File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9812, message 138


Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 10:55:06 -0500
From: Aletha Stahl <stahlal-AT-earlham.edu>
Subject: Edward Said on Iraq/US tensions


The following may be of interest:

[Source: http://www.salam.org/iraq/apocalypse.html]

 Apocalypse Now

 by Edward Said
 It would be a mistake, I think, to reduce what is happening between Iraq
 and the United States simply to an assertion of Arab will and sovereignty
 on the one hand versus American imperialism, which undoubtedly plays a
 central role in all this. However misguided, Saddam Hussein's cleverness is
 not that he is splitting America from its allies (which he has not really
 succeeded in doing for any practical purpose) but that he is exploiting the
 astonishing clumsiness and failures of US foreign policy. Very few people,
 least of all Saddam himself, can be fooled into believing him to be the
 innocent victim of American bullying; most of what is happening to his
 unfortunate people who are undergoing the most dreadful and unacknowledged
 suffering is due in considerable degree to his callous cynicism -- first of
 all, his indefensible and ruinous invasion of Kuwait, his persecution of
 the Kurds, his cruel egoism and pompous self-regard which persists in
 aggrandizing himself and his regime at exorbitant and, in my opinion,
 totally unwarranted cost. It is impossible for him to plead the case for
 national security and sovereignty now given his abysmal disregard of it in
 the case of Kuwait and Iran.
 Be that as it may, US vindictiveness, whose sources I shall look at in a
 moment, has exacerbated the situation by imposing a regime of sanctions
 which, as Sandy Berger, the American National Security adviser has just
 said proudly, is unprecedented for its severity in the whole of world
 history. 567,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the Gulf War, mostly as a
 result of disease, malnutrition and deplorably poor medical care.
 Agriculture and industry are at a total standstill. This is unconscionable
 of course, and for this the brazen inhumanity of American policy-makers is
 also very largely to blame. But we must not forget that Saddam is feeding
 that inhumanity quite deliberately in order to dramatize the opposition
 between the US and the rest of the Arab world; having provoked a crisis
 with the US (or the UN dominated by the US) he at first dramatised the
 unfairness of the sanctions. But by continuing it as he is now doing, the
 issue has changed and has become his non-compliance, and the terrible
 effects of the sanctions have been marginalised. Still the underlying
 causes of an Arab/US crisis remain.
 A careful analysis of that crisis is imperative. The US has always opposed
 any sign of Arab nationalism or independence, partly for its own imperial
 reasons and partly because its unconditional support for Israel requires it
 to do so. Since the l973 war, and despite the brief oil embargo, Arab
 policy up to and including the peace process has tried to circumvent or
 mitigate that hostility by appealing to the US for help, by "good"
 behavior, by willingness to make peace with Israel. Yet mere compliance
 with the US's wishes can produce nothing except occasional words of
 American approbation for leaders who appear "moderate": Arab policy was
 never backed up with coordination, or collective pressure, or fully agreed
 upon goals. Instead each leader tried to make separate arrangements both
 with the US and with Israel, none of which produced very much except
 escalating demands and a constant refusal by the US to exert any meaningful
 pressure on Israel. The more extreme Israeli policy becomes the more likely
 the US has been to support it. And the less respect it has for the large
 mass of Arab peoples whose future and well-being are mortgaged to illusory
 hopes embodied, for instance, in the Oslo accords.
 Moreover, a deep gulf separates Arab culture and civilization on the one
 hand, from the United States on the other, and in the absence of any
 collective Arab information and cultural policy, the notion of an Arab
 people with traditions, cultures and identities of their own is simply
 inadmissible in the US. Arabs are dehumanized, they are seen as violent
 irrational terrorists always on the lookout for murder and bombing
 outrages. The only Arabs worth doing business with for the US are compliant
 leaders, businessmen, military people whose arms purchases (the highest per
 capita in the world) are helping the American economy keep afloat. Beyond
 that there is no feeling at all, for instance, for the dreadful suffering
 of the Iraqi people whose identity and existence have simply been lost
 sight of in the present situation.
 This morbid, obsessional fear and hatred of the Arabs has been a constant
 theme in US foreign policy since World War Two. In some way also, anything
 positive about the Arabs is seen in the US as a threat to Israel. In this
 respect pro-Israeli American Jews, traditional Orientalists, and military
 hawks have played a devastating role. Moral opprobrium is heaped on Arab
 states as it is on no others. Turkey, for example, has been conducting a
 campaign against the Kurds for several years, yet nothing is heard about
 this in the US. Israel occupies territory illegally for thirty years, it
 violates the Geneva conventions at will, conducts invasions, terrorist
 attacks and assassinations against Arabs, and still, the US vetoes every
 sanction against it in the UN. Syria, Sudan, Libya, Iraq are classified as
 "rogue" states. Sanctions against them are far harsher than against any
 other countries in the history of US foreign policy. And still the US
 expects that its own foreign policy agenda ought to prevail (eg., the
 woefully misguided Doha economic summit) despite its hostility to the
 collective Arab agenda.
 In the case of Iraq a number of further extenuations make the US even more
 repressive. Burning in the collective American unconscious is a puritanical
 zeal decreeing the sternest possible attitude towards anyone deemed to be
 an unregenerate sinner. This clearly guided American policy towards the
 native American Indians, who were first demonized, then portrayed as
 wasteful savages, then exterminated, their tiny remnant confined to
 reservations and concentration camps. This almost religious anger fuels a
 judgemental attitude that has no place at all in international politics,
 but for the United States it is a central tenet of its worldwide behavior.
 Second, punishment is conceived in apocalyptic terms. During the Vietnam
 war a leading general advocated -- and almost achieved -- the goal of
 bombing the enemy into the stone age. The same view prevailed during the
 Gulf War in l99l. Sinners are meant to be condemned terminally, with the
 utmost cruelty regardless of whether or not they suffer the cruelest
 agonies. The notion of "justified" punishment for Iraq is now uppermost in
 the minds of most American consumers of news, and with that goes an almost
 orgiastic delight in the gathering power being summoned to confront Iraq in
 the Gulf.
 Pictures of four (or is now five?) immense aircraft carriers steaming
 virtuously away punctuate breathless news bulletins about Saddam's
 defiance, and the impending crisis. The President announces that he is
 thinking not about the Gulf but about the 21st century: how can we tolerate
 Iraq's threat to use biological warfare even though (this is unmentioned)
 it is clear from the UNSCOM reports that he neither has the missile
 capacity, nor the chemical arms, nor the nuclear arsenal, nor in fact the
 anthrax bombs that he is alleged to be brandishing? Forgotten in all this
 is that the US has all the terror weapons known to humankind, is the only
 country to have used a nuclear bomb on civilians, and as recently as seven
 years ago dropped 66,000 tons of bombs on Iraq. As the only country
 involved in this crisis that has never had to fight a war on its own soil,
 it is easy for the US and its mostly brain-washed citizens to speak in
 apocalyptic terms. A report out of Australia on Sunday, November l6
 suggests that Israel and the US are thinking about a neutron bomb on
 Baghdad.
 Unfortunately the dictates of raw power are very severe and, for a weak
 state like Iraq, overwhelming. Certainly US misuse of the sanctions to
 strip Iraq of everything, including any possibility for security is
 monstrously sadistic. The so-called UN 661 Committee created to oversee the
 sanctions is composed of fifteen member states (including the US) each of
 which has a veto. Every time Iraq passes this committee a request to sell
 oil for medicines, trucks, meat, etc., any member of the committee can
 block these requests by saying that a given item may have military purposes
 (tires, for example, or ambulances). In addition the US and its clients --
 eg., the unpleasant and racist Richard Butler, who says openly that Arabs
 have a different notion of truth than the rest of the world -- have made it
 clear that even if Iraq is completely reduced militarily to the point where
 it is no longer a threat to its neighbors (which is now the case) the real
 goal of the sanctions is to topple Saddam Hussein's government. In other
 words according to the Americans, very little that Iraq can do short of
 Saddam's resignation or death will produce a lifting of sanctions. Finally,
 we should not for a moment forget that quite apart from its foreign policy
 interest, Iraq has now become a domestic American issue whose repercussions
 on issues unrelated to oil or the Gulf are very important. Bill Clinton's
 personal crises -- the campaign-funding scandals, an impending trial for
 sexual harassment, his various legislative and domestic failures -- require
 him to look strong, determined and "presidential" somewhere else, and where
 but in the Gulf against Iraq has he so ready-made a foreign devil to set
 off his blue-eyed strength to full advantage. Moreover, the increase in
 military expenditure for new investments in electronic "smart" weaponry,
 more sophisticated aircraft, mobile forces for the world-wide projection of
 American power are perfectly suited for display and use in the Gulf, where
 the likelihood of visible casualties (actually suffering Iraqi civilians)
 is extremely small, and where the new military technology can be put
 through its paces most attractively. For reasons that need restating here,
 the media is particularly happy to go along with the government in bringing
 home to domestic customers the wonderful excitement of American
 self-righteousness, the proud flag-waving, the "feel-good" sense that "we"
 are facing down a monstrous dictator. Far from analysis and calm reflection
 the media exists mainly to derive its mission from the government, not to
 produce a corrective or any dissent. The media, in short, is an extension
 of the war against Iraq.
 The saddest aspect of the whole thing is that Iraqi civilians seem
 condemned to additional suffering and protracted agony. Neither their
 government nor that of the US is inclined to ease the daily pressure on
 them, and the probability that only they will pay for the crisis is
 extremely high. At least -- and it isn't very much -- there seems to be no
 enthusiasm among Arab governments for American military action, but beyond
 that there is no coordinated Arab position, not even on the extremely grave
 humanitarian question. It is unfortunate that, according to the news, there
 is rising popular support for Saddam in the Arab world, as if the old
 lessons of defiance without real power have still not been learned.
 Undoubtedly the US has manipulated the UN to its own ends, a rather
 shameful exercise given at the same time that the Congress once again
 struck down a motion to pay a billion dollars in arrears to the world
 organization. The major priority for Arabs, Europeans, Muslims and
 Americans is to push to the fore the issue of sanctions and the terrible
 suffering imposed on innocent Iraqi civilians. Taking the case to the
 International Court in the Hague strikes me as a perfectly viable
 possibility, but what is needed is a concerted will on behalf of Arabs who
 have suffered the US's egregious blows for too long without an adequate
 response.

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 This article was first published in Arabic in Al-Hayat, London, and in
 English in Al Ahram Weekly, Cairo.

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