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The historian’s business is to reveal the less obvious features hidden
from a careless eye in the present situation. What history can bring to
moral and political life is a trained eye for the situation in which one
has to act.
R.G. Collingwood An Autobiography
OUP 1939 p100
We are told over
and over that the United States is entitled to go to war to disarm the
tyrant Hussein and deprive him of his `weapons of mass destruction.’ We
are told that `the war on terrorism’ requires prevention of any collusion
between fundamentalist extremists and `rogue states’. All around the world
millions of people who see American rule as an inequitable alien
imposition simply will not buy such an argument. It is to skeptics and the
Arab and Muslim multitude that Ben Laden spoke when he denounced the US
led alliance as a coalition of Crusader states. In the East, the bloody
legacy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is an historical memory which arouses
traditional anger towards Christian intolerance and occidental arrogance.
As Richard Butler, no apologist for the Hussein regime and its military
policies has pointed out, the glaring problem is that the US fox is in
charge of the global hen run. The US holds a much greater arsenal of
weapons of mass destruction than any other power on Earth, and recognises
the opportunity of consulting none but its colleagues on the UN Security
Council, who are similarly armed to the teeth.
Education and
the influence of the media are spreading as never before in developing
countries. But the hypocrisy of the US position is patent to the teeming
unprovided multitudes of the East irrespective of their level of
education. It is only in countries within the US cultural orbit such as
Australia that the pretensions of the US have acquired a veneer of
credibility through dint of repetition. The rest of the world is not
hoodwinked as readily as we are. And the fact of the matter is that there
will always be sympathy for terrorism whilst the US continues to throw its
weight around and avoids addressing the demands for socioeconomic
transition widespread amongst the followers of Islam, one of the most
significant religions in human history. Until the majority of the wretched
of the Earth are persuaded that our aversion to terrorism is more than
self pity, we will never be safe from outrages like November 11 and Bali.
This climate of diffidence is the constituency of terrorism, in which
extremists swim like the fish in the sea of the old Maoist theory of
people’s warfare. What is most conspicuous in US policy is the complete
failure to draw popular support away from the terrorists it claims to be
fighting by a policy of equity towards the Palestinians and of
understanding towards traditional cultures besieged by the world market
championed by US vested interests. For the Arab and the Muslim world, the
Palestinian question has always been the acid test of Western intentions.
But we would be naïve to think that the rage which has been building for
generations would be assuaged if the most glaring injustice were belatedly
addressed whilst more systemic grievances languished. All the more reason
to begin acting with a little decision and intelligence now. To make a
martyr of Hussein now world be stupid, and pregnant with implications for
the future. He would be more dangerous dead than alive.
America is not
feigning concern about terrorism. Its paranoia about Hussein is as genuine
as it is addled. But it is a muddle headedness coloured darkly by
venality. Wounded by terrorism, the American empire is once again
demonising anyone who represents a challenge. Tyranny never discouraged
Washington from dealing with Pinochet. But then his economic policies were
trademarked Chicago, and Chile was laid open to US investors in the name
of free trade. What angers Washington about Hussein is that he is a
dictator who does not follow their orders. Hussein is a populist tyrant,
respected by his people as a nationaliser of the oil industry who
redirected energy revenues away from absentee capitalists and towards
national capital works and social objects such as education. Many would
still applaud his calling the Kuwaiti bluff on oil production and pricing
and invoking the historical Iraqi claim to the lost Gulf province. A prime
function of the blockade of Iraq is to starve the regime of oil revenue.
One wonders if the Bush family, representatives of the Texan oil industry,
are keen to maintain the price of oil and angry at the prospect of Iraqi
`overproduction’. Almost certainly they would like to denationalise the
Iraqi oil industry and see its revenues safely back in the politically
correct hands of metropolitan shareholders as the nice little earner they
think it should be. Clearly Washington is disturbed that Hussein remains
in control of some of the world’s most significant petroleum reserves, at
the geopolitical crossroads of the Middle East and Central Asia. Hussein’s
independence and willingness to be a machiavellian champion of Islam
regionally constitute a bad example to the neighbourhood in American eyes.
If we can see these things, we can be sure that they are not lost on
observers in Karachi and Cairo, struggling to study on the smell of an
oily rag and exasperated with Coca Cola capitalism and the local regimes
compliant with it. The September 11 terrorists were just such young men as
these, who in the fundamentalist cause found a purpose and a dignity which
they considered were worth dying for. We trifle with such earnestness at
our peril.
Let there be no
illusions. If Baghdad is bombed again it will be like Guernica a symbol
for a generation who will cry in Arabic `They Shall Not Pass’. If Iraq is
invaded the emigres who will flee will fight the American empire by any
means. They will give battle without asking or giving quarter. They will
make no distinction between combatant and civilian. Already these
ideologically inspired guerillas represent a challenge not readily
addressed and easily exacerbated. It is much easier to declare a war on
terrorism and prosecute it than to control it. In such a dangerous
situation the first principle of good policy is the same as that of
Hippocratic medicine: `First, do no harm’. We have enough harm to undo as
it is. If we hear that Baghdad is being bombed, we will know we are in for
it, and that there is no telling where this will all end.
David Faber
is an Adelaide historian.
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