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CounterPunch
September
9, 2002
There's Still
Time to Stop Insanity
by Robert Jensen
The evening of Sept. 11, I wrote an essay that
ended with a plea that "the insanity stop here," that
the brutal act of terrorism not spark more terrorism, theirs
or ours.
But the insanity didn't stop.
Instead, the Bush administration cynically
manipulated people's grief and rage to unleash an unlimited war
against endless enemies, which has made the world more dangerous
and the American people less secure in any land, home or abroad.
A year later, it's clear the so-called
"war on terrorism" is primarily a war to project U.S
power around the world. Its goal is to extend and deepen U.S.
control, especially in the energy-rich Middle East and Central
Asia. Ordinary people have not benefited, and will not benefit,
from this war or the economics that drive it.
The antiwar movement argued from the
start that conventional war could not produce security from terrorism,
and we were right. Administration officials this summer acknowledged
that the attack on Afghanistan didn't significantly diminish
the terrorist threat and may have complicated counterterrorism
efforts by dispersing potential attackers.
Those of us who criticized the mad rush
to war also suggested the Bush administration would use terrorism
as a pretext to justify a wider war;  again, we were right. Officials have
floundered trying to justify an attack on Iraq with claims about
Iraqi connections to al-Qaida or other terrorist networks that
are so unconvincing they have largely been abandoned.
Claims about Iraq's alleged weapons of
mass destruction are more plausible, but riddled with inconsistencies.
Iraq may have developed, or be developing, limited biological
or chemical weapons programs, but no one has offered proof or
a scenario in which Iraq might use them, except in the case of
a U.S. attack. And the Bush administration has repeatedly announced
that it won't be satisfied with renewed weapons inspections and
is determined to topple the Saddam Hussein regime, destroying
hopes for the diplomacy needed for multilateral regional arms
control.
Bush's talk of democracy in Afghanistan
or Iraq is a bad joke. U.S. manipulation of the political process
in Afghanistan to install a handpicked puppet, Hamid Karzai (now
being guarded by U.S. troops and agents to protect him from his
own people), was barely concealed. In Iraq, "democracy"
will be acceptable to the Bush administration so long as a democratic
process produces a similarly pliant leader.
These failed attempts to build a case
for war only highlight what has long been clear: The war in Afghanistan
and a possible war in Iraq are about U.S. dominance, at two levels.
The first involves the specific resources of those regions. In
the case of Afghanistan, the concern is pipelines to carry the
oil and natural gas of the Caspian region to deep-water ports.
In Iraq, it's about controlling the country with the world's
second-largest oil reserves.
Beyond those direct interests, the logic
of empire requires violence on this scale; when challenged, imperial
powers strike back to maintain credibility and extend control.
U.S. control is through mechanisms different from Rome or Britain
in their imperial phases, but there can be no doubt that we are
an empire.
Much of the world is frightened by these
imperial ambitions. A friend traveling in Europe reports back
that people talk of their fear of America's militarism. Politicians
in allied nations are questioning, or openly repudiating, American
war plans.
The task for U.S. citizens is clear:
We must ensure that the U.S. empire is the first empire dismantled
from within, through progressive political movements that reject
world dominance that perpetuates inequality in favor of our place
in a world struggling for justice and peace.
On Sept. 11, we got a glimpse of what
it might look like if the empire is taken down from the outside.
Today we still have a choice. We can
learn from history and step back from empire, or suffer the fate
that history makes clear lies down the imperial path.
We still have time to turn away from
empire and toward democracy, away from unilateralism toward engagement,
away from hoarding power and toward seeking peace. We still have
time to demand of our government that the insanity stop here.
Robert Jensen
is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas and author
of Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.
He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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September
7 / 8, 2002
Bill Christison
A
Year Later: It's Happening Here
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Tenth Crusade
Susan Davis
Mr. Ashcroft's
Neighborhood
Bruce Jackson
When
War Came Home
David Krieger
Looking
Back on September 11
Mike Leon
Bush and War
Peter Linebaugh
Levellers
and 9/11
William McDougal
September 11 One Year On:
That's Entertainment!
Riad Z. Abdelkarim and Jason
Erb
How American Muslims Really Responded
to 9/11
Jeffrey St.
Clair
The Trouble
with Normal
Tom Stephens
Rise Up...Dump Bush
September
6, 2002
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Stolen
Trust
Gale Norton, Indians and the Case of the Missing $10 Billion
September
5, 2002
Ben Tripp
Jesus vs.
George the Second
William Hughes
McKinney's
Defeat:
Undue Meddling
Gavin Keeney
Beaux
Reves, Citoyens!
Wayne Saunders
War
Begins; Nobody Notices
Irit Katriel
Drunk
with Power:
Israeli Chief of Staff Calls Palestinians a "Cancerous Demographic
Threat"
Gary Leupp
Who's Afraid
of Iraq?
September
3, 2002
Nabil Amro
Leadership
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Robert Fisk
A Forgotten
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Uri Avnery
The Return
of the Dinosaurs
September
2, 2002
Francis Boyle
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Lou Cohan
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Philip Farruggio
Labor
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Cuban Political
Prisoners
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September
1, 2002
Dave Marsh
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August 31,
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at the State Dept.
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Alexander
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