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April 23, 2002
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
April 20, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Drowning in a Sea of Apathy
Kristen
Schurr
Leaving
Nablus
Bernard Weiner
Israel and the Intifada
for Dummies
Jean-Guy
Allard
A
Coup Signed by Otto Reich
Chris Floyd
The "Grandeur" That Was Rome:
A Letter from the Front
April 19, 2002
Eric Flint
Free
the Books!
David Krieger
A Peace Proposal:
Bring in the Children
Jeff Paterson
Advice
to Recruits from
a Gulf War Vet
Jeffrey St. Clair
From Sen. "Lunkhead" to
Bush Energy Czar: A Year in the Life of Spencer Abraham
April 18, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Latin
America's Dilemma:
The Propaganda of Otto Reich
Sam Bahour
Bush is Playing Russian
Roulette with Palestinians
M. Shahid
Alam
A
Colonizing Project
Built on Lies
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Five
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Photos by Allan Sekula
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Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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April 23, 2002
I, George
Gomer as Claudius
By John Chuckman
There has been a fair amount written recently
about whether America should just get over the inhibitions of
its anti-imperial origins and boldly embrace the fact of its
having swelled and fattened into a full-fledged empire--a kind
of imperial coming out of the closet, if you will. Favoring,
as I do, honesty in politics and human affairs, I tend to support
this approach.
But before all the drawling, born-again,
yahoo-patriots with custom shotgun racks in the rear windows
of their Cadillacs and faded little flags fluttering from the
antennas break into the chorus of "Onward Christian Soldiers"
(actually, an excellent choice for a new Imperial Anthem), a
few qualifying reflections are in order.
Rome built magnificent roads, aqueducts,
forums, and theaters where its imperial footstep trod. America
leaves behind Coca-Cola bottlers, Lay's potato-chip distributors,
piles of trash, cluster-bomb canisters, and landmines. Rome built
beautiful temples and embraced all religions. America sends loopy
fundamentalist missionaries and people who believe God is an
alien life form speaking from tin cans to disparage the ancient
beliefs of others.
Rome at least had some great emperors
before it fell into decline and experienced such notable events
as a group of legionnaires declaring a horse to be emperor. America
starts off with the likes of Reagan, Clinton, and Bush--one intelligent,
immersed in hormones, sandwiched between two bell hops elevated
to the imperial purple. I know, I forgot the whining, snobbish
mama's boy who doesn't eat broccoli and who kept looking at his
watch when others spoke in a debate, but then, so have most Americans.
It has been observed that so often true
evil has a banal appearance, and in the case of many of history's
most evil people, this appears often to have been the case. Think
of Hitler eating his beloved pastries, the vegetarian, non-smoker
and teetotaler, watching Marlene Dietrich movies. Or Himmler,
the weak-chinned, former chicken farmer who ran the dread powers
of the SS and other state security for the Third Reich. Think
of Stalin, generally sitting quietly at meetings or dinners,
always praised by outside observers for his modest manner, quietly
smoking his pipe and rarely drinking much even while those around
him were reduced to comradely stupor.
These are the kind of people who once
in power set in motion the machinery that employs the psychopaths
and thugs that constitute some natural share of any society's
population in order to turn bad dreams into reality. Generally,
their own boots are not splattered with the blood of their victims.
And so we have Emperor Bush, certainly
not ranking as one of the great menaces of history, but a man
whose banality comes married to a decided taste for the stupid
and brutal use of power.
As to his banality, it would be hard
to match not just among the world's leaders, but also among the
men briskly walking by on any busy downtown street. His droning,
nasally voice suggests a cardigan-sweatered Ozzie Nelson giving
Dave and little Ricky a homily after being caught chugging root
beers in the kitchen. One senses in Mr. Bush intense earnestness
about insignificant matters and uninformed self-righteousness
about big ones. One imagines him fitting right in as the manager-trainee
going nowhere in the ladies' garments department at a Wal-Mart
or the petty assistant vice-principle at an elementary school
whose life swells with purpose when disciplining ten-year olds.
Actually, if it weren't for his slurred
pronunciation, his Archie-Bunker vocabulary, and the odd, deliberate
nincompoop-phrase like "Axis of Evil" or "homicide-bombers"
cropping up, there would be no reason ever to listen to his speeches.
You can learn nothing from them. They are imperial gestures.
His words and views are utterly predictable and commonplace in
their expression. The empire would be no worse off were his staff
to prepare a multi-purpose, all-occasion, error-free DVD and
distribute it to the press corps and members of Congress.
But in so many of Mr. Bush's words and
actions one also senses that same conscience-numbed, sniggering
tone he used during his campaign in speaking of the scores of
prisoners executed in Texas. Whether it's thousands of innocents
killed in Afghanistan, murdered and mistreated Afghan prisoners,
or Mr. Sharon's running a Murder Incorporated, the tone is the
same. Just as with the prisoners in Texas, his emphasis is always
on, not the plight of those suffering before him, but on the
crimes they are presumed to be answering for.
The banal Mr. Bush in a comparatively
short period has managed to give the world a nasty whiff of in-your-face
Americanism and, while doing so, to create the beginnings of
a dark, unholy alliance. While I fully recognize the inconsistency
of speaking about foreign policy and morality in the same breath,
still America is the world's first great empire that pretends
to adhere to principles of democracy and concern for human rights.
There is some reason at least to hope that the mold of history
in these matters might one day be broken.
Well, the simple fact is, that with virtually
every breath Mr. Bush has worked against these important principles.
His idiotic, undefined War against Terror has created needless
destruction and privations, threatening itself to become a kind
of global terror. That and his cavalier attitude towards international
treaties have set a frightening precedent and basis for relationships
with the rest of the world.
Israel's Sharon is free to crush Palestinians'
hopes, crushing a good many of their people along the way. Russia's
Putin, in return for toning down his criticisms of American policy,
has been given carte blanche to continue state-terror in Chechnya,
the bulldozing of Jenin on a vaster scale. And Turkey, in return
for its support of a future attack against Iraq, appears to have
received the same carte blanche for its campaign against the
Kurds, a people who have suffered under Iraq, Iran, and Turkey
and who were treated atrociously by that tireless worker for
peace, Henry Kissinger.
Oh, and then there's the new alliance,
complete with an exchange of bounty for information and cooperation,
with a military man in Pakistan. And the "we'll bomb, you
fight" pact with cutthroat warlords of the Northern Alliance
in Afghanistan. Of course, they are looking for someone to fill
the same role in Iraq, but it's going to be tough with the record
of flip-flops and betrayals the U.S. has earned amongst various
groups there over the years.
I am reminded of the old joke, "What
do you get when you cross a canary with a gorilla?" "I
don't know, but when it sings, you had better listen." Perhaps
better than any image I can come up with, this joke describes
Mr. Bush as Emperor. A weak, narrow, uninformed man married to
a colossal, imperial military machine. And you had better listen.
John Chuckman
is a columnist for YellowTimes.
He encourages your comments: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
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