is in the thousands. In Israel,
5,000
Palestinians are now being detained.) Non-citizens, of course,
have no
rights at all. They can simply be "disappeared" like the people
of Chile
under Washington's old ally, General Pinochet. More than 1,000
people, many
of them Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin, have been detained,
some
without access to legal representatives.
Apart from paying the actual economic costs of war, American
people are
paying for these wars of "liberation" with their own freedoms.
For the
ordinary American, the price of "New Democracy" in other countries
is the
death of real democracy at home.
Meanwhile, Iraq is being groomed for "liberation." (Or did they
mean
"liberalization" all along?) The Wall Street Journal reports
that "the Bush
administration has drafted sweeping plans to remake Iraq's economy
in the
U.S. image."
Iraq's constitution is being redrafted. Its trade laws, tax
laws, and
intellectual property laws rewritten in order to turn it into
an
American-style capitalist economy.
The United States Agency for International Development has invited
U.S.
companies to bid for contracts that range between road building,
water
systems, text book distribution, and cell phone networks.
Soon after Bush the Second announced that he wanted American
farmers to
feed the world, Dan Amstutz, a former senior executive of Cargill,
the
biggest grain exporter in the world, was put in charge of agricultural
reconstruction in Iraq. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director,
said,
"Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction
in Iraq is
like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission."
The two men who have been short-listed to run operations for
managing Iraqi
oil have worked with Shell, BP, and Fluor. Fluor is embroiled
in a lawsuit
by black South African workers who have accused the company
of exploiting
and brutalizing them during the apartheid era. Shell, of course,
is well
known for its devastation of the Ogoni tribal lands in Nigeria.
Tom Brokaw (one of America's best-known TV anchors) was inadvertently
succinct about the process. "One of the things we don't want
to do," he
said, "is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a
few days we're
going to own that country."
Now that the ownership deeds are being settled, Iraq is ready
for New
Democracy.
So, as Lenin used to ask: What Is To Be Done?
Well…
We might as well accept the fact that there is no conventional
military
force that can successfully challenge the American war machine.
Terrorist
strikes only give the U.S. Government an opportunity that it
is eagerly
awaiting to further tighten its stranglehold. Within days of
an attack you
can bet that Patriot II would be passed. To argue against U.S.
military
aggression by saying that it will increase the possibilities
of terrorist
strikes is futile. It's like threatening Brer Rabbit that you'll
throw him
into the bramble bush. Any one who has read the documents written
by The
Project for the New American Century can attest to that. The
government's
suppression of the Congressional committee report on September
11th, which
found that there was intelligence warning of the strikes that
was ignored,
also attests to the fact that, for all their posturing, the
terrorists and
the Bush regime might as well be working as a team. They both
hold people
responsible for the actions of their governments. They both
believe in the
doctrine of collective guilt and collective punishment. Their
actions
benefit each other greatly.
The U.S. government has already displayed in no uncertain terms
the range
and extent of its capability for paranoid aggression. In human
psychology,
paranoid aggression is usually an indicator of nervous insecurity.
It could
be argued that it's no different in the case of the psychology
of nations.
Empire is paranoid because it has a soft underbelly.
Its "homeland" may be defended by border patrols and nuclear
weapons, but
its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts
are
exposed and vulnerable. Already the Internet is buzzing with
elaborate
lists of American and British government products and companies
that should
be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets - Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds
-
government agencies like USAID, the British DFID, British and
American
banks, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, and American Express
could find
themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and refined
by
activists across the world. They could become a practical guide
that
directs the amorphous but growing fury in the world. Suddenly,
the
"inevitability" of the project of Corporate Globalization is
beginning to
seem more than a little evitable.
It would be naïve to imagine that we can directly confront Empire.
Our
strategy must be to isolate Empire's working parts and disable
them one by
one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant. We
could reverse
the idea of the economic sanctions imposed on poor countries
by Empire and
its Allies. We could impose a regime of Peoples' Sanctions on
every
corporate house that has been awarded with a contract in postwar
Iraq, just
as activists in this country and around the world targeted institutions
of
apartheid. Each one of them should be named, exposed, and boycotted.
Forced
out of business. That could be our response to the Shock and
Awe campaign.
It would be a great beginning.
Another urgent challenge is to expose the corporate media for
the boardroom
bulletin that it really is. We need to create a universe of
alternative
information. We need to support independent media like Democracy
Now!,
Alternative Radio, and South End Press.
The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one.
Our
freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were
wrested from
them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve
them is
called a revolution. It is a battle that must range across continents
and
countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries but,
if it is to
succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution
more
powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society.
The rest of us
are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless,
but you have
the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace
and the
Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out
in your name,
and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight.
Refuse to move
those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave
that flag.
Refuse the victory parade.
You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read
Howard Zinn's A
People's History of the United States to remind yourself of
this.
Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda
you
have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government.
In
the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States,
that's as
brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his
or her homeland.
If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but
in your
millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world.
And you
will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal,
safe instead
of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of
hated.
I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means
a great
nation. But you could be a great people.
History is giving you the chance.
Seize the time
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