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September
21, 2001
Unlimited War?
by Rahul Mahajan
and Robert Jensen
For more than a week everyone has been
saying that our world changed on Sept. 11.
In fact, it was on Sept. 20
that the world changed, the day that George W. Bush spoke to
the nation and announced the American jihad
"Every nation in every
region now has a decision to make," he said. "Either
you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Independent
policy, middle ground -- it appears these are concepts of the
old world.
The Taliban, he said, must
"hand over every terrorist and every person in their support
structure." Punishment only for the guilty -- another irrelevant
concept. What is a support structure? That's a question for
those who don't understand the new war.
"They will hand over the
terrorists or they will share in their fate." Collective
punishment is part of the new world order.
Bush has said repeatedly this
isn't about a clash of religions. But, he told us, "Freedom
and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and
we know that God is not neutral between them."
God has signed on with us,
and so difficult questions need not be asked. We need have
no qualms about a campaign to -- in the words of the secretary
of defense -- "drain the swamp," borrowing on an old
counterinsurgency term that translates into killing civilians
to deprive targeted groups of their "cover."
The goal of this new campaign
is "Infinite Justice." The Pentagon has retracted
that name, with its overtones of Christian fundamentalism, in
deference to the sentiments of Muslims. But it cannot retract
the uneasy feeling the phrase leaves us with, for the Pentagon
planners are not speaking of justice spread infinitely throughout
the world.
Instead, it is "justice"
ad infinitum -- to the end. The war of the 21st century begins
now.
It is justice by the sword.
It ends in victory not peace, and Bush has made it clear that
the sword will be unsheathed for a long time to come.
It did not have to be this
way. Even after the provocation of such a brutal and inhuman
attack, the United States could have chosen the path of sanity.
Bush could have said that 56 years of a national security state
has done nothing to assure our security and has only endangered
us.
He could have said that America's
course of unilateralism, military aggression, and economic domination
must be rethought.
He could have said that support
for Israel's occupation of Palestine and for the brutal economic
siege of Iraq should be rethought.
He could have said at least
that there was no need to exacerbate risks at a time of great
tension, that there was no need of a rash insistence that our
demands "are not open to negotiation or discussion."
He need not have threatened to use "every necessary weapon
of war."
We stand at a juncture in history,
a moment in which our course can be changed. We need political
leaders who can see what a disaster past policies have been.
We need people with vision, who can imagine what a just world
would look like.
As Democrats and Republicans
in Congress all showered with praise Bush's call for an unlimited
war with unending enemies, never before has it been so clear
that the existing political leadership of this country is bankrupt
No one from any part of the
political spectrum -- left, right, or center -- or any walk
of life -- rich, poor, or middle class -- can any longer afford
the illusion that being a good citizen means supporting the
status quo.
Bush wanted to galvanize a
nation, and in a strange way he might have. As we watch leaders
callously leverage the suffering of Americans into carte blanche
for their jihad, we see how the world has changed for the worse.
There is nothing to do but
face that reality -- not cynically in despair, but realistically
with hope and the understanding that we can change it for the
better. In the spontaneous demonstrations of resistance that
have sprung up the past few days, we may be seeing the seeds
of that change. Ordinary Americans are beginning to see that
we are connected more to Afghan peasants, in our shared vulnerability,
than to any of the people with the fingers on the triggers --
the terrorists or the man in the White House.
Radical change is not only
possible, it has begun. CP
Rahul Mahajan serves on the National Board of Peace
Action. Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at
the University of Texas. Both are members of the Nowar
Collective. They can be reached at rahul@tao.ca.
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