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Hezbollah's Rise,
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light cavalry since Ghenghis Khan; How the whites got the Texas
that the Bush family moved to. Alexander Cockburn
on why Israel lost. What you just missed, but can still get,
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All was going well. Serbia, on its knees,
had just sold Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribunal
in The Hague for a fistful of dollars (some of which, it was
learned later, went to pay debts accumulated since the time of
Tito). NATO was stretching eastward as Russia looked on helplessly.
Whenever one wished, one could, in all impunity, "bomb Saddam
Hussein" (that is, the Iraqi population). The Palestinian
territories were under tight police control and their leaders
assassinated by smart bombs. In recent years, stockholders had
made record profits. The political left no longer existed, all
parties having rallied to neo-liberalism and "humanitarian"
military intervention. In short, even if we had not yet arrived
at the "end of history"; its course was well under
control and its "happy ending" in sight.
And then -- shock, surprise,
horror -- the greatest power of all time struck in the very center
of its wealth and strength. A sophisticaled electronic spy network
had been unable to do anything to prevent the catastrophe.
I do not, of course; share
the "values" of Ms. Albright who, when asked if the
death of a half million Iraqi children is "worth it",
replies: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we
think the price is worth it" . The massacre of innocent
civilians does not ever seem to me to be worth it. This does
not prevent me from considering it necessary, on the occasion
of that tragedy, to ask a few questions.
An American pacifist, A.J.
Muste, once observed that the big problem after a war is the
winning side: it has learned that violence pays. All of post-World
War II history illustrates the pertinence of that remark. In
the United States; the War Department was renamed Defense Department,
although in reality there was no direct danger threatening the
country, and successive American governments embarked on campaigns
of military intervention and political destabilization. It takes
a large dose of good will to see all that as a mere attempt to
contain communism. But let us stick to current events and try
to see how they look outside West -- without trying to think
in terms of another culture or another religion, but simply asking
ourselves how we would react if we were confronted with certain
situations:
The Kyoto protocol: The American objections are not primarily
scientific, but of the type: "it would hurt our economy".
How does that reaction sound to people who work twelve hours
per day for starvation wages?
The Durban conference --
[ i.e., the World Conference
against racism, held in Durban (South Africa), from August 31
to September 7 2001. It was widely criticized in the West for
its support of Palestinians.]
The West rejects any suggestion of reparations for slavery and
colonialism. But how is it possible not to see that the State
of Israel functions as a reparation for anti-Semitic persecutions,
except that, in this case, the price is paid by Arabs for the
crimes committed by Europeans? And how is it possible not to
understand that, to the victims of colonialism, this shift of
responsibility looks like a manifestation of racism?
Afghanistan: The Americans did not hesitate to
train and arm bin Laden to destabilize the Soviet Union, according
to a scenario developed by President Carter's advisor, Zbigniew
Brzezinski. How many lives are lost in the game that Brzezinski
called "the Great Chessboard"? And how many terrorists,
in Asia, in Central America, in the Balkans or in the Middle
East, are left to their own devices after having served the "free
world"?
Iraq: For ten years the population has been strangled
by an embargo that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives --
of people who are also civilian victims, even if they are not
shown on television. All that because Iraq attempted to recuperate
oil wells that had been de facto confiscated by the British.
Compare this to the treatment of Israel which occupies, in perfect
illegality, territories conquered in 1967. Does one really think
that the idea, generally accepted in the West, that Saddam Hussein
is to blame for everything, makes a big impression in the Arab-Muslim
world?
China: When an American spy plane is shot down along
the Chinese coast on April 1, 2001, and its crew is briefly held
prisoner, there is indignation: how dare the Chinese? But how
many Chinese or Indian spy planes venture to fly along American
coasts?
USA: Is it really of foremost importance to squander
the planet's rare resources, including brains, to build an antiballistic
shield that will not protect the United States from terrorist
attacks and, eventually, not even from nuclear attacks?
All that doesn't excuse terrorism,
they will say. Agreed, but it does make it possible to undertand
why the reaction outside the United States is often mixed: sympathy
for the victims, yes; for the American government that tries
to play on emotions to legitmatize its policies and is getting
ready to violate international law once again, no.
By a pure coincidence; the
attacks took place on September 11, anniversary of the overthrow
of Allende (1973), which marked not only the installation of
the first neo-liberal government, that of Pinochet, but also
the beginning of the end of the national and independent movements
in the Third World -- roughly speaking, those that emerged from
the Bandung Conference -- which would all soon bend to the dictates
of the United States and the IMF. That coincidence recalls that
the West's victory over independent political movements in the
Third World has been achieved by methods that are far from democratic:
Pinochet, obviously, but also the assassination of Lumumba, terrorist
armies in Central America, and, last but not least, support to
"good" Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia and
in Afghanistan. In fact, so long as the obscurantist and feudalist
forces could be used against the political left, they were employed
profusely. If the accusations against those forces turn out to
be true, it will be appropriate to meditate on that curious irony
of history.
Marx thought that a political
struggle against oppression would cause religious obscurantism
to recede. For the past twenty years, the trend is in the opposite
direction: the more the political left loses ground; the more
obscurantism asserts itself, and not only in the Muslim world.
And this is largely because it has become the only possible form
of protest against this "vale of tears" on earth.
In the West; the "firm
responses" will of course be applauded when they come. Numerous
intellectuals will be found to link those attacks to whatever
they don't like in the world: Saddam Hussein, Western pacifists,
the Palestine liberation movement, and, while they are at it,
the "anti-globalization" movement. Spy networks will
be built. Citizens will be watched more closely. Edifying stories
will be told about the struggle between Good and Evil and the
wicked people who attack us because they don't like democracy;
or women's liberation, or multiculturalism. It will be explained
that we have nothing to do with such barbarism -- indeed, we
prefer to bomb from on high or use embargoes to kill people gradually.
But none of that will solve any basic problem. Terrorism grows
in the soil of revolt which is itself nourished by injustice
in the world.
For the immediate future, it
is to be feared that those attacks will have at least two negative
political consequences. On the one hand, the American population,
which in its vast majority displays a disturbing nationalism,
risks "rallying around the flag", as they put it, and
supporting their government's policy, no matter how barbarous
it is. It wants, more than ever, to "protect its way of
life", without asking the price paid by the rest of the
planet. The timid movements of dissent that have appeared since
Seattle will no doubt be marginalized or even criminalized. On
the other hand, millions of people, who have been defeated, humiliated
and crushed by the United States all around the world, will be
tempted to see in terrorism the only weapon that can really strike
the Empire. That is why a political -- and not terrorist -- struggle
against the cultural, economic and especially military domination
of a tiny minority of the human race over the vast majority is
more necessary than ever.
Jean Bricmont sat down and
wrote this essay a few days after the attacks of September 11,
2001. It was published in Europe in French in a number of venues
including Le Monde, on September 27, 2001, under the title "Quelques
questions à l'empire et aux autres". This is the
first time it has appeared in English, with very minor changes.
Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium. He is
a member of the Brussells
Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism,
will be published by Monthly Review Press.
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