Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 14:18:13 +1100
From: saeed urrehman <think-AT-riseup.net>
Subject: from the guardian


Only American national interest counts now

Hugo Young
Thursday January 31, 2002
The Guardian

This will sound to some people like an anti-American column. It is not 
meant to be. As the writer, I assert that it is not. I'm the one who knows. 
I am not anti-American in any of the conditioning senses the epithet 
usually signifies: ethnically hostile, corporately obsessed, economically 
resentful, chanting every night the well-known litany of Washington's 
postwar dirty deeds. That my disclaimer is necessary, however, is a 
commentary on the diminished state of consultative democracy just now. The 
least considered aspect of the war against terrorism is that a loyalty test 
- are you pro- or anti-American? - has become the obligatory standard 
against which deductions are made about anything written on American 
foreign policy.
For in the land of the first amendment, the normal rules of discourse are 
now blurred. The possibility of civilised people, all sharing the same 
loyalty, disagreeing about the right way forward is much attenuated. A 
single label can be made to wipe out every nuance. If you're not with me, 
you may be proving that you aren't a patriot. President Bush's state of the 
union address was redolent of the triumphalism and alarm that obliterate 
every alternative mind-set.
It was a fine oration by a war leader who is carrying all before him. The 
war has allowed a president without a mandate to grow into a heroic figure 
whom nobody wishes to challenge. Thus far it has been an impressive 
campaign, defying the military and political prophets who said the Taliban 
would take far longer to remove. Osama bin Laden remains at large, and 
al-Qaida networks perhaps still girdle the globe. Innocent Afghans have 
been killed. But, as recent wars go, this one has so far been the most 
efficient in all respects.
And now it will be pressed forward. The speech, I think, did not so much 
stoke up as reflect a national mood that there's a great deal more to do. 
But it was scarcely understated. What is the evidence that there really are 
"tens of thousands of trained terrorists still at large"? We begin to 
understand that in Bush's mind the Afghan campaign, aided by the Northern 
Alliance, may have been the easy bit - compared with destroying the 
nebulous cohorts now being sought by the same US agencies that have been 
unable to track down the anthrax terrorist in their own backyard.
So he was preparing Americans for the long haul. They do still prefer other 
people to take the human risks. They wouldn't put troops on the ground to 
seal the Pakistan border, which may be how Bin Laden escaped. Though the 
special forces are there, the Northern Alliance locals do most of the dirty 
work. But it's a fight for a world cause, and it is being run by America: 
one command, one air force, a unifying intelligence, an uncomplicated 
national will and no Jacques Chirac poking his nose into daily targeting 
decisions as he did in Kosovo.
However, the state of the union address had certain blank bits. There were 
important absences. Only fleeting references were allowed to any other 
country. It was as if these other participants in the drama barely existed, 
which in terms of the military effort was, by Washington's choice, true 
enough, but which, as a diplomatic statement, seemed both ignorant and 
dangerous. The need for the coalition was perfunctorily acknowledged, but 
not the faintest doubt was allowed to attach to the fact that it would 
continue to operate on America's terms.
The military success, in other words, emboldened the president to speak as 
though there is no broader purpose than the assertion of American power. He 
sounded like a man whose war had intensified rather than slackened his 
belief in America, if necessary, going it alone. Other voices, it appears, 
are not terribly interesting, especially European voices that bring up the 
priority of a Middle East peace process being resumed, or publicly insist 
on codes of behaviour in the Guantanamo prison camp that rest on different 
attitudes to human rights than those now prevailing in war-torn America.
There can be arguments about that. Our governments do not have them, at 
least in public. To judge from the tortuous haste with which Mr Blair 
yesterday backed away from the early doubts his foreign secretary expressed 
about Camp X-Ray, they don't have them in private either. Instead, we fall 
in with the unilateralist impulse of a new age. The era of guilt (Vietnam) 
and the era of dithering (Clinton) have been replaced by a fresh discovered 
triumph of American will, that more and more permits Washington to take 
decisions which have to pass only an exclusive test of the American 
national interest. Such was the state of the union that Bush seemed to be 
describing on Tuesday night.
It is not entirely new. Unilateralist wrecking of the Kyoto treaty and the 
international criminal court began with Clinton. But Bush is pushing more 
recklessly ahead. The killing of the ABM treaty is a done deal. Nuclear 
testing is blithely listed for resumption. Nuclear warhead reductions 
agreed with Moscow may be scuppered by a Bush decision to store his own 
dismantled warheads anyway, just in case. Now, with all the yapping about 
Camp X-Ray, the White House has begun to ruminate in semi-public that, like 
ABM, the Geneva Conventions may be suddenly unsuitable to the new era.
Many Americans must find this only sensible. After all, it reflects power 
relationships nobody can contest. Post-Afghanistan, it seems to be the new 
reality. But it carries costs, which a pro-American should be the first to 
lament.
First, it negates the notion of a world community of self-respecting 
nations, many of which have much to contribute to making this a safer 
place. In George Bush's America, there's evidently little room for a sense 
of noblesse oblige. This America is an alliance-builder only for her 
national purposes. She's the only great power in the world, but shrinks 
from what it means to be a world power. Anti-terrorism became her 
postcommunist mission, and it's a vital one. But world power surely carries 
the responsibility to look wider, towards a benign shaping of decisions 
that are collective not unilateral.
Second, though the campaign against al-Qaida has been brilliantly 
destructive of appalling evil forces, it has far to go. Bush's own account 
of the nightmares he's trying to pre-empt makes that very clear. How can he 
hope to do it solely through the might of American power and intelligence? 
For a campaign lasting that long, there's a hearts-and-minds problem all 
over the Middle East and Asia. That's where the real anti-Americans live. 
They present a challenge to patience, subtlety and understanding, as well 
as military zeal. They need to see America living up to her best and 
broadest values. Bush paid lip service to that in his speech: "human 
dignity ... rule of law ... free speech ... equal justice". But in the face 
of homeland hubris, what price words?



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