28 July 2003

It may be prudent to assume that Iraqis are acutely aware of the classical folklore about the proverbial camel and the Arab. The lore has it that a camel seeking refuge from the harsh elements in the desert solicited some space from the cameleer who was happily ensconced in the tent, just enough space to accommodate the camel’s head. The Arab in his infinite and renowned generosity, agreed. Then came the camel’s next request to move only his forelimbs to further protect them from the inclement weather outside. Finally the camel thrust his entire torso into the tent, displacing the Arab who found himself in an unlikely reversal of roles – of landlord turned prospective tenant, left pleading with the new occupant for refuge in the cameleer’s tent. Now physically, an Arab camel jockey is no match for a determined camel. Raw strength is the determinant here, no matter how charming the pleas for sanctuary that initially let the camel sneak in. Ultimately, the camel invaded, occupied and dictated terms. The original resident was dispossessed, weakened and left with few choices beyond those ordered by the occupier or else face the ruggedness of the elements. As spiteful as this brief apparent victory of brawns over brains was, the camel clearly lacked an understanding of human resilience and the depth of commitment to the justice of human causes, in all their diversity. It matters little that the camel will insist on the noblest of intentions in justifying the occupation and saving the Arab from himself. But, understandably, camels are incapable of perceptions that challenge or exceed their dromedary confines. They are too intoxicated with raw power to be inconvenienced by moralistic twaddle. Nevertheless, a mere understanding of that fact neither furnishes validation for the aggressive exploits, nor forecloses the need for the dispossessed to regroup, resist and reassert themselves.

So it is that racist tactics have much in common with dromedary strategies. You are either with them or against them, no matter what – either inside or outside the tent, all in black and white. But racist stratagems will see to it that the tent becomes wholly appropriated and if any negotiations are to ensue, they shall proceed on the occupier’s terms, case closed. That racism itself is to a large extent about appropriating tents, followed by eloquent theses on the virtues of private property intended to protect the booty and consolidate the dispossession, the core subject matter will be shrewdly kept outside the sphere of public discourse. All human problems that collectively define diversity as integral to the human condition are perceived as bereft of historical and cultural roots and must be subsumed by racist fabrications of human aspirations. All cultures, regardless of their own rich heritages are subordinated to racist whims via instant analyses and coercive reinvention. Dedicated scholars bearing grave countenances are tirelessly standing by to expound on subjects they know little to nothing about. Their voices add to the boisterous choruses of their media and official lies. A final and deeply familiar message emerges: it is our way or the highway. And a lesson is supposed to be gathered from all this by those untutored in the White man’s noble ways – democracy by coercion and brute force. En route, a characteristic distortion and mutilation of history and facts are undertaken, blurring distinctions between fantasy and reality. Even the solemn proclamations of yesterday, so long as they issue from the powerful, can be subjected to absolute reversal today and be made to assume the nature of veritable truths. It is human omnipotence divine and unidimensional in scope. Brute and naked power lends wayward ignorance the face of knowledge and wisdom with a supporting cast of a gullible public cheerfully abetting and succumbing to history’s truly monumental and recurring frauds – those of racism and imperial grandeur. Hence, not unlike the camel, a racist failure to see human aspirations in human as opposed to racist terms has been the persistent theme of racism, of which imperialism remains its outstanding metaphor.

A dazzling diversity of manifestations of colonializing strategies has been articulated to explain away subjugation of the non-white world. We will be told of the uniqueness of the colonial history of India, as distinct from that of Africa; that the French and the Portuguese versions differed from that of the British and of the invasion of Australia as of a dissimilar category. Canadians are seen as a gentler species of conquerors. Narratives of dispossessing and killing of the Native peoples of the Americas will be projected in ways that romanticize genocide, since heroes will emerge from among the cold blooded killers and songs in their praise will constitute a history to terminate and bury all other histories. Even if the beginnings of history should, coincidentally, be ascribed to others, its conclusion will remain categorically White. So that in proclaiming the “end of history”, it might have conveniently escaped Professor Fukuyama’s astute mind that in fact the end of history equates with racist appropriation of the final word via crude power and intimidation, denying the other his or her own testimony on their own reality and destiny. This diversification of racist strategies is patently manifest in the current illegal occupation of Iraq. We hear of such ludicrous explications of armed Iraqi resistance sprinkled with laughable phrases such as “the Sunni triangle” (implying that the Shias love being occupied and will have none of the oil), Saddam loyalists, foreign interference, etc. However, this is unlikely to veer anyone away from the one stubborn fact about the Iraq war: it remains a racist criminal invasion totally heedless of civilized world opinion.

Again, the habitual demented logic of President Bush rears its ignorant head when he warns of the dangers of “foreign” interference and “terrorist” attacks on US occupiers. Given the illegal, unsolicited and criminal nature of the invasion, running against all appeals by the world community outside this country, the real foreign invaders are the U.S. and their British cousins. By any civilized definition, any invasion as immoral and scandalous as this one remains a criminal one and those responsible are nothing short of invaders and harbingers of unsolicited terror. Such sentiments are unambiguously resonating among Iraqis, Sunnis and Shias alike, with a growing recognition that the real foreigner and the enemy is the one that is firmly entrenched in their soil by force of arms. Having thus coined this act of thuggery as “liberation”, this Administration is on the verge of discovering that this President’s idiotic ideology of White Supremacy and global hegemony will not wash with Iraqis. In reality, it would seem that the real war of liberation has only just begun. It is one in which Iraqis are bound to feel compelled to rid themselves of this aggression, no matter how the issue is being presented for nightly entertainment in American homes. Just like Viet Nam, similar lies were being spun about racist versions of “democracy” to justify that aggression, costing the lives of 2 million Vietnamese. Among the maimed and mutilated survivors of that genocide, are still to be found victims of grizzly chemical attacks with Agent Orange, and the war criminals running scot-free in our midst. This comes on the heels of racist notions of justice in which the US exempts itself from the norms of civilized practice and international jurisdiction for war crimes, coercing other countries to endorse this inexcusable exemption. The only sensible conclusion that can be drawn from this deadly series of con games is that the racist super power is in no mood to abandon its campaign of hate and sadism on people of color.

In South Africa, racist dispossession was called apartheid and its White practitioners were the natural democrats, its African victims terrorists. In the United States too, Americans of African descent having been subjects of descending categories of dehumanization and still struggling for an equitable share of the American dream, remain consigned merely to an embarrassing racist footnote to this country’s history. Still, despite attempts to confer glamour on the varieties of white imperial ventures, a common and pervasive thread -- that of denying the other his humanity, belies this nonsensical diversity. In essence, it is bigotry that lay at the heart of this imagined glory and majesty of a past constructed on the backs of colored folks. True diversity in fact lay in pre-colonial histories and cultures of the colonized. But that was soon to be transformed into a common purpose by the colonized in urgently ridding themselves of the racist pestilence that had permeated their social fabric. Iraq is no exception in the ongoing White American fantasies about “liberation”. Viet Nam too had a generous dose of racist “liberation” and its peoples are still licking their wounds, many years later. What the world is now treated to is the illogical and racist notion of a deeply traumatized America as a result of it, not the Vietnamese. No mention is made here of the 2 million Vietnamese victims of that wanton aggression. In the interim, the culprits continue to indulge themselves in their insatiable appetite for the blood and resources of defenseless societies. The US public continues to be infatuated and held spellbound by the high tech nature of the aggressive exploits of its government, obscuring all the death and destruction visited on civilians, distorting distinctions between sci-fi and reality with a unashamed sense of glee that is only possible among dedicated racists. The suffering and pain of the victims of aggression are digitally deleted from the consciousness of an already numbed prime time audience.

Iraq therefore remains one more country that provides yet another present day metaphor for imperial whims, as dangerous and as deadly as they come. An important part of the racist colonizing spirit is to create and propagate a new self-serving language and impose it on the colonized. With the adoption of a new language utterly disconnected from reality, it is hoped that in response to it, resistance to racist imperial machinations will weaken and subsequently crumble. Yet history does not bear this out. Indeed historical trends embarked on quite the reverse course: that of inspiring resistance and wars of liberation. No amount of linguistic and semantic subtleties will mask the blunt racism that has distinguished these centuries-old imperial adventures. A case of the camel once again underestimating human buoyancy and desire to assert its own version of freedom, a natural and inalienable right, requiring no help from racist do-gooders. Consequently, when leaders of two of the most powerful countries in the world meet (President Bush and British Prime Minister Mr. Tony Blair) as they did last week in a Congress utterly devoid of dissenting voices and any oppositional significance, their language was warped, substituting liberation for criminal aggression, coercion for democracy, all compliments of a corporate media whose journalistic functions are mutated beyond recognition. Yet by all Western accounts to date, a cheerleading press was supposed to be the exclusive domain of Banana Republics and axes of evil from which Iraq is being supposedly “liberated” by this brutal war. As a first step toward this new and democratic Iraq, news censorship reminiscent of the old Iraq is in full swing, adding a new dimension and potency to the xenophobic disinformation machinery – creating an information blackout and keeping the world in the dark about the horrors of “liberation”. The racist “free press”, now thoroughly “disembedded” is observing an eerie silence that should come as a surprise to no one.

If racist policies of this president were to be evaluated on the strength of public enunciations, analyzing them would be less daunting and perhaps as challenging as a lazy stroll on the beach. Barring the attendant necessities of churning out imageries and looking presidential – whatever that means, they are policies that are consistent with time-honored imperial and racist traditions of disingenuousness, lies, ambiguities and downright deceit. A number of passionate declarations merit mention here. First, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the danger they held for “world peace” provided a prime justification for war and invasion, which in any event was fait accompli. Regardless, that “world”, except for similar sentiments that were parroted by a predictable number of countries (each of which -- England, Spain and Australia, with their own historical versions of imperial mayhem), seemed oddly unaware of these threats to its security. So, satellite pictures of purported WMD sites were produced, African papers “proving” the imminent nuclear threats posed by Iraq were displayed, and non-existent Iraqi links with 9/11 alluded to, never proven. A case for war, not peace, was being furiously advanced before the United Nations. The world remained unmoved, all the while appealing for saner alternatives to prevail. For some strange reasons best known to the racist clique, the sites captured by satellite cameras and the weapons inside them conjured up a bizarre disappearance act. All that we are now left with are assurances from this gang of two – which are pretty worthless – that the WMDs will be found “in time”. Consider a not unlikely scenario: since the evidence was fabricated, the WMDs will in fact be manufactured, “in time”, very much in keeping with the hierarchy of fabrications that have been erected to orchestrate the invasion.

Second, the insinuated moral imperative of “liberating” a people worn out by decades of tyranny is that their humanity and dignity would soon be on its way to recovery. Included in this package are their heritage, cultural sensibilities and their freedoms. But as the old adage has it, actions speak louder than words. Not only are all of the above false as pertains to this invasion, the rampant greed imperative stood supreme among the invaders. Oil fields were secured at lightening speed, while greedy American CEOs were anxiously scrambling for lucrative contracts, ostensibly for Iraq’s “reconstruction”, naturally without Iraqi consent. But the real destruction that motivated this “reconstruction” was being stubbornly implemented for over a decade by US arm twisting by way of sanctions, killing 50,000 children annually, according to UN estimates. To this genocide, which prompted the resignation of 3 UN arms inspectors, Madeline Albright, Secretary of State under Bill Clinton responded: “It will all have been worth it”. Meanwhile, Iraq’s vast and immensely rich historical heritage, in fact one that belongs to all of humanity was left to the whims of looters. This is a case of crude oil taking precedence over human heritage. Where else would these priceless artifacts be found except in the homes of some rich Westerners, making their pile from other people’s history? This instinctive contempt for alien cultures typifies the encounter between colonizer and the colonized. A renowned British historian, Trevor Roper once said that Africa is a dark continent and darkness is not a subject of history implying that no meaningful history can be attributed to the dark races. And if any magnificence should be encountered in their history, it should be sought in the libraries of the West, where its experts stand ready to explain the native to himself. Colonialism in essence then equates with the robbery of the sense of the collective self from the colonized. So this invasion of Iraq then adds up to more than addiction to oil: it is utter disdain for the alienated Other and their perceived outlandish histories and cultures. Consequently, any claims to the love of liberty as the declared motive for the invasion of Iraq must be strictly taken for what they represent -- for your info and entertainment only, a bit like your daily horoscope.

Third, it is currently fashionable to obscure intent, no matter how ghastly, with the language of political correctness. The challenge then is to endeavor to make sense of events that unfold. One is then forced to filter out the lies that come at a bewildering pace and focus on the actual exploits as they transpire in their digitalized splendor. The trick is then to reverse translate acts into a credible analysis from which some sense can be extracted. Plainly, little sense can be made from studying noble statements made by Thomas Jefferson on individual liberties, while he owned slaves of African descent. Clearly then those statements were aimed at Whites who were deemed more capable of appreciating individual liberties which must have sounded pretty hollow and irrelevant for enslaved African Americans. Presently, as Mr. Trent Lott will tell you, it is perfectly admissible to be a practicing racist, if you can keep your mouth shut, because the ghost of political correctness will come to haunt you and deny you your post as Speaker of the House. The threat to your political fortunes therefore has much less to do with your actions and state of political being than with your public pronouncements. Stated differently, a climate has been constructed where being a practicing racist is far more innocuous than making public proclamations and defining your identity as one. In a similar vein, proclamations of that renowned British statesman, Winston Churchill, must be seen in the pre-correctness era and transported to present day realities to appreciate the nature of racist American foreign policy initiatives. He had declared: “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes…. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place”. In fact present American foreign policy initiatives with British backing are an accurate reflection of these sentiments, considering the death and destruction they have wrought on peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia. While such verbal arrogance is no longer fashionable or permissible in politically correct times, occasional Freudian slips will continue to be made. Here is one by Mr. Blair the British Prime Minister in his recent address to the U.S. Congress: “The risk is that terrorism and states developing weapons of mass destruction come together.” Well, as far as is known, none have been found in Iraq and as to where they are truly located and who actually owns them, no expertise is required to identify them. Using this logic then, if states developing WMDs are on their way to terrorism, those that have enough stockpiles of them to destroy the world several times over must be highly accomplished terrorists themselves. As one Iraqi put it in the aftermath of the handling of the bodies of Saddam’s sons and the escalating resistance against occupation, “But the Americans are criminals and unbelievers. We got rid of one tyrant and we ended up with a bigger one”. Another Iraqi reacting to the killing of four unarmed countrymen said on Public Broadcasting radio this (7/28/03) morning that he had witnessed dogs being rescued on American TV receiving better treatment than Iraqis. My, oh my, are we in familiar territory or what? Perhaps political incorrectness might after all have some merit.

Finally, as Mr. Bush, in sheer desperation in the face of the Iraqi debacle and the growing resistance by Iraqis, now pleads for international participation to clean up his racist mess, while his business buddies gloat over oil. But unfortunately for him, the war is much too fresh in any thinking person’s mind for this utter nonsense to hold water. Was it not that very international community that he paid scant regard to when indulging himself in his reckless and deadly games? Read his concerns as translating to the search for cannon fodder to be positioned between Iraqi resistance fighters and American occupiers. Naturally, he will send his Uncle Tom Collin Powell to the United Nations once again; apply the now familiar arm-twisting tactics -- coercion and bribery -- to recruit cannon fodder from among peoples of color. So while the battles that have been described by Mr. Bush as being formally over were conducted at a blazing pace, unlike those of classic colonialism – the job of leaving Iraq to the Iraqis will require a kind of statesmanship that this president simply is incapable of grasping. And no one is accusing him of such capabilities. His utmost racist concern right now is to shield his White kith and kin from the wrath of the occupied using colored humans as shields, compliments the United Nations. Was that not in fact the very crime that Saddam Hussein was being accused of before the war? It is tempting to predict that this new form of digitalized imperial fantasizing and colonialism on the fast lane, will inspire a new form of resistance, but with the same old spirit and one that American racists have been enthusiastically prescribing for others – the need for freedom is basic to all human beings and they will defend it regardless of the nature of its transgressor, even if it includes those that claim to have invented freedom itself.