Cuestiones de América
The world didn't change on 11 September last year. Its American citizens
– alongside all nations who share their values – were simply reminded, more
forcibly than anyone could ever have predicted, that Western values are not
quite as universally coveted as we like to assume them to be. In fact, we were
brutally told, (albeit merely by some fanatically hate-fuelled people), our
values are wholly, utterly, nihilistically, rejected.
That this was news to the US is confirmed in the much repeated, achingly
bathetic question: “Why do they hate us?” That the world has not changed, is
confirmed in the fact that this question is always rhetorical. Any misguided
fool who attempts a dispassionate answer, in the eyes of the hawks setting the
agenda, is anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-terrorist, and an appeaser.
That the American way might not be quite so perfectly geared to the ways
of others is still not something the vast majority of US citizens want to hear.
In this important way, the world has not changed. There's much to be said for
the view that until such self-examination starts to happen, the world cannot
change so very much either. However, the actions of the suicide bombers have
made it more difficult for such an assessment to take place, as it would be
seen by many as “giving in” to the terrorist agenda. It wouldn't, but
nevertheless, in this and other respects, 11 September has made the world less
likely to change.
That the world has not changed, is confirmed also in the fact that the
US feels such an urgent need now to change it. So keen is the US to change the
world, that it is willing to go to war for the second time in a year.
Paradoxically though, it is this very activity that is cited as the great shift
that has been wrought in the past 12 months. Before 11 September, goes the
argument, the US did not have much in the way of a foreign policy. Now, the US
does.
Nonsense. America did have foreign policies before. It's just that they
were mainly based on the idea that the most odious of self-appointed leaders
could be controlled simply by the promise of US friendship (and plenty still
are). The US has had fascinating dealings with Saddam Hussein, going back many
decades, just as it had been involved with the fate of Afghanistan long before
11 September 2001. The present situation, in both countries, is not unconnected
to US involvement in the past.
The focus on Iraq right now, is due as much to the feeling that there is
long-running, unfinished, business between the two countries, as it is to
careful consideration of exactly which regime is the most evil on the planet.
Ask any dissenter from the view of the US as the world's knight in shining
armour what really gets up their nose about America, and they'll point out the
many shameful, hypocritical contradictions in America's foreign dealings.
Not that the attitudes of other countries to the US aren't just as
shameful and contradictory. A young Turkish woman recently explained to me that
while the Turks dislike their neighbour, Saddam Hussein, they also despise the
Americans. When asked whether her country feared Saddam, though, she replied
that it did not, because it was fairly certain that in the event of trouble,
the US would sort matters out. In this respect, the US is in a terrible
situation, resented and relied on in equal measure. Likewise, I've heard again
and again the complaint that Tony Blair should not align himself with George
Bush so strongly, because in doing so he's making London a bigger terrorist
target than it would otherwise be. I don't, I'm afraid, find this to be a
particularly edifying argument. All credit to Mr Blair that he isn't so craven
as to put his own safety and comfort before what he believes to be right. And
there can be little doubt that Mr Blair believes this war on selected terrorism
and selected regimes that the US has declared, to be right.
He is right to say that one should not turn away and ignore a person who
is violating another, just because they are not under the same governmental
jurisdiction as us. Surely we know from our own personal morality that to stand
by and fail to come to the aid of those we can save, is wrong.
Many optimistic and humanitarian people are behind Mr Blair in believing
that 11 September was the moment when the world woke up, and realised that
unfairness could not be left to fester, for from it evil would breed. They
believe that America's war on terrorism is about building a fairer world.
But while Mr Bush apes Mr Blair's humanitarian rhetoric, in no deed does
he betray any understanding of what that might really mean. Nor, in all of his
talk of the change in the world, does he seek to pin down any of the abstract
or universal shifts he believes the world to have experienced. And that the
world has not changed, can also be seen in the way that no one appears to be at
all interested in rewriting the world's rules. A new world would need new
rules. Our old one prefers simply to cite the old ones when it suits them, and
ridicule them when it doesn't.
Not so long ago, it appeared to be international law that one country,
or even an international coalition, didn't declare war on another country with
the intention of imposing a regime change. Now, we appear on the brink of doing
this for the third time in as many years.
Realistically, isn't it worth facing the fact that the idea of the
sovereignty of the nation state, whatever crimes it has committed against its
own people, is not necessarily a desirable moral compass? That maybe, in some
carefully defined circumstances that all leaders understand, action does have
to be taken internationally?
And while we're on that subject, couldn't we start discussing such little
details as whether it might be useful to have a fairly clear idea prior to
action, of what that new regime, or at least what those in charge of putting
together that new regime, may look like, how much investment that regime can
expect from the West, and what kind of timetable for democratic elections might
sensibly be laid down?
Might it also be agreed that in the event of such action, it might be
humanly decent to count, list and honour the innocent dead of the country we
decide to drop bombs on, and include those people too in the silence of
remembrance that will from now on mark this day? For there would be some
evidence of a changed world, if the West would start considering that maybe all
lives are as precious as their own.
There's no sign of that, 12 months on. America remains far and away the
most powerful nation in the world. There's no change there either, except that
she is all the more keen for the people to acknowledge it, to understand it, to
remember it. Which unfortunately, is exactly what 19 nutcases were doing, when
they kicked off this long killing spree.
Cuestiones de América Nº 11,
Octubre-Noviembre de 2002
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