Dear worzel,
The so-called war on terror is a project in which the administration of
George Bush, like that of Augustus Caesar two millennia ago, seeks by
military might to impose its idea of order on a world in transition.[1]
The idea of achieving peace through war is not new. What the Pax Americana
does offer by way of novelty relative to the Pax Romana is a vast but
subtle media apparatus that sells the virtues of the war to the public
on the same scale and with the same methods with which an automobile
manufacturer advertises its new model.
In ancient times, the true motives of the ruling class were kept obscure
by sheer physical distance from the peasantry. Today, when satellite
dishes and optical fibers penetrate the barriers of time and space,
secrets are not easily kept. Everyone's words can be intercepted in any
place and transmitted worldwide instantaneously. Hence the need for a new
terminology that rephrases vexatious ideas so as to make them palatable or
innocuous. The phrase "war on terror", while casting Bush's project as a
holy alliance against an immoral minority, is in fact an attempt to deploy
the resources of a single nation against an increasingly unruly majority.
Anti-terrorism [...] has become the animating principle of
nearly every aspect of American public policy. We have launched
two major military engagements in its name. It informs how we
fund scientific research, whose steel or textiles we buy, who
may enter or leave the country, and how we sort our mail.
Harper's: Luke Mitchell: A Run on Terror
http://harpers.org/ARunOnTerror.html
Global dissent against the American way of life has developed since the
end of the European colonial era in the middle of the 20th century, and
through the five decades of paternalistic American world leadership that
followed, into a serious threat against the old order. With the success
of the Southeast Asian market economies, a newly prospering India,
and an ascendant China, the balance of power is ineluctably tilting
toward the East.[2] In the meantime, the spiritual allegiance of the
world's poor has turned from the servility of aspiring materialism
to the fervor of religious fanaticism. In response, the American
military-industrial-political complex is making a stand against the
dissolution of its hegemony. The war on terror is an attempt in multiple
ways to assert or reassert American domination: economically, militarily,
and culturally.
The economic character of the war on terror is plain to see in the Bush
regime's choice of target for extraterritorial occupation. The invasion
of Afghanistan, a flinty piece of land with little economic value to
anyone but its inhabitants, was a warm-up act for the land, sea, and
air assault on Iraq. This country, the seat of Babylon and later of the
Islamic Caliphate, is now interesting to the West chiefly as a source
of petroleum. With its proven reserves of 115 billion barrels of oil,
the third largest in the world, Iraq is an attractive property for an
imperial power that seeks to shore up its energy supplies against the
energy demands of a resurgent Far East.[3] The fact that U.S. troops
failed to invade nations that look increasingly capable of wielding
nuclear terror, namely North Korea annd Iran, shows that the war is one
of convenience rather than principle.
The idea that oil is a factor in official thinking about Iraq
shouldn't even be controversial. Protecting oil supplies
from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait was an explicit -? though
disingenuously underemphasized -? reason for Bush War I. After
all, we couldn't claim to be fighting to restore democracy
to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, let alone Iraq. This time around,
the fact that Bush and Cheney are both oil men is suggestive,
but the implication is not clear. A war to topple Saddam will
raise oil prices in the short run but probably lower them in
the longer run by stabilizing the supply. An oil man could have
sincerely mixed feelings about these prospects. Surely, though,
even a sensible opponent of the war ought to register a steady
oil supply as one of the better reasons for it.
Slate: Michael Kinsley: What Bush Isn't Saying About Iraq
http://slate.com/id/2073093
The occupation of Middle Eastern oil fields in the name of a war an
terror is not only an effort to secure a flow of petroleum to American
industry but to deprive China, India, and Europe of the same. Although
Americans are eager to import manufactured goods produced inexpensively by
underpaid Oriental workers, the Bush regime is less eager to see foreign
powers spend the profits from these sales on rearmament and technological
improvement. In the case of Europe, depriving the former cold-war allies
France and Germany of rebuilding contracts is a punishment for their
unwillingness to march in lockstep with the American empire. The planes,
tanks, and bombs purchased for the armed forces are also a direct subsidy
to American arms industry.
Why does it matter to Americans if many in Europe, including
political and opinion leaders, see the United States veering
toward a kind of political isolation? Because the competition
that matters in the post-Cold War world is economic competition
-- and Europe remains a potential rival. According to figures
provided by the European Central Bank, the countries of the Euro
Zone last year accounted for 16.2 percent of the world's gross
domestic product. That's shy of the U.S. percentage of 21.9 --
but not by much.
Salon: Bush's Euro-skeptics
http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2001/04/06/europe/index.html?pn=1
Sometimes, a gun is just a gun. The introduction of an American armed
presence into the Middle East is not merely an economic gambit but a
stratagem in the straightforward military sense. With the cessation of
the Soviet threat and the consequent withdrawal from Western Europe
of American forces, the Pentagon must look elsewhere for an overseas
foothold from which to project its military power. The American military
presence in the Far East is also on the wane as Japan and South Korea
gain increasing self-confidence.[4] Thus, for the first time since the
Marines invaded Tripoli to halt the predations of the Barbary pirates,
the U.S. has raised its flag over Arab lands.[5]
Save that the loci of modern piracy in the Middle East are Riyadh and
Cairo rather than Baghdad. Indeed, Saddam was a client of the CIA who
assisted the U.S. in suppressing Islamic fundamentalism and enforcing a
secular if brutal rule over his people.[6] The conquest of Iraq serves
as an object lesson to those who are contemplating ingratitude toward the
U.S. and as a showcase for the might of the American war machine. It also
makes possible the establishment of permanent bases from which Bush and
his successors will be better able to prosecute their wars on whatever
real or imagined terrors may appear in future.
It takes a true demagogue to remorselessly cheapen the
lovely word "freedom" by deploying it twenty-seven times in
a twenty-one-minute speech, while never admitting that its
real-life creation is more complicated than cranking out a
batch of Pepsi-Cola and selling it to the natives with a catchy
"Feeling Free!" jingle.
The Nation: Robert Scheer: 1600 Pennsylvania Meets Madison Ave.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050207&s=scheer0125
When American soldiers march into town, they bring with them, in addition
to their gleaming machines of destruction, the comforts of their wealthy
civilization: refrigerators, microwave ovens, color televisions. The camp
followers of every army are the merchants who set up shop in the wake of
the invasion, selling their goods and looking to invest in joint ventures
with the locals. The projection of military might that appears to be
chief feature of the war on terror is a solid pretext for the extension
of American cultural hegemony over a fractious Middle East. The Bush
regime, alarmed at the staying power of the Iranian mullahs and the
radicalization of the Palestinian resistance movement, must have seen
that the emergence of Al Qaeda signified that the pleasures of American
consumer culture held little attraction for these fiery Middle Easterners.
The war on terror allows the U.S. to deliver a double whammy of American
influence to every nation with which it can plausibly pick a fight. First,
the iron fist: B-52 Stratofortresses, 15,000-pound daisy cutters, Joint
Direct Attack Munitions guided by the Global Positioning System. Next,
the velvet glove: carbonated beverages, Levi's loose-fit jeans, MTV
rap videos. The combined effect is formidable. It is quite explicitly a
goal of American foreign policy to impress upon the natives of foreign
localities the merits of a juvenile consumer-driven popular culture. It
is likely that if self-realization and financial fulfillment become more
important to Middle Eastern youth than Arab nationalism or religious
enlightenment, they will desist in their Jihad and turn their energies
to the worship of Mammon.
Bush's war on terror is an attempt -- poorly disguised but perhaps
not meant to be disguised, and vigorous but not necessarily fated to
be successful -- to impose American economic, military, and cultural
might on our world. It has been the longstanding project of the American
empire, as that of every empire, to do so. Before the trading ships of
Phoenicia came the war galleys. In the wake of the Roman legion came
Roman learning and law. In our age, American invasion is a prologue
to rampant materialism and cultural homogenization. It was inevitable
that this should have taken place within a decade or so of the Soviet
collapse. After spending half a century defending its values against
the encroachments, real and imagined, of global Communism, the American
culture of triumphalist materialism could only go on the offense. The
nefarious actions of a few Islamic zealots made it possible for Bush
to direct the imperial energies of the U.S. toward the Middle East. The
war on terror is a logical sequel to the cold war. Like other sequels,
it may not turn out quite so well as the original.
[1] History Guide: Lecture 12: Augustus Caesar and the Pax Romana
http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture12b.html
[2] BBC: Adam Brookes: US watches China warily
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4342527.stm
[3] Department of Energy: Country Analysis Briefs: Iraq
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/iraq.html
[4] BBC: US plans big S Korea troop cuts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3782213.stm
[5] Wikipedia: Barbary pirates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs
[6] UPI: Richard Sale: Saddam key in early CIA plot
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r
Regards,
leapinglizard |
