At
this grim moment, we can do nothing to stop the ongoing invasion.
But that does not mean that the task is over for people who
have some concern for justice, freedom, and human rights.
Far from it. The
tasks will be more urgent than before, whatever the outcome of the
attack. And about that,
no one has any idea: not the Pentagon, the CIA, or anyone else.
Possibilities range from the horrifying humanitarian catastrophes
of which aid and relief agencies that work in Iraq have been warning,
to relatively benign outcomes – though even if not a hair is harmed
on anyone’s head that will in no way mitigate the criminality of those
willing to subject helpless people to such terrible risks, for their
own shameful purposes.
As
for the outcomes, it will be a long time before preliminary judgments
can be made. One immediate
task is to lend what weight we can to more benign outcomes.
That means, primarily, caring for the needs of the victims,
not just of this war but of Washington’s vicious
and destructive sanctions regime of the past ten years, which has
has devastated the civillian society, strengthened the ruling tyrant,
and compelled the population to rely on him for survival.
As has been pointed out for years, the sanctions therefore
undermined the hope that Saddam Hussein would go the way of other
murderous tyrants no less vicious than he.
That includes a terrible rogues gallery of criminals who were
also supported by those now at the helm in Washington,
in many cases to the last days of their bloody rule: Ceausescu, to
mention only one obvious and highly pertinent case.
Elementary
decency would call for massive reparations from the US;
lacking that, at least a flow of aid to Iraqis, so that they can rebuild
what has been destroyed in their own way, not as dictated by people
in Washington and Crawford whose higher faith is that power comes
from the barrel of a gun.
But
the issues are much more fundamental, and long range.
Opposition to the invasion of Iraq
has been entirely without historical precedent.
That is why Bush had to meet his two cronies at a US
military base on an island, where they would be safely removed from
any mere people. The
opposition may be focused on the invasion of Iraq,
but its concerns go far beyond that.
There is growing fear of US
power, which is considered to be the greatest threat to peace in much
of the world, probably by a large majority.
And with the technology of destruction now at hand, rapidly
becoming more lethal and ominous, threat to peace means threat to
survival.
Fear
of the US
government is not based solely on this invasion, but on the background
from which it arises: An openly-declared determination to rule the
world by force, the one dimension in which US
power is supreme, and to make sure that there will never be any challenge
to that domination. Preventive
wars are to be fought at will: Preventive, not Pre-emptive.
Whatever the justifications for pre-emptive war might sometimes
be, they do not hold for the very different category of preventive
war: the use of military force to eliminate an imagined or invented
threat. The openly-announced
goal is to prevent any challenge to the “power, position, and prestige
of the United States.”
Such challenge, now or in the future, and any sign that it may emerge,
will be met with overwhelming force by the rulers of the country that
now apparently outspends the rest of the world combined on means of
violence, and is forging new and very dangerous paths over near-unanimous
world opposition: development of lethal weaponry in space, for example.
It
is worth bearing in mind that the words I quoted are not those of
Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or other radical statist extremists
now in charge. Rather,
they are the words of the respected elder statesman Dean Acheson,
40 years ago, when he was a senior advisor to the Kennedy Administration.
He was justifying US actions against Cuba
– knowing that the international terrorist campaign aimed at “regime
change” had just brought the world close to terminal nuclear war.
Nevertheless, he instructed the American Society of International
Law, no “legal issue” arises in the case of a US
response to a challenge to its “power, position, and prestige,” specifically
terrorist attacks and economic warfare against Cuba.
I
bring this up as a reminder that the issues are deep-seated.
The current administration is at the extremist end of the policy-planning
spectrum, and its adventurism and penchant for violence are unusually
dangerous. But the spectrum
is not that broad, and unless these deeper issues are addressed, we
can be confident that other ultrareactionary extremists will gain
control of incredible means of devastation and repression.
The
“imperial ambition” of the current power holders, as it is frankly
called, has aroused shudders throughout the world, including the mainstream
of the establishment at home.
Elsewhere, of course, the reactions are far more fearful, particularly
among the traditional victims.
They know too much history, the hard way, to be comforted by
exalted rhetoric. They
have heard enough of that over the centuries as they were being beaten
by the club called “civilization.”
Just a few days ago, the head of the non-aligned movement,
which includes the governments of most of the world’s population,
described the Bush administration as more aggressive than Hitler.
He happens to be very pro-American, and right in the middle
of Washington’s international
economic projects. And
there is little doubt that he speaks for many of the traditional victims,
and by now even for many of their traditional oppressors.
It
is easy to go on, and important to think these matters through, with
care and honesty.
Even
before the Bush administration sharply escalated these fears in recent
months, intelligence and international affairs specialists were informing
anyone who wanted to listen that the policies Washington is pursuing
are likely to lead to an increase in terror and proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction, for revenge or simply deterrence.
There are two ways for Washington
to respond to the threats engendered by its actions and startling
proclamations. One way
is to try to alleviate the threats by paying some attention to legitimate
grievances, and by agreeing to become a civilized member of a world
community, with some respect for world order and its institutions.
The other way is to construct even more awesome engines of
destruction and domination, so that any perceived challenge, however
remote, can be crushed – provoking new and greater challenges.
That way poses serious dangers to the people of the US
and the world, and may, very possibly, lead to extinction of the species
– not an idle speculation.
Terminal
nuclear war has been avoided by near miracle in the past; a few months
before Acheson’s speech, to mention one case that should be fresh
in our minds today. Threats
are severe and mounting. The
world has good reason to watch what is happening in Washington
with fear and trepidation. The
people who are best placed to relieve those fears, and to lead the
way to a more hopeful and constructive future, are the citizens of
the United States,
who can shape the future.
Those
are among the deep concerns that must, I think, be kept clearly in
mind while watching events unfold in their unpredictable way as the
most awesome military force in human history is unleashed against
a defenseless enemy by a political leadership that has compiled a
frightening record of destruction and barbarism since it took the
reins of power over 20 years ago.
