[Reader-list] Guardian article by A Roy

[Dr. Alok Rai]

I don't know if this article has already been circulated on the List. If it
has, apologies.

Alok Rai

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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 million
s 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. And the hidden fist
that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is
called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." Perhaps this was
written in a moment of vulnerability, but it's certainly the most succinct,
accurate description of the project of corporate globalisation that I have
read.
After September 11 and the war against terror, the hidden hand and fist have
had their cover blown - and we have a clear view now of America's other
weapon - the free market - bearing down on the developing world, with a
clenched, unsmiling smile. The Task That Never Ends is America's perfect
war, the perfect vehicle for the endless expansion of American imperialism.
In Urdu, the word for profit is fayda. Al-qaida means the word, the word of
God, the law. So, in India, some of us call the War Against Terror, Al-qaida
vs Al-fayda - The Word vs The Profit (no pun intended). For the moment it
looks as though Al-fayda will carry the day. But then you never know...
In the past 10 years, the world's total income has increased by an average
of 2.5% a year. And yet the numbers of the poor in the world has increased
by 100 million. Of the top 100 biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not
countries. The top 1% of the world has the same combined income as the
bottom 57%, and the disparity is growing. Now, under the spreading canopy of
the war against terror, this process is being hustled along. The men in
suits are in an unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down, contracts are being
signed, patents registered, oil pipelines laid, natural resources plundered,
water privatised and democracies undermined.
But as the disparity between the rich and poor grows, the hidden fist of the
free market has its work cut out. Multinational corporations on the prowl
for "sweetheart deals" that yield enormous profits cannot push them through
in developing countries without the active connivance of state machinery -
the police, the courts, sometimes even the army. Today, corporate
globalisation needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt,
preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries, to push through
unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies. It needs a press that pretends to
be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear
bombs, standing armies, sterner immigration laws, and watchful coastal
patrols to make sure that its only money, goods, patents and services that
are globalised - not the free movement of people, not a respect for human
rights, not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and
nuclear weapons, or greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, or, God
forbid, justice. It's as though even a gesture towards international
accountability would wreck the whole enterprise.
Close to one year after the war against terror was officially flagged off in
the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country freedoms are being
curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being
suspended in the name of protecting democracy. All kinds of dissent is being
defined as "terrorism". Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the war
against terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to
continue their way of life. When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves
tremble in their quarters. So, it's hard for me to say this, but the
American way of life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't
acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty
empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from
within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared. As the
war against terror casts its net wider and wider, America's corporate heart
is haemorrhaging. A world run by a handful of greedy bankers and CEOs whom
nobody elected can't possibly last.
Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but
because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power:
21st-century market-capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same
reasons.


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