NIE! znowu nie!

[Gość: Guardian]

Not again

Tomorrow thousands of people will take to the streets of London to protest
against an attack on Iraq. Here, the distinguished Indian writer Arundhati
Roy argues that it is the demands of global capitalism that are driving us to
war

Friday September 27, 2002
The Guardian

Recently, those who have criticised the actions of the US government (myself
included) have been called "anti-American". Anti-Americanism is in the
process of being consecrated into an ideology. The term is usually used by
the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say
inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the
chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the
argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.
What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to
free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you
have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the
hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear
weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to
withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?

This sly conflation of America's music, literature, the breathtaking physical
beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism
of the US government's foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely effective
strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated
city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy
fire.

There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their
government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious
critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in US government policy
come from American citizens. (Similarly, in India, not hundreds, but millions
of us would be ashamed and offended, if we were in any way implicated with
the present Indian government's fascist policies.)

To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, is not just
racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in
terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you
don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good, you're evil. If you're not
with us, you're with the terrorists.

Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-
September 11 rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. I've realised
that it's not. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived,
dangerous war. Every day I'm taken aback at how many people believe that
opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism. Now that the
initial aim of the war - capturing Osama bin Laden - seems to have run into
bad weather, the goalposts have been moved. It's being made out that the
whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan
women from their burqas. We're being asked to believe that the US marines are
actually on a feminist mission. (If so, will their next stop be America's
military ally, Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this way: in India there are some
pretty reprehensible social practices, against "untouchables", against
Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even
worse ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they be
bombed?

Uppermost on everybody's mind, of course, particularly here in America, is
the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly 3,000 civilians lost
their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The
rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is
raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely
knows that no war, no act of revenge, will blunt the edges of their pain or
bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War
is only a brutal desecration of their memory.

To fuel yet another war - this time against Iraq - by manipulating people's
grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling
detergent or running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of
meaning. We are seeing a pillaging of even the most private human feelings
for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a state to do to
its people.

The US government says that Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, a cruel
military despot who has committed genocide against his own people. That's a
fairly accurate description of the man. In 1988, he razed hundreds of
villages in northern Iraq and killed thousands of Kurds. Today, we know that
that same year the US government provided him with $500m in subsidies to buy
American farm products. The next year, after he had successfully completed
his genocidal campaign, the US government doubled its subsidy to $1bn. It
also provided him with high-quality germ seed for anthrax, as well as
helicopters and dual-use material that could be used to manufacture chemical
and biological weapons.

It turns out that while Saddam was carrying out his worst atrocities, the US
and UK governments were his close allies. So what changed?

In August 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so much that he had
committed an act of war, but that he acted independently, without orders from
his masters. This display of independence was enough to upset the power
equation in the Gulf. So it was decided that Saddam be exterminated, like a
pet that has outlived its owner's affection.

A decade of bombing has not managed to dislodge him. Now, almost 12 years on,
Bush Jr is ratcheting up the rhetoric once again. He's proposing an all-out
war whose goal is nothing short of a regime change. Andrew H Card Jr, the
White House chief-of-staff, described how the administration was stepping up
its war plans for autumn: "From a marketing point of view," he said, "you
don't introduce new products in August." This time the catchphrase for
Washington's "new product" is not the plight of people in Kuwait but the
assertion that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Forget "the feckless
moralising of the 'peace' lobbies," wrote Richard Perle, chairman of the
Defence Policy Board. The US will " act alone if necessary" and use a "pre-
emptive strike" if it determines it is in US interests.

Weapons inspectors have conflicting reports about the status of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction, and many have said clearly that its arsenal has
been dismantled and that it does not have the capacity to build one. What if
Iraq does have a nuclear weapon? Does that justify a pre-emptive US strike?
The US has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. It's the only
country in the world to have actually used them on civilian populations. If
the US is justified in launching a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, why, any
nuclear power is justified in carrying out a pre-emptive attack on any other.
India could attack Pakistan, or the other way around.

Recently, the US played an important part in forcing India and Pakistan back
from the brink of war. Is it so hard for it to take its own advice? Who is
guilty of feckless moralising? Of preaching peace while it wages war? The US,
which Bush has called "the most peaceful nation on earth", has been at war
with one country or another every year for the last 50 years.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for
hegemony, for business. And then, of course, there's the business of war. In
his book on globalisation, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Tom Friedman
says: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.
McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas.

[Gość: mefet]

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