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HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section:
Viewpoints,
Outlook
Sept. 8, 2002, 7:03PM
There's still time for Americans to stop insanity By ROBERT JENSEN
The evening of Sept. 11, I wrote an essay that ended with a plea that "the
insanity stop here," that the brutal act of terrorism not spark more
terrorism, theirs or ours.
But the insanity didn't stop.
Instead, the Bush administration cynically manipulated people's grief and
rage to unleash an unlimited war against endless enemies, which has made
the world more dangerous and the American people less secure in any land,
home or abroad.
A year later, it's clear the so-called "war on terrorism" is primarily a
war to project U.S power around the world. Its goal is to extend and deepen
U..S. control, especially in the energy-rich Middle East and Central Asia.
Ordinary people have not benefited, and will not benefit, from this war or
the economics that drive it.
The antiwar movement argued from the start that conventional war could not
produce security from terrorism, and we were right. Administration officials
this summer acknowledged that the attack on Afghanistan didn't significantly
diminish the terrorist threat and may have complicated counterterrorism
efforts by dispersing potential attackers.
Those of us who criticized the mad rush to war also suggested the Bush
administration would use terrorism as a pretext to justify a wider war;
again, we were right. Officials have floundered trying to justify an attack
on Iraq with claims about Iraqi connections to al-Qaida or other terrorist
networks that are so unconvincing they have largely been abandoned.
Claims about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction are more plausible,
but riddled with inconsistencies. Iraq may have developed, or be developing,
limited biological or chemical weapons programs, but no one has offered
proof or a scenario in which Iraq might use them, except in the case of a
U.S. attack. And the Bush administration has repeatedly announced that it
won't be satisfied with renewed weapons inspections and is determined to
topple the Saddam Hussein regime, destroying hopes for the diplomacy needed
for multilateral regional arms control.
Bush's talk of democracy in Afghanistan or Iraq is a bad joke. U.S.
manipulation of the political process in Afghanistan to install a handpicked
puppet, Hamid Karzai (now being guarded by U.S. troops and agents to protect
him from his own people), was barely concealed. In Iraq, "democracy" will be
acceptable to the Bush administration so long as a democratic process
produces a similarly pliant leader.
These failed attempts to build a case for war only highlight what has long
been clear: The war in Afghanistan and a possible war in Iraq are about
U.S.. dominance, at two levels. The first involves the specific resources
of those regions. In the case of Afghanistan, the concern is pipelines to
carry the oil and natural gas of the Caspian region to deep-water ports. In
Iraq, it's about controlling the country with the world's second-largest
oil reserves.
Beyond those direct interests, the logic of empire requires violence on this
scale; when challenged, imperial powers strike back to maintain credibility
and extend control. U.S. control is through mechanisms different from Rome
or Britain in their imperial phases, but there can be no doubt that we are
an empire.
Much of the world is frightened by these imperial ambitions. A friend
traveling in Europe reports back that people talk of their fear of
America's militarism.
Politicians in allied nations are questioning, or openly repudiating,
American war plans.
The task for U.S. citizens is clear: We must ensure that the U.S. empire is
the first empire dismantled from within, through progressive political
movements that reject world dominance that perpetuates inequality in favor
of our place in a world struggling for justice and peace.
On Sept. 11, we got a glimpse of what it might look like if the empire is
taken down from the outside.
Today we still have a choice. We can learn from history and step back from
empire, or suffer the fate that history makes clear lies down the imperial
path.
We still have time to turn away from empire and toward democracy, away from
unilateralism toward engagement, away from hoarding power and toward seeking
peace.
We still have time to demand of our government that the insanity stop here.
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Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin
and author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the
Mainstream. He can be reached at [log in to unmask]
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