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A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
November 16, 2001
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Voices
of Muslim Feminists
Mokhiber/Weissman
Kill,
Kill, Kill
November 15, 2001
George
Monbiot
Blasting
Our Way
Toward Peace
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens
Mind-Meld
and Hot Bodies
Steve
Perry
Afghan
Puzzle Palace
RAWA
We Do Not Accept
the Northern Alliance
November 14, 2001
Jensen/Mahajan
The
Press Must Press Harder on Afghanistan
David Vest
The Great Unificator
Harry
Browne
Preventing
Future Terrorism
November 13, 2001
Peter Mahoney
Veteran's
Day, 2001
Rep. Ron
Paul
Expanding
NATO
Is a Bad Idea
November 12, 2001
Robert Jensen
Goodbye to
All That...
Patriotism
Nancy
Oden
My
Day at the Airport
CounterPunch Wire
East Timor
10 Years
After the Massacre
C.G. Estabrook
Instead
of Terror
Alexander Cockburn
Wide World
of Torture
November 11, 2001
Douglas
Valentine
Homeland
Insecurity: The Politics of Terror in America
November 10, 2001
Grover Furr
Seeking an Opposition
to the Afghan War
Bruce
Kyle
Anatomy
of a Green Smear:
Backstabbing Nancy Oden
November 9, 2001
Karen Snell
Torture By
Proxy
John Troyer
A
New Kind of Activism
Tariq Ali
Q &
A About the War
Michael
Colby
Schoolgirl
Gets Booted
for Anti-war Views
November 8, 2001
Mokhiber/Weissman
The
Cipro Rip-Off
Mitchel Cohen
The Smear Campaign
Against Nancy Oden
Steve
Perry
American
Roulette
November 7, 2001
Bahour/Dahan
Placebo Peace
Plan
Tom Turnipseed
Bush
Gives Billions
to His Oil Buddies
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
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A CounterPunch
Special Report
Robin Blackburn is former editor of New Left Review,
author of the renowned two-volume history of colonial
slavery and currently visiting professor at The New School,
New York. CounterPunch is proud to publish Robin's booklength
report, Terror and Empire, the first extended radical
analysis of the post September 11 world, what the terror war
is all about, and how a just war on terror could be fought and
won.
Terror and Empire
By Robin Blackburn
Chapter 2
The Imperial Presidency
and National Messianism
The terrorist coup of September 11 set the scene
for the  resurgence of an
imperial presidency. This was initially concealed by Bush's dithering
on the day itself. Yet his first words insisted that the nation
was at war and that reprisals would be visited not only on the
perpetrators but on the states which had backed them. It soon
became clear that the Bush White House was taking advantage of
the shock at what had happened to demand global 'war powers'
and the financial and constitutional means to employ them. In
less than 48 hours NATO was persuaded to invoke, for the first
time ever, Article 5 and consequently to give the US commander
in chief huge scope to act in its name. The Senate took only
a little longer unanimously to back the President's declaration
of war against an unnamed enemy and for Congress to place a $40
billion war chest at his disposal. When the Senate and House
of representatives passed the anti-terrorism legislation requested
by the administration in October many legislators complained
that they had had no opportunity even to read the complex legislation
they were voting on.
Even before the new order could be annointed
by Congressional votes and orations it was clear that only the
President of the United States could fill the hole that yawned.
For an unforgettable moment the Empire trembled as an abyss opened,
the sun stopped in the darkened sky and the most powerful state
in history was paralysed by the suicidal and murderous audacity
of nineteen youths. Nowhere in the world--save perhaps TV-less
Afghanistan--did anyone doubt that something fundamental had
happened and that it happened everywhere. The void had to be
filled and, for better or worse, Bush stepped into a new role.
What has now happened raises the power
of the president by a quantum leap. It restores an imperial potency
to the presidency equal to--or even exceeding--that of the Reagan
era. Bush's authority and freedom of action today is certainly
far greater than that enjoyed by his father on the eve of the
Gulf War. The imperial presidency has been struggling to be born
for some time. Indeed in some respects Bush's imperial White
House is simply continuing the policies of his predecessors.
But it would be wrong to see the post-September 11 Bush regime
as essentially a ratcheting up of the Clinton policy, commensurate
with the newly-perceived dimensions of the threat. Everything
suggests that a watershed has been been passed. Bush is far stronger
than Clinton, essentially because he faces virtually no opposition.
While Clinton was unrelentingly pilloried and opposed by a fairly
effective Republic Congressional majority, Bush now has the Democrats
eating out of his hand. On September 14-15 only Congresswoman
Barbara Lee (Oakland) voted against the emergency package. Congress
may later wish to challenge Bush's chosen strategy or target
but their resolution gives them only scant leverage--and only
a few are likely to hold him even to those broadly-construed
limits.
The Clinton administration claimed and
exercised a right of unilateral action against a variety of enemies.
Madeleine Allbright explained: 'If we have to use force it is
because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand
tall. We see farther into the future.' Yet the record of the
indispensable nation in the nineties was not a good one. The
issue of nuclear disarmament was neglected. The Russians were
not engaged in this or any other positive way, and instead NATO
was enlarged to encircle it. In the absence of an agreement between
Moscow and Washington the secondary nuclear powers did nothing
and India and Pakistan tested nuclear devices. Repeated bombardment
of Iraq did more to weaken the United States in the region that
to weaken the regime of Saddam Hussein. Rwanda bled. The break
up of Yugoslavia dragged on for many years and cost many lives.
The failure to use Moscow and the OSCE structure to secure Serb
withdrawal from Kosovo at Rambouillet lead to massive bombing
of Serbia and Kosovo. But eventually the European allies insisted
that Russian mediation to this end be obtained--and it was this
rather than the bombing which secured a result. The essential
mistake, a fruit of the Cold War mentality, was the attempt to
exclude Russia and undermine the Primakov government. (Washington
squelched Russian mediation at Rambouillet because, if successful,
it would have given Russia an ongoing role in the former Yugoslavia.
In the end, Russia had to be given a minor role anyway. Russia
had great leverage in Belgrade because Yugoslav forces were highly
dependent on Russian oil and military supplies. Washington regarded
the Primakov government as a throwback to the Soviet era. In
fact, his fall and eventual replacement by Putin led to the bloody
Russian onslaught on Chechnya, with only token western protests.
The unspoken agreement was that if you let us bomb Serbia we'll
let you bomb Chechnya. Also note that mass opposition to Milosevic,
including street demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of citizens,
took place in 1996 and 1997 and in 2000, but not in the period
of western bombardment.)
While Washington might ask the United
Nations to rubber stamp its own initiatives, it did not even
bother to pay its quota. With the possible exception of Haiti
there were very few gains for the US go-it-alone method in the
nineties, but an alternative edged into view when the UN successfully
orchestrated, with the help of regional powers, the Indonesian
military withdrawal from East Timor.
When Bush arrived in the White House
its allies were unhappy to discover that the new president, despite
his own criticisms of the Clinton-Albright interventions, had
an even more vigorous notion of America's special destiny. He
regarded international treaties as scraps of paper (ABM or Kyoto),
spurned agreements on land-mines, biological warfare and terrorism
or, as in Durban, simply left the room when dialogue was required.
Secretary of State Colin Powell seems to have cautioned against
some of these decisions but without any success. Sustaining these
positions was a determination not to yield an iota of US sovereignty
while often expecting this sacrifice of other states.
Because the US was manifestly the injured
party on September 11 the situation itself conspired to reinforce
Washington's habitual conduct and assumptions. Washington always
insists on running the show but this time virtually no one objected.
Such was the shock at the events of September 11 that the European
allies announced their prior willingness to back almost any action
the US might launch, even before learning what it would be. Perhaps
they thought that their swift support would earn them some influence
at a later stage and that in its hour of need the Bush presidency
would discover the need to jettison the unilateral approach.
In a way it has but in the direction of a proliferation of bi-lateralism
as the US Secretary of State and Defense Secretary engage in
an unceasing round of consultations across several continents,
not a new emphasis on NATO and the European allies.
The likelihood that Europe will restrain
Washington is further reduced by political factors. The balance
in Europe is shifting. The new rightist Italian government wants
to ingratiate itself with Washington to enhance its respectability.
Berlusconi, the prime minister, probably agrees with Bush anyway.
Blair always supports the US and Chirac is also now inclined
to, while the German government is in disarray. The Europeans
have few troops to spare and are likely to be much less involved
then they were (or are) in the Balkans. So this will give them
less influence anyway.
In the weeks following September 11 both
Powell and Rumsfeld undertook a wide-ranging diplomatic effort
directed at key regional players, like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Uzbekistan, Russia and China. This could be called a multilateral
approach, especially since US policy evidently took note of reservations
and problems raised by the governments of these states. But the
choice of whom to approach, and what advice to accept, still
lay with Washington. No attempt was being made to mount a collective
operation using the United Nations or some other body.
Thus it is not so much Bush's personality
which should be scrutinised as the president's new programme
and mandate, the situation and character of his machine and the
facilities it now enjoys, both domestically and abroad. Behind
Bush stand more considerable figures like Cheney and Rumsfeld
and behind them a military-industrial complex which begins to
see its prayers being answered. It is astonishing to recollect
that as recently as September 2 the New York Times ran a headline:
'Dogfight for Dollars on Capitol Hill: The Winnowing Begins on
Contracts for Planes, Ships and All Things Military'.
While it would be foolish to minimise
the tidal wave of US public outrage and the upsurge of patriotism
occasioned by September 11, it would also be wrong to think that
all Americans were bent on evening the score by slaughtering
innocents. Of course there were angry voices in the tabloids,
radio shows and respectable organs of opinion which whip up blood
lust or peddle stereotypes. These are dangerous because they
encourage official recklessness and the brandishing of US sovereignty,
not because tens of millions of Americans actually want to fight
a war. On September 18 the New York Times reported that there
had been no increase in enlistment over the previous week and
that there were no queues at the recruiting offices as there
had been after Pearl Harbour. The grief and candle-lit vigils
had a more thoughtful side that could also be heard in the media,
and which found expression in declarations by the Bishop of Boston
and other senior Catholics, but not in Congress. The Democrats'
conduct was dictated by their belief that, in an atmosphere of
patriotic mobilisation, it would be fatal to allow any daylight
to appear between themselves and the president.
So the Presidency came to enjoy almost
complete freedom of action and was able to give shape and direction
to the widespread sense of shock, anger and alarm. Moreover Bush
repeatedly insisted that the campaign against international terrorism
would be a long one, presumably requiring indefinite extension
of his special powers. In a book published this September Daniel
Lazare anticipated this state of affairs when he warned of the
extraordinary power of a US president compared with counterparts
in other democratic states. In European democracies the head
of government has greater domestic power than a US president.
But in external affairs, Lazare argues, matters stand the other
way around: '(A) US president is a good deal more powerful. Surrounded
by courtiers, intelligence agencies, and military units at his
beck and call, he is free to launch invasions or order covert
operations any time, day or night, without fear of contradiction
from his cabinet or any of his subordinates. Indeed he is expected
to engage in such unilateral displays'. . Lazare was here drawing
attention to a powerful war- and Cold War-related trend in US
government which witnessed a twentieth century aggrandisement
of the presidency that would have astonished the framers of the
Constitution. But this trend was at least partly checked by resistance
to the Vietnam war, by the impeachment of Nixon and by the considerable
public controversy over Iran-Contra, or even the Gulf War or
Kosovo bombardment. Moreover the post-Vietnam refusal to accept
casualties also hobbled the US president and the war machine
at his command. The opinion polls and talk shows now suggest
that this restraint has weakened. Finally, US allies also constrained
the White House during those episodes. Today matters are different
and Lazare is simply stating the bare truth when he writes: 'Short
of total war, the US president has carte blanche to attack whom
he pleases virtually anywhere in the world.' .
The exact wording of the Congressional
resolution of September 15 made clear the latitude extended to
Bush: ' the president is authorized to use all necessary and
appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons
he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist
attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations
or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international
terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations
or persons.' So Bush can decide who is the enemy. That enemy
can be a 'nation', a term which, unlike 'state' or 'government',
would seem to expose whole peoples to attack. The president could
be tempted to read the last clause as authorizing him to hit
at any potential terrorist outfit or 'nation', not just those
implicated in September 11. The only hints at restraint are those
words 'necessary and appropriate' and the residual implication
that it is only those implicated in September 11 who should be
targeted. For the moment these qualifications carry little weight
though if things go wrong critics might invoke them. It was on
the day after this resolution that Bush vowed to 'rid the world
of evil-doers' and cautioned: 'This crusade, this war on terrorism,
is going to take a while.'
The imperial presidency legitimated by
the resolution might astound the framers of the Constitution
but is not thereby unconstitutional. As Lazare argues, the Constitution
was forged for another age and with the purpose of rendering
public power as circumscribed and divided as possible. The presidency
has escaped these bounds because no state could respect them
in modern conditions. Invoking the archaic features of the Constitution
will not restrain the presidency. Once war powers have been conferred
on the president the executive's already large competence is
both increased and formally sanctioned.
When Americans say they want action against
'those responsible' for the attacks the sentiment is easy to
understand. To expect the mass of US citizens simply to accept
that they should be the target of such attacks would be ridiculous.
Bush's address to Congress on September 20 outlining his campaign
against terrorism addressed these anxieties. Unfortunately it
also harnessed them to a boundless and unilateral, US-defined
and US-led war against terrorism (the word 'crusade' was avoided
this time). This approach is most unlikely to capture the culprits
or to prevent further attacks acts from the same quarter. Indeed,
as I will argue, it gets in the way of more effective approaches
that would inflict political defeats on Al Qaeda.
In a controlled and polished performance,
and speaking from a prepared text, Bush underlined the limitless
scope and long duration of the new mission which he would undertake
on behalf of his wounded but unbowed country. 'Our enemy is a
radical network of terrorists and every government that supports
them. Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not
end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global
reach has been found, stopped and defeated.' This new war against
terror forced a choice upon every nation: 'Every nation in every
region of the world now has a decision to make. Either you are
with us or you are with the terrorists.' So the president not
only commandeered US foreign policy but sought to impose his
definitions on every state in the world. In the truncated discussion
that followed the speech no member of Congress queried the extraordinary
new mandate.
The laying down of the law to other states
combined with the refusal to yield up a particle of US sovereignty
establishes the principle of the new empire. The obsessively
reiterated discourse of war directed attention away from what
could have been an international police action. And its definition
as a 'new kind of war' allowed unilateralism to be raised to
a new pitch. This was the unilateralism of imperial leadership,
not that of isolationism or withdrawal. The attack had demonstrated
'global reach' yet had been aimed this time exclusively at targets
on US soil. The fact that both attackers and victims were of
many nations, and the world-wide revulsion at its devastating
consequences, could have been used to mount a multilateral response.
But that would have been contrary to the administration's every
instinct and inclination. That such an approach might be more
effective in tracking down and punishing the network responsible
for the attack would appear a crazy notion not only to the Bush
White House but to the jingoists such as liberal commentator
Thomas Friedman and the conservative commentator William Safire.
After the events of September 11 any
US president, it might be urged, would have reacted in much the
same way. But some might have avoided the continued and strident
unilateralism. They might have seen that the international revulsion
already evident, and willingly given , made it clear the United
Nations, and its Security Council, could play a crucial role
in combating terrorism. In the aftermath of the two world wars
US presidents did advocate supranational organisation, in the
shape of the League of Nations and UN. The aftermath of September
11 offered an opportunity to work out with other governments
what was justified and effective in a campaign against terrorism,
and what would merely feed it.
Whether or not a different president
might have acted differently, Congress could have acted differently.
One suspects that a Republican Senate faced with such demands
from a Democratic president would have retained more of a say
over future developments, or at least secured an informal agreement
that the text of the President's speech would have to be agreed
beforehand. While the Democrats were under pressure to vote a
resolution, the president, after a poor start, was also under
pressure. In her interview
with The Nation for 8 October Barbara Lee tells us many legislators
shared her fears. They just lacked the courage of their convictions.
When Bush declared that states implicated
in terrorism would be treated as enemies he was announcing a
new, and in some ways welcome, policy since too many such states
have in the past been close friends of the US. The US president
showed no awareness, for example, that the US had aligned itself
with states that unleashed death-squads in Central and South
America. The generous might say that we should not visit the
sins of the father on the son and that it is the future that
matters. Yet in the days following the September 11 the Senate
ratified Bush's nominee as Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte,
a man notorious for his failure to report large scale violations
of human rights by US-linked contra forces when he was ambassador
in Honduras in the eighties. Thus the man who will represent
the US case against terrorism to the major world forum will himself
be someone who at best turned a blind eye to the slaughter of
many thousands, and whose complicity may well have been worse
than that.
The unilateralist conclusions drawn by
Bush were superficially at odds with one theme of his speech
on September 20: 'This is not, however, just America's fight.
And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the
world's fight. This is civilisation's fight.' Given this claim
it might seem strange that a world body, such as the United Nations,
was not entrusted with conducting the fight. The explanation,
of course, was the doctrine of national messianism. The United
States is the leader and representative of humanity and civilisation,
acting in their name.
Chapter
3
The US Alliance with Militant Islam
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