Title: Message
Global Justice
IT’S EMPIRE
VERSUS DEMOCRACY
By Tom
Hayden
In the aftermath of September 11, American
conservatives launched a political and intellectual offensive to discredit any
public questioning of the Bush administration’s open-ended, blank-check,
undefined war against terrorism. The conservative message, delivered through
multiple media outlets, was that dissenters from the Bush administration’s war
were those who allegedly “blamed America first,” that is, dared to explore
whether Bin Laden’s terrorism was possibly rooted in Western policies toward the
Islamic world, the Palestinians, and the oil monarchies of the Middle
East.
The strike against domestic dissent was a preemptive one, since
most progressives were too stunned, traumatized, and confused by the September
11 attacks to dissent anyway. But Susan Sontag was targeted for a right-wing
stoning for an article in the New Yorker, and Bill Maher for not being
politically correct. Vice President Cheney’s wife helped monitor college
classrooms for dissenting voices. Rapid articles appeared in the New Republic.
Intimidating full-page ads by William Bennett announced plans to expose anyone
who “blamed America first.” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer added an
official warning when he crafted an “offhand” remark that Americans should
“watch what they say.” Chief Republican political strategist Karl Rove proposed
that his party’s candidates make the war on terrorism an election issue. Senate
Republican leader Trent Lott accused Democratic Senator Tom Daschle of being
soft on Saddam Hussein (because Daschle opposed Arctic oil drilling). The
chairman of the Republican House Campaign Committee declared that all
questioners were “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
Civil liberties
were rapidly becoming the domestic collateral damage of the war on terrorism. It
almost could be said they died without a fight, except for a brave but
ineffective handful of stragglers in their progressive enclaves.
Some will
ask, so what? Isn’t the right to dissent a secondary concern when thousands of
innocent Americans have been killed in terrorist attacks? A fair question. The
truth is that Osama Bin Laden set the stage for this political shift to the
right by his strategy of targeting civilians. And Bin Laden is no aberration.
Radical Islamic fundamentalism has risen in the vacuum created by the failures
of political Arab nationalism (and the end of the Soviet Union, which, whatever
else may be said, supported non-religious revolutionary movements). The radical
religious-based movements are here to stay.
So it is understandable that
the vast majority of Americans responded to September 11 with existential cries
for public safety and a military response. And if Bin Laden or his successor
carry out further attacks against American civilians, the politics of repression
will deepen. The problem is that conservatives inside and outside the Bush
administration are seeking to take advantage of America’s understandable fears
to push a right-wing agenda that would not otherwise be palatable. In short,
they are playing patriot games with the nation’s future.
The Wall Street
Journal gave the secret away in an October 2001 editorial declaring that
September 11 created a unique political opportunity to advance the whole
Republican-conservative platform. Worse, the real conservative agenda is to
create an American empire, not simply rout out the al-Qaida organization. No
sooner had the September 11 attacks occurred than the Wall Street Journal’s
editorial writer, Max Boot, published “The Case for American Empire” in the
conservative organ, the Weekly Standard. Boot endorsed a return to nineteenth
century British imperialism, this time under American hegemony. “Afghanistan and
other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign
administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith
helmets” (see NYT, Mar. 31, 2002). The orchestrated call for empire was “out of
the closet,” according to conservative columnist Charles Krautheimer, and was
echoed in the works of historians Paul Kennedy and Robert D. Kaplan (who found
nice things to say about Emperor Tiberius, namely that he used force to
“preserve a peace that was favorable to Rome”).
The skilled but immoral
and deceitful machinations of these would-be Romans have been described by David
Brock in his confessional bestseller, Blinded by the Right, the Conscience of an
Ex-Conservative. Brock should know the game. He consciously distorted the facts
to gun down Anita Hill and protect Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme
Court. Not satisfied, he invented the “Troopergate” allegations against the
Clintons. He admits that the conservative agenda was to impeach Clinton even
before there was a Monica Lewinsky scandal. He describes in detail the “vast
right-wing conspiracy” of investigators, muckrakers, pundits, talk show hosts,
and hard-line Republican Congressmen who made Newt Gingrich Speaker for two
years, instigated the Iran-Contra scandal, nearly brought down Clinton, and
eventually mobilized the ground troops which shut down the Florida recount for
George Bush.
With the Cold War ended, these conservatives asked what the
new enemy threat was that would justify the continuation of a growing military
budget and an authoritarian emphasis on national security. The answer, brewing
long before September 11, was the threat of “international terror”—sometimes
described as Islamic fundamentalism, sometimes as the drug cartels—but in any
event suitably nebulous and scary to justify the resurrection of priorities not
seen since the Cold War.
Let us review those Cold War priorities for
those who didn’t live through the era of the ’50s and ’60s, the era that
shaped—indeed, finalized—the consciousness of the Bush family, Dick Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld, and many others fingering the military trigger today. The
fundamental paradigm of the Cold War era was that an innocent democratic America
was threatened by a shadowy Communist conspiracy representing two billion people
in countries with nuclear capabilities and an amoral disregard for human life.
This fearful paradigm justified America’s first permanent military
establishment, alliances with despotic right-wing dictators around the world,
and a domestic politics that smeared dissenters who were charged with being soft
on communism.”
Those are exactly the dynamics in play again today. The
difference is that, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. government and
our multinational corporations are bidding for global preeminence. According to
interviews with White House officials by Nicholas Lemann in the New Yorker, the
new American strategy is to transcend traditional balance-of-power politics by
an assertion of American military dominance, which incidentally would lay the
foundation of empire. One example of this imperial thinking is the leaked
Pentagon strategy paper of January 2002 which called for a new reliance on
usable nuclear weapons targeted for possible use against China, Russia, and
several other countries. The previous nuclear strategy of “mutual assured
destruction” was dangerous enough, but this radical new U.S. doctrine—never
publicly debated—introduces the ambition of nuclear dominance.
What can
be done about this journey from Afghanistan to empire? For now, counting on an
electoral alternative seems like wishful thinking. The Democratic Party,
whatever doubts it may harbor, will remain devoted to the war on terrorism,
including spending for a new generation of weapons and reinvigorated
intelligence programs, as long as it is popular. The framework of the war on
terrorism will be accepted as the litmus test of political legitimacy, and
partisan differences will be limited to social security, unemployment benefits,
Enron-inspired regulatory reform, and the like. Those differences are not
unimportant, but the truth is that spending alone on the war on terrorism will
cause permanent underfunding of important social programs for many years to
come. For the Democrats to offer themselves as simply a liberal version of the
war on terrorism will not address the root causes nor protect programs for which
earlier generations of liberals, unionists, and Democrats have
struggled.
The same bipartisan lockstep politics dominated the Cold War
era of the ’50s. Democrats stood for civil rights and progressive domestic
issues, but blindly accepted the doctrine that “politics ends at the water’s
edge” until the anti-Vietnam movement finally shattered the consensus. It will
take the same popular discontent in the years ahead to shake the Democrats and
challenge the framework of the war on terrorism. At first, that discontent will
arise from a prophetic minority.
How to make it a mainstream issue?
Conservative crusades have a way of backfiring when, unchecked by effective
dissent, they go too far. McCarthyism began to unravel when the Wisconsin
senator started searching for Communists in the army. The Nixon Administration,
teethed on McCarthyism, repeated the same extremist folly with Watergate.
Inevitably, the same fate awaits the unchecked war on terrorism. A combination
of military quagmire abroad and neglect of priorities at home will sooner or
later shape an opposition.
The U.S. military is involved in more
multiplying fronts of the war on terrorism (the Middle East, Afghanistan, the
southern Philippines, Colombia, Georgia, Indonesia, not to mention threats of
future action against Iraq, Iran, and North Korea) than it can sustain without
eventually causing domestic repercussions. These interventions are being carried
out—thus far—with little or no congressional oversight or fiscal accountability.
The Bush defense budget augmentation request of $50 billion—which itself is
larger than the military budget of any other country—when combined with massive
tax breaks for the wealthy will steadily erode funding for Social Security,
health care, education, and the environment.
At the same time, a new
human rights movement is sweeping the planet, with protests against corporate
globalization and militarism. Before September 11, these American protests,
especially those in Seattle in December 1999, were more forceful than any I can
recall since the 1960s. While that American protest energy has been drained or
divided since September 11, the battle continues to explode globally in places
like Quebec City, Genoa, and Porto Allegre. Corporate globalization, led by the
U.S. government, has spawned a new globalization of conscience. For a valid
comparison of the historic impact, one would have to revisit the global
confrontations of 1968 and, before the ’60s, the period of the 1840s in Europe,
when the world order was last threatened and rearranged by revolts from
below.
The war on terrorism is simply incompatible with serious efforts
to alleviate world poverty, just as it was impossible for President Lyndon
Johnson to afford both “guns and butter” in the ’60s. There are two billion
people on the planet working for daily wages of less than two U.S. dollars. At
ten hours a day in degrading workplace conditions, without health benefits,
without union protections. A recent appeal by workers in Bangladesh, a Muslim
country that supplies most of America’s apparel, pleaded for thirty-four cents
in wages from every seventeen-dollar U.S. baseball cap, up from twenty-four
cents. Global sweatshops are among the petri dishes in which anti-Western
violence is grown.
The conservatives strain to deny any connection
between world poverty and terrorism. That is what their bullying tirades against
“blaming America first” are all about. They fear the blame. But they cannot deny
that humiliation fostered by poverty and arrogance is a long fuse leading to the
suicide bomber.
Take the story of Laura Blumenfeld as an example. A young
reporter for the Washington Post, her father, a rabbi, was shot and wounded by a
Palestinian militant in Jerusalem in 1986. The assailant simply wanted to kill a
Jew, and Laura Blumenfeld’s father was available. At first seeking revenge,
Laura Blumenfeld concealed her identity and began a correspondence with the
imprisoned Palestinian gunman, finally revealing herself and confronting him in
a courtroom. She then came to know his family, ventured into a complicated
reconciliation, and wrote a book on her experience. Reflecting on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she told the New York Times on April 6, 2002:
I think for them [the Palestinians], humiliation is sometimes more
important than the actual offense. Humiliation drives revenge more than anything
. . .They feel honor and pride are very important in their culture, and they
feel utterly humiliated, whether it’s by roadblocks or just by the sheer wealth
and success of society that’s set up right next to them . . . I found that
feelings of humiliation and shame fuel revenge more than anything
else.
Blumenfeld’s thoughtful analysis distinguishes mere poverty from
shame and degradation. Poverty is sometimes bearable if the poor feel respected
or hopeful; for example, the Aristide government in Haiti has campaigned on a
slogan of “poverty with dignity.” But usually the policies that allow poverty to
grow as if it were a natural condition of market economics are accompanied by a
rationale that transfers blame from the rich and powerful to the poor and
powerless. That shaming inherent in globalization is the triggering source of
violence, as shown in numerous studies such as those of James Gilligan at
Harvard. The syndrome we can call the will to empire (like Nietzche’s famous
will to power) is wrapped into a need to shame others.
Instead of
recognizing the reality of global interdependence, the will to empire seeks
American independence by plunging other nations, cultures, and classes into
dependence, which in turn triggers a spiral of resentment and resistance.
Actually, the conservatives who condemn thinking about “root causes” as “blaming
America” have a root cause in mind themselves—the belief that all terrorists and
the cultures that spawn them are incorrigible enemies because they are “evil.”
American conservatives substitute theology for sociology, psychology, and
history. Since the evil they seek to purge is defined as innate to human nature,
and satanic, it arises from no causes that can be addressed politically or
economically. The only option for Pentagon planners when confronted with evil is
war, which is the secular equivalent of exorcism, or conversion to the American
Way of Life.
That this is actually a logical crutch, a rhetorical device,
is shown by the ease with which the stamp of evil is applied and removed.
Mujahideen, including Osama Bin Laden, were not “evil” when the U.S. government
supplied them with weapons and funding in the 1980s, because then the Islamic
fundamentalists were battling true “evil” in the form of the Soviet Union. But
the label of evil has its uses. It serves to shut off rational debate, for
example. It stimulates public fear. It justifies the killing of people whose
annihilation might be problematic if they were classified as simply desperate.
Fighting evil is good politics.
A domestic analogy might be useful in
understanding how this process works. In 1988, George Bush (senior) was battling
for the presidency against Michael Dukakis. Bush’s media consultant then was
Roger Ailes, now the top executive at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox television news. The
Bush campaign concocted the famous “Willie Horton” ads, depicting a shadowy and
menacing black figure, and blamed Dukakis for being soft on crime. The attack,
which manipulated fears of black violence, served the purpose of the Bush
campaign. Taking advantage of the formula, the Republican conservatives ushered
in a law-and-order politics that justified the drug wars, disproportionate
sentences for powder versus crack cocaine, and the largest prison build-up per
capita in the world. In the process, job training and numerous social programs
were slashed, private investment was drawn toward speculative mergers instead of
the inner cities, and the oppression of the underclass became so severe that
fully one-third of all African-American males between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-five were ensnared in the criminal justice system. As politics, the
law-and-order campaign was successful, while the long-term consequences of
worsening the racial divide in America were left for a future generation to sort
out.
The current war on terrorism is the internationalization of the
Willie Horton campaign. Instead of going along with the conservative agenda out
of fear or expediency, it is time to outline an alternative.
The litmus
test for political bravery at present is whether one questions the framework of
the war on terrorism. Progressives might still disagree about whether a U.S.
military response against al-Qaida was justified, but all can agree that while
seeking to demobilize al-Qaida is one thing, using September 11 as a pretext for
an open-ended war leading to a new empire is, to say the least, a policy worthy
of debate. Even if one supports the right of U.S. self-defense against al-Qaida,
there should be broad consensus on the need for congressional hearings and
oversight. Patriotism should not mean the restoration of the imperial
presidency.
Were there flaws or biases in U.S. intelligence gathering that
made September 11 more likely? Have the Taliban actually been defeated, or
simply faded into the mainstream population? Are Afghan women better off under
warlords? Will a global glut of heroin result from greater opium reduction
“expected to enrich tribal leaders whose support is vital to the American-backed
government” (NYT, April 1, 2002)? Is Texas-based Unocal’s oil pipeline across
Afghanistan now “feasible once again” (NYT, April 1, 2002)? Should Bush have
appointed a former Unocal consultant the new American ambassador to Afghanistan?
The nearly one year of silence in Washington on these reasonable questions is a
measure of the fear that has eroded the democratic process
already.
Beyond Afghanistan, the political questions are whether this war
should be conducted unilaterally by the executive branch, whether its budget
should be unlimited, whether congressional oversight should be waived, and
whether the battle should be conducted wherever undefined terrorists are alleged
to be based, whatever their threat to the American people.
Is the Bush
administration, intoxicated with gladiator fantasies, trying to build a new
Roman Empire by neutralizing the checks and balance intended by having a
vigorous legislative branch? (It should be remembered that the Russell Crowe
character in Gladiator was committed to defending the Roman Senate and the
Republic against the imperial designs of the emperor—this is one case where
Washington should definitely mimic Hollywood.)
How to challenge this
imperial framework cloaked, with apparent legitimacy, as the war on terror? My
advice is: carefully, thoughtfully, but deliberately and for the long haul. For
demonstrators interested in mass outreach in a time of manipulated patriotism,
it may mean calling for a process of greater oversight, greater attention to
priorities, and greater tolerance of dissent, instead of, for example, calls for
military withdrawal from Afghanistan. For Democrats in the mainstream, it will
mean provoking debate in the party over how to challenge the Bush framework,
then nurturing and promoting a new generation of Democrats for peace.
In
either scenario, here are some fruitful issues to raise that will resonate with
a majority of voters: First, progressives and Democrats should take the position
that those in power have failed over the years to make America safer from
terrorist attack. There should be full public disclosure of what Condoleeza Rice
has called the increased “chatter” of intelligence cables concerning a possible
al-Qaida attack before it happened. Questions should be asked. For example: Why
did the Federal Aeronautics Administration (FAA) make a finding that Bin Laden
was “a significant threat to civil aviation” in late July 2001, but do nothing
about airline security regulations which were so lax that knives with four-inch
blades could be carried on planes? These questions go to the heart of the
bipartisan special-interest nature of the state that has strangled
accountability and democracy for a very long time.
Public questioning is
urgently needed about the unprecedented U.S. strategy of making nuclear warfare
feasible in the future. This classified military strategy represents the return
of Dr. Strangelove to the Pentagon, and is certain to make Americans less safe
from an uncontrolled nuclear arms race.
Another key question that needs
to be addressed concerns budget priorities. In concrete, easy-to-understand
terms, the costs of the war on terrorism need to be conveyed to a public now
shielded from the facts. For the Bush administration and the military-industrial
complex, the moment has come for a massive increase in Pentagon spending.
Non-governmental organizations and Democrats must make clear to the public that
the daily spending on terrorism means less funding for everything from family
farms to inner city schools.
Next, progressives and Democrats should
question whether the massive intelligence failure surrounding September 11
really justifies returning to the Cold War policies of hiring as operatives or
allies the same unsavory elements that brought us the Bay of Pigs and the
Central American “dirty wars” of the ’70s and ’80s.
The war on terrorism
should not become pretext for undermining the Freedom of Information Act and
preventing disclosure of presidential files from the first Bush era. Bush’s
solicitor general is arguing in court that government has a right to misinform
and disinform the American people.
Nor should the war be a further excuse
to advance the agenda of the oil industry, whether drilling in Alaska,
protecting Occidental pipelines in Columbia, enmeshing ourselves with the Saudi
royal family, or launching joint ventures for Unocal on the old Silk Road
through southern Asia.
Before any further subsidies are granted to the
Bush-Cheney friends in the oil industry, the government should take the lead in
charting a transition to energy conservation and renewable resources. A modest
fuel-efficiency increase of 2.7 miles per gallon would eliminate the need for
any Persian Gulf oil. In the Middle East, the U.S. should promote a settlement
that results in a viable Palestinian state, the end of Israeli occupation, and a
military guarantee of secure Israeli borders. Instead, the war on terrorism is
being used as the new rationale for the use of U.S. weapons in assisting an
Israeli occupation.
Finally, the “new world order” should be based on
living wages, not starvation sweatshops, and the United States should lead the
G-7 powers to meet the aspirations of the United Nations to double foreign aid
by 2015. So-called “free trade” and “fast track” agreements now blatantly being
justified by the war on terrorism will reinforce divisions between the rich
minority and the poor majority. Demanding peace is not enough. What is at stake
is a conflict in the American soul between empire and democracy that will shadow
our lifetimes.
http://www.tomhayden.com/GJ.1.html
