----------
From: "mart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [pttp] Fwd : WAR FRENZY
On Tue, 16 Oct 2001 16:13:20 -0500, Farkhondeh, Simin wrote:
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 10:20 PM
Subject: Sunera Thobani essay: please distribute widely
WAR FRENZY
Sunera Thobani
My recent speech at a women's conference on violence against women has
generated much controversy. In the aftermath of the terrible attacks of
September 11, I argued that the U.S. response of launching 'America's
new war' would increase violence against women. I situated the current
crisis within the continuity of North/South relations, rooted in
colonialism
and imperialism. I criticized American foreign policy, as well as
President
Bush's racialized construction of the American Nation. Finally, I spoke
of the need for solidarity with Afghan women's organizations as well as
the
urgent necessity for the women's movement in Canada to oppose the war.
Decontextualized and distorted media reports of my address have led to
accusations of me being an academic impostor, morally bankrupt and
engaging in hate-mongering. It has been fascinating to observe how my
comments regarding American foreign policy, a record well documented
by numerous sources whose accuracy or credentials cannot be faulted,
have been dubbed 'hate-speech.' To speak about the indisputable record
of U.S. backed coups, death squads, bombings and killings ironically
makes
me a 'hate-monger.' I was even made the subject of a 'hate-crime'
complaint
to the RCMP, alleging that my speech was a 'hate-crime.'
Despite the virulence of these responses, I welcome the public
discussion my speech has generated as an opportunity to further the
public debate
about Canada's support of America's new war. When I made the speech, I
believed it was imperative to have this debate before any attacks were
launched on any country. Events have overtaken us with the bombing of
Afghanistan underway and military rule having been declared in
Pakistan. The need for this discussion has now assumed greater urgency
as reports of casualties are making their way into the news. My speech
at
the women's conference was aimed at mobilizing the women's movement
against
this war. I am now glad for this opportunity to address wider
constituencies and in different fora.
First, however, a few words about my location: I place my work within
the tradition of radical, politically engaged scholarship. I have
always
rejected the politics of academic elitism which insist that academics
should remain above the fray of political activism and use only
disembodied, objectified language and a 'properly' dispassionate
professorial demeanor to establish our intellectual credentials. My
work is grounded in the politics, practices and languages of the various
communities I come from, and the social justice movements to which I am
committed.
ON AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
In the aftermath of the terrible September 11th attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Bush administration launched
"America's War on Terrorism." Eschewing any role for the United
Nations and the need to abide by international law, the US
administration
initiated an international alliance to justify its unilateral
military action against
Afghanistan. One of its early coalition partners was the Canadian
government which committed its unequivocal support for whatever forms of
assistance the United States might request. In this circumstance, it is
entirely reasonable that people in Canada examine carefully the record
of American foreign policy.
As I observed in my speech, this record is alarming and does not inspire
confidence. In Chile, the CIA-backed coup against the democratically
elected Allende government led to the deaths of over 30,000 people. In
El Salvador, the U.S. backed regime used death squads to kill about
75,000
people. In Nicaragua, the U.S. sponsored terrorist contra war led to
the deaths of over 30,000 people. The initial bombing of Iraq left over
200,000 dead, and the bombings have continued for the last ten
years. UNICEF estimates that over one million Iraqis have died, and
that 5,000 more die every month as a result of the U.N. imposed
sanctions,
enforced in their harshest form by U.S. power. The list does not stop
here. 150,000 were killed and 50,000 disappeared in Guatemala after the
1954 CIA-sponsored coup; over 2 million were killed in Vietnam; and
200,000 before that in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks.
Numerous authoritarian regimes have been backed by the United States
including
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the apartheid regime in South Africa, Suharto's
dictatorship in Indonesia, Marcos in the Philippines, and Israel's
various
occupations of Lebanon, the Golan Heights and the Palestinian
territories.
The U.S. pattern of foreign intervention has been to overthrow leftist
governments and to impose right wing regimes which in turn support U.S.
interests,
even if this means training and using death squads and assassinating
leftist
politicians and activists. To this end, it has a record of treating
civilians as entirely expendable.
It is in this context that I made my comment that the United States is
the
largest and most dangerous global force, unleashing horrific levels of
violence around the world, and that the path of U.S. foreign policy is
soaked in blood. The controversy generated by this comment has
surprisingly not addressed the veracity of this assessment of the U.S.
record. Instead, it has focused on my tone and choice of words
(inflammatory, excessive, inelegant, un-academic, angry, etc.).
Now I have to admit that my use of the words 'horrific violence' and
'soaked in blood' is very deliberate and carefully considered. I do not
use these words lightly. To successive United States administrations
the deaths resulting from its policies have been just so many statistics,
just so much 'collateral damage.' Rendering invisible the humanity of the
peoples targeted for attack is a strategy well used to hide the impact
of colonialist and imperialist interventions. Perhaps there is no more
potent a strategy of dehumanization than to proudly proclaim the accuracy
and
efficiency of 'smart' weapons systems, and of surgical and technological
precision, while rendering invisible the suffering bodies of these
peoples as disembodied statistics and mere 'collateral damage.' The use of
embodied language, grounded in the recognition of the actual blood running
through these bodies, is an attempt to humanize these peoples in profoundly
graphic terms. It compels us to recognize the sheer corporeality of the
terrain
upon which bombs rain and mass terror is waged. This language calls on
'us' to recognize that 'they' bleed just like 'we' do, that 'they' hurt and
suffer just like 'us.' We are complicit in this bloodletting when we
support American wars. Witness the power of this embodiment in the
shocked and horrified responses to my voice and my words, rather than to the
actual horror of these events. I will be the first to admit that it is
extremely
unnerving to 'see' blood in the place of abstract, general categories
and statistics. Yet this is what we need to be able to see if we are to
understand the terrible human costs of empire-building.
We have all felt the shock and pain of repeatedly witnessing the searing
images of violence unleashed upon those who died in New York and
Washington. The stories we have heard from their loved ones have made
us feel their terrible human loss. Yet where do we witness the pain of the
victims of U.S. aggression? How do we begin to grasp the extent of
their loss? Whose humanity do we choose to recognize and empathize with,
and
who becomes just so much 'collateral damage' to us? Anti-colonial and
anti-imperialist movements and theorists have long insisted on placing
the bodies and experiences of marginalized others at the centre of our
analysis of the social world. To fail to do so at this moment in history
would
be unconscionable.
In the aftermath of the responses to my speech, I am more convinced than
ever of the need to engage in the language and politics of embodied
thinking and speaking. After all, it is the lives, and deaths, of
millionsof human beings we are discussing.
This is neither a controversial nor a recent demand. Feminists
(such as of Mahasweta Devi, Toni Morrison, Gayatri Spivak and
Patricia Williams) have forcefully drawn our attention
to what is actually done to women's bodies in the course of mapping out
racist colonial relations. Frantz Fanon, one of the foremost theorists
of decolonization, studied and wrote about the role of violence in colonial
social organization and about the psychology of oppression; but he
described just as readily the bloodied, violated black bodies and the
"searing bullets" and "blood-stained knives" which were the order of the
day in the colonial world. Eduardo Galeano entitled one of his books
The Open Veins of Latin America and the post-colonial theorist Achille
Mbembe talks of the "mortification of the flesh," of the "mutilation" and
"decapitation" of oppressed bodies. Aime Cesaire's poetry pulses with
the physicality of blood, pain, fury and rage in his outcry against the
domination of African bodies. Even Karl Marx, recognized as one of the
founding fathers of the modern social sciences, wrote trenchant
critiques of capital, exploitation, and classical political economy; and
did not
flinch from naming the economic system he was studying 'vampire
capitalism.' In attempting to draw attention to the violent effects of
abstract and impersonal policies, I claim a proud intellectual pedigree.
INVOKING THE AMERICAN NATION
In my speech I argued that in order to legitimize the imperialist
aggression which the Bush administration is undertaking, the President
is invoking an American nation and people as being vengeful and
bloodthirsty. It is de rigueur in the social sciences to acknowledge
that the notion of a 'nation' or a 'people' is socially constructed. The
American nation is no exception.
If we consider the language used by Bush and his administration to
mobilize this nation for the war, we encounter the following: launching a
crusade; operation infinite justice; fighting the forces of evil and
darkness;
fighting the barbarians; hunting down the evil-doers; draining the
swamps of the Middle East, etc., etc. This language is very familiar to
peoples who have been colonized by Europe. Its use at this moment in
time
reveals that it is a fundamentalist and racialized western ideology which
is
being mobilized to rally the troops and to build a national and
international
consensus in defense of 'civilization.' It suggests that anyone who
hesitates to join in is also 'evil' and 'uncivilized.' In this vein, I
have repeatedly been accused of supporting extremist Islamist regimes
merely for criticizing US foreign policy and western colonialism.
Another tactic to mobilize support for the war has been the manipulation
of public opinion. Polls conducted in the immediate aftermath of the
September 11 attacks were used to repeatedly inform us that the
overwhelming majority of Americans allegedly supported a strong military
retaliation. They did not know against whom, but they purportedly
supported this strategy anyway. In both the use of language and these
polls, we are witnessing what Noam Chomsky has called the "manufacture
of consent." Richard Lowry, editor of the National Review opined, "If we
flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, this is part of
the solution." President Bush stated, "We will bear no distinction
between those who commit the terrorist attacks and those who harbor them."
Even as the bombing began last weekend, he declared that the war is
"broader"
than against just Afghanistan, that other nations have to decide if they
side with his administration or if they are "murderers and outlaws
themselves."
We have been asked by most public commentators to accept the calls for
military aggression against "evil-doers" as natural, understandable and
even reasonable, given the attacks on the United States. I reject this
position. It would be just as understandable a response to re-examine
American foreign policy, to address the root causes of the violent
attacks on the United States, and to make a commitment to abide by
international
law. In my speech, I urged women to break through this discourse of
'naturalizing' the military aggression, and recognize it for what it is,
vengeful retribution and an opportunity for a crude display of American
military might. We are entitled to ask: Who will make the decision
regarding which 'nations' are to be labeled as "murderers" and
"outlaws"? Which notions of 'justice' are to be upheld? Will the Bush
administration set the standard, even as it is overtly
institutionalizing racial profiling across the United States?
I make very clear distinctions between people in America and
their government's call for war. Many people in America are seeking to
contest the 'national' consensus being manufactured by speaking out and by
organizing rallies and peace marches in major cities, about which there
has been very little coverage in Canada. Irresponsible media reporting of
my comments which referred to Bush's invocation of the American nation as a
vengeful one deliberately took my words out of this context, repeating
them in one television broadcast after another in a grossly distorted
fashion.
My choice of language was, again, deliberate. I wanted to bring
attention to Bush's right wing, fundamentalist leanings and to the
neo-colonialist/imperialist practices of his administration. The words
'bloodthirsty' and 'vengeful' are designations most people are quite
comfortable attributing to 'savages' and to the 'uncivilized,' while the
United States is represented as the beacon of democracy and
civilization. The words 'bloodthirsty' and 'vengeful' make us confront
the nature of the ideological justification for this war, as well as its
historical roots, unsettling and discomforting as that might be.
THE POLITICS OF LIBERATING WOMEN
I have been taken to task for stating that there will be no emancipation
for women anywhere until western domination of the planet is ended. In
my speech I pointed to the importance of Afghanistan for its strategic
location near Central Asia's vast resources of oil and natural gas. I
think there is very little argument that the West continues to dominate
and consume a vast share of the world's resources. This is not a
controversial statement. Many prominent intellectuals, journalists and
activists
alike, have pointed out that this domination is rooted in the history of
colonialism and rests on the ongoing maintenance of the North/South
divide, and that it will continue to provoke violence and resistance across
the
planet. I argued that in the current climate of escalating militarism,
there will be precious little emancipation for women, either in the
countries of the North or the South.
In the specific case of Afghanistan, it was the American
administration's economic and political interests which led to its initial
support for, and arming of, Hekmatyar's Hezb i Islami and its support for
Pakistan's collaboration in, and organization of, the Taliban regime in the
mid-1990s. According to the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, the
United States and Unocal conducted negotiations with the Taliban for an oil
pipeline through Afghanistan for years in the mid-1990s. We have seen the
horrendous consequences this has had for women in Afghanistan.
When Afghan women's groups were calling attention to this U.S. support as a
major
factor in the Taliban regime's coming to power, we did not heed them.
We did not recognize that Afghan women's groups were in the front line
resisting the Taliban and its Islamist predecessors, including the
present militias of the Northern Alliance. Instead, we chose to see them
only
as 'victims' of 'Islamic culture,' to be pitied and 'saved' by the West.
Time and time again, third world feminists have pointed out to us the
pitfalls of rendering invisible the agency and resistance of women of the
South,
and of reducing women's oppression to various third world 'cultures.' Many
continue to ignore these insights. Now, the U.S. administration has
thrown its support behind the Northern Alliance, even as Afghan women's
groups
oppose the U.S. military attacks on Afghanistan, and raise serious concerns
about the record of the Northern Alliance in perpetuating human rights
abuses and violence against women in the country. If we listen to the
voices of these women, we will very quickly be disabused of the notion
that U.S. military intervention is going to lead to the emancipation of
women
in Afghanistan. Even before the bombings began, hundreds of thousands of
Afghan women were compelled to flee their homes and communities, and to
become refugees. The bombings of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and other
cities in the country will result in further loss of life, including the
lives of women and children. Over three million Afghan refugees are now
on the move in the wake of the U.S. attacks. How on earth can we justify
these bombings in the name of furthering women's emancipation?
My second point was that imperialism and militarism do not further
women's liberation in westerm countries either. Women have to be brought
into
line to support racist imperialist goals and practices, and they have to
live
with the men who have been brutalized in the waging of war when these
men come back. Men who kill women and children abroad are hardly likely to
come back cured of the effects of this brutalization. Again, this is
not a very controversial point of view. Women are taught to support
military
aggressions, which is then presented as being in their 'national' interest.
These are hardly the conditions in which women's freedoms can be
furthered. As a very small illustration, just witness the very public
vilification I have been subjected to for speaking out in opposition to
this war.
I have been asked by my detractors that if I, as a woman, I am
so critical of western domination, why do I live here? It could just as
readily be asked of them that if they are so contemptuous of the
non-western world, why do they so fervently desire the oil, trade, cheap
labor and other resources of that world? Challenges to our presence in
the West have long been answered by people of color who say, We are here
because you were (are?) there! Migrants find ourselves in multiple
locations for a myriad of reasons, personal, historical and
political. Wherever we reside, however, we claim the right to speak and
participate in public life.
CLOSING WORDS..
My speech was made to rally the women's movement in Canada to oppose the
war. Journalists and editors across the country have called me idiotic,
foolish, stupid and just plain nutty. While a few journalists and
columnists have attempted balanced coverage of my speech, too many
sectors of the media have resorted to vicious personal attacks. Like
others, I
must express a concern that this passes for intelligent commentary in
the mainstream media.
The manner in which I have been vilified is difficult to understand,
unless one sees it as a visceral response to an 'ungrateful immigrant' or
an
uppity woman of colour who dares to speak out. Vituperation and
ridicule are two of the most common forms of silencing dissent. The
subsequent
harassment and intimidation which I have experienced, as have some of my
colleagues, confirms that the suppression of debate is more important to
many supporters of the current frenzied war rhetoric than is the open
discussion of policy and its effects. Fortunately, I have also received
strong messages of support. Day by day the opposition to this
unconscionable war is growing in Canada and all over the world.
I would like to thank all of my family, friends, colleagues and allies
who have supported and encouraged me.
*************************
"Americans have political problems which they don't even recognize as
political. The impoverishment of the country by the arms race is a good
example."
- American author Donald Barthelme (interviewed by Barbara Roe, 1988)
_______________________________________________________
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