[South Asia Citizens Web | April 3, 2003]
Brutal imperialism in the name of democracy
by Aseem Srivastava
"To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder."
"Nationalism, on my opinion, is nothing more than an idealistic rationalization for militarism and aggression."
- Albert Einstein
Nationalism is the reigning religion in the United States, if not in the whole world. It is the sacrosanct shrine to which all the leaders of the day must pay their homage. That it represents a great danger to world peace should be obvious but is not so readily acknowledged.
After the first successful tests for the Hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s, two Nobel laureates, the physicist Albert Einstein and the philosopher Bertrand Russell summoned some of the leading scientists of their generation to bring out a document which came to be called the "Russell-Einstein manifesto." It appears elsewhere in this issue of the magazine and warrants careful reading.
In this document they warn humanity and its leaders of the implications of the new weaponry which had become available to it. For the very first time in all history, humankind had evolved a technology which could be used for ecocide, the demise of the species itself. This was not something to take pride in. Either man would abolish war or war would abolish man.
They proposed that humanity ñ all of us ñ needed a new way of thinking if we are to survive. In particular, they argued that "the abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty."
This was said 48 years ago. President Bush still closes his address to the Union by saying "May God bless the United States of America." When will God begin to bless all humanity?
In this week preceding the Global Concerns on Nationalism, it is good to remind ourselves that this is no time to be nationalistic or parochial. As Einstein and Russell pleaded, a prerequisite of the survival of our species is the need for each of us to examine oneís heart for the prejudices one may carry, which exclude vast numbers of humanity.
The growing crisis in the Middle East is a case in point.
The coming siege of Baghdad
The first war under the new Bush doctrine ñ of preventive war - is in progress. Consider once again the official justifications for the war: the liberation of the people of Iraq from a brutal dictatorial regime and the elimination of the immediate mortal threat to all peace-loving peoples of the world from the possibility that it may be in possession of usable weapons of mass destruction. As I write this, the 12th day of the war is in progress. So far, no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction has been found. (Some reports claim that some protective gear has been discovered, but it could as easily have been summoned for defence against chemical/biological warfare.)
More importantly, far from greeting their "liberators" with cries of joy, the people of Iraq have been cursing their invaders with shouts of hatred. Reports ñ from The Washington Post to Al-Jazeera ñ differ on a thousand details. But on one point, everyone concurs: the invading armies have encountered "fierce resistance" on their way to Baghdad. We have heard in the past two weeks of every possible means of deceiving the enemy, from a suicide-bomber dressed up as a taxi-driver to troops apparently masquerading as civilians to peasants shooting down Apache helicopters. Who wouldnít resist if their "liberators" rained down bombs on them at night, killing innocents by the scores, destroying schools, hospitals, residential neighborhoods far from military installations, telephone exchanges and such like, while tanks and armoured vehicles roll through the countryside as though the land was meant for US military exercises, and all this was being done in the name of their own freedom? The irony is breathtaking! The collective memory of the Iraqi people brings back to their minds the umpteen occasions that they have been invaded or betrayed in similar manner by the West in the past, each time under some holy banner.
And so the Iraqis are fighting, with the ferocity of a people trapped in their own land, bringing to the minds of war-making American strategists chilling memories of the Viet-Cong from Vietnam days. The Iraqi people do not love their avowed leader Saddam Hussein, but would rather rid themselves of him on their own, certainly not through the aegis of a foreign invader who wants to get a foot in the oil door in the process of liberating them. A known devil is better than a greedy, morally indifferent imperial invader. Nobody would have accepted bets on Saddam Hussein becoming a hero so soon in the Arab world a few weeks ago. Now, whether he lives or dies, it is a growing reality that the Bush campaign has to contend with, both within Iraq as well as in the region at large.
It was not meant to be like this. The 300-mile march to the capital was meant to be smooth, swift and successful, happy children and their parents cheering the marines on their way. Baghdad was meant to fall shortly thereafter. The war, inaugurated by Washingtonís "Shock and Awe" strategy was meant to end within weeks, at most. Now media wisdom talks in terms of months. The realization is dawning that it takes more than bombs to win an unjust war. Residents of Baghdad have got used to continuous bombing. It is armchair war-makers in Washington who have got a rude "shock" as their plans have whirled in the sandstorms. The impatience and arrogance of the superpower which did not even care to make a formal declaration of war on the enemy is now meeting its nemesis in Iraq.
Despite the ritual babble of spokesmen in the US and the UK that the war is moving "according to plan", the reality on the desert sands has been a dramatically different one. 6000 precision-guided bombs and 700 Tomahawks later, one reporter is even willing to bet on a stalemate in Baghdad. Such is the degree of surprise on the part of the "coalition" troops that one of the frontline commanders Lt. Gen. William Wallace had to admit the other day in an official briefing, much to the embarrassment of the Bush administration, that "the enemy we are fighting is different from the one we had war-gamed against." Veteran Pulitzer-prize winning NBC reporter Peter Arnett has been fired today for telling Iraqi television what everyone now knows, that America is having to "re-write its war-plan", thanks to the growing resistance.
It seems that even the military commanders had been led to believe the propaganda that their political bosses have been hurling at the public. It is now that they realize that they have deployed too few soldiers. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has come in for special criticism for repeatedly overriding the advice of experienced Generals in demanding a strategy of using a "light" ground force (his initial proposal was 60,000), relying for a quick victory heavily on the success of a massive air assault on Baghdad as much as on a cooperative population and induced rebellions against the Iraqi regime from the Kurds in the north to the Shiíites in the south. Predictably, given the history of American betrayal in 1991, none of the groups expected to rebel have answered American prayers. (In any case, why should Basra Shiíites rebel when their brehren in the Al-Shualla neighbourhood of Baghdad have been bombed to death in huge numbers?) Nor have Husseinís troops surrendered. Early reports have been, it turns out, hugely exaggerated.
Robert Fisk reports from Baghdad that more than 4,000 volunteers from Arab countries are now in Iraq, ready to serve as Islamic suicide-bombers. He quotes an Iraqi General as saying that "martyrdom operations will continue not only by Iraqis but by thousands of Arabs who came to Baghdad". It is increasingly being regarded as a war of liberation against the Americans. Washington aggression is precipitating the most unlikely of scenarios: a crisis-driven de facto alliance between secular Arab nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists.
The fight is on.
The next big move in this war will be the attempt to lay siege to Baghdad. This may be "the mother of all battles" promised by Saddam Hussein 12 years ago. It may even lead the US, in despair at losing too many young American men, and with it, American public opinion, to drop "the mother of all bombs", tested last month in the Nevada desert. So itís either a huge number of Iraqi civilian deaths, or large numbers of American troops to their graves.
The US has summoned an additional 120,000 troops, in addition to the 225,000 troops already in the Gulf. This mobilization may take up to a month to complete. The siege of Baghdad will take a while to start, given stretched supply-lines. The frontline troops, although only 50 miles from Baghdad, have had to manage on one meal a day and have limited diesel in their tanks. And all the while, they are under threat from what appears increasingly to be a deadly guerilla strategy of resistance to US aggression.
It is telling on the US/UK troops. One injured American soldier, upon returning to the US, wished for nothing more than to go home to his family. The commander of the British troops in Iraq, General Mike Jackson says that "this amount of commitment is not sustainable over a long period of time." And summer is yet to arrive. The General hinted that Britain may have to cut back troops in the Gulf, given that it is already deploying half its total available force.
Todayís issue of The Guardian reports that three British soldiers have refused to fight and are being sent home where they will face court-martial for their refusal to take orders in what they regard is an unjust war in which too many innocent civilians are dying.
Apart from scores of US and UK troops, over 500 civilians and much more than a 1000 uniformed Iraqis have already died in the invasion of Iraq. Several thousands have suffered injuries. The Al-Noor hospital in Baghdad has been receiving a steady stream of patients of every age and gender since the start of the attack on March 19. Heaven alone knows how many more, in Baghdad and Basra, Najaf and Mosul, await their tragic fates in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile American bombs and missiles are not proving to be as smart as they were initially thought to be. Stray missiles have landed in Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Bombs have missed their targets in the cities and taken plenty of innocent lives.
The criminal folly of the Bush invasion is now betraying its true cowardly character. Strategically, the war is already a failure. Politically, it is a disaster in the Middle East region and the longer it prolongs, the more likely it will be a disaster for both Bush and Blair. Militarily, only George Bush is "sure of the outcome of this battle." Weapons inspections could only be given limited time, but "war for as long as it takes" is alright.
April will be the cruelest month.
"Democracy" at gunpoint
Victory, if it comes, will be pyrrhic.
In her book The March of Folly, the historian Barbara Tuchman writes:
"A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests." The coming summer will tell if her view will find more emphatic vindication in the Iraqi desert.
It is time that the Western world got even with its illusion that democracy is a healthy political virus that can be spread across willing or unwilling parts of the globe by democratic societies by any means necessary, military or otherwise. This is an especially urgent task when one cares to ponder the following four facts:
First, the irony of how deeply eroded democracy stands today, both within the US as well as in the world at large; second, the fact that true democracy abroad (whether you consider Mossadeqís Iran or Allendeís Chile) has not suited the overseas interests of the US (dictatorships, especially in the oil-producing countries suit its interests much better); third, democracies within imperial nations is perfectly consistent with them fanning dictatorships outside (British democracy was perfectly consistent with the British Empire for centuries, as American democracy continues to be with "friendly" dictatorships abroad today); finally, there are traditions of freedom and resistance in the non-Western world if one knows where to look.
Patronage is the surviving character of Western domination of the world. Imperialism has found remarkable ideologies to mask its plunder in the past: the Christian mission, the civilizing burden of the white man. Democracy is the latest. Hopefully it will be the last.Return to: Progressive South Asian Voices Against the War on Iraq - 2003
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