Opinion, May 26, 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
US dominance: the only bully on the block,
Nihal Singh
May 26 2003,
Khaleej Times,
AMERICANS have proven in Iraq that
they are bad colonialists. Unlike 'old Europe', which lorded over colonies
in a bygone age, Americans do not have an ideology to support a
colonialist frame of mind. Traditionally, they have not carried the White
Man's Burden of the British and do not possess the supreme confidence of
the French in the innate superiority of their language and culture, their
civilising mission.
The nearest the United States came to framing an
ideology was during president Wilson's time, an ideology distorted by the
neoconservatives today into the messianic spread of democracy by the sword
or its modern equivalent, the B-52. In their relatively brief history,
Americans have hovered between promoting the American model around the
world and isolationism. Modern times are not conducive to the latter and
there are distinct limits to the former. The frontier mentality has influenced the remarkable
growth of the US in science, technology and material prosperity. They
believe in the solubility of all problems and take an incorrigibly
optimistic view of their world. Americans have also reaped rich dividends
from welcoming the world's talent to the land of opportunity and liberty.
This is not to suggest that the men who ruled America could not be cynical
and opportunistic - witness the slave trade, the Negro problem and the
Monroe Doctrine under which Americans were perfectly happy to run the
(usually unsavoury) rulers of the banana republics of Latin America and,
on occasion, a colony such as the Philippines for a time. In a sense,
recent years have been a traumatising time for Americans. They not merely
called into question their self-view but brought new problems and
responsibilities. President Ronald Reagan might not have been primarily
responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union but his countrymen and he
collectively took credit for it. Thereby they were transformed into the
only bully on the block - in fact, the universe. And just as the American
establishment was congratulating itself on becoming the seat of the Second
Roman Empire, September 11, 2001 happened. What goes under the cachet of September 11 became
such a defining moment for Americans because it punctured their collective
ego and pointed to their vulnerability on home soil. The neoconservatives
in seats of power close to President George W. Bush took charge. In fact,
they had been discussing their themes of world dominance for decades
without convincing previous presidents, including Bush Senior. Although
the latter proclaimed a New World Order after the 1991 Gulf War, he fought
shy of acting on the hawks' advice. September 11 happened at a propitious time for the
neoconservatives. The country was suitably primed for radical solutions,
President George W. Bush was a greenhorn in foreign affairs and
international diplomacy and the Christian Right of the southern variety,
with its full-throated support for Israel, was a valuable ally. The result
was the strategy document unveiled last September immodestly seeking world
dominance for eternity and the right, pre-emptively and preventively, to
attack any nation. Iraq was an obvious and inviting target because it
would enhance Israel's standing in the region, ensure future oil supplies
for America and allow Washington to tinker with the region's geopolitical
map. The tussle between the US and the 'old Europe' of US Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's definition in the run-up to the American
invasion of Iraq was as much due to Washington's incomprehension about
anyone daring to challenge the Bush administration as to Europe's desire
to stand and fight. Having won the war after a fashion, America is now
coping with the consequences of its action. If anyone had any illusions
about American ability to run a colony, Iraq is a bleeding example. Some
six weeks after the occupation of Iraq, looting and killings are rampant,
most of Baghdad citizens do not have water or electricity; sewage spills
over on to roads and into rivers. Hospitals, looted of much of their
equipment and medicines, are unable adequately to care for the people's
health and the prospect of an Iraqi transitional authority is receding
like a mirage. The simple answer to these shocking facts is that
while Americans diligently prepared for waging war with the latest weapons
of destruction against an ill-equipped and poor army, there was little
planning for the day after. Experts are still trying to detail the slices
of precious history looted from the National Museum in the first days of
American occupation. Ministries and other offices and homes were pillaged,
but the only ministry protected by US soldiers was that of oil. American planners in the US were living in their own
world plotting the happy post-Saddam days. They waited in vain for the
joyous crowds welcoming them as liberators and ultimately had to make do
with the small crowd that pulled down the Saddam statue in a central
Baghdad square with the help an American armoured vehicle, the statue face
briefly muffled in the Stars and Stripes. Saddam was nowhere. One change of occupation regime later, America is
beginning to perceive some inherent limitations in its ability to run the
world. It is part of the optimistic American outlook that they take
themselves so seriously. This goes ill with the tasks of governing a
colony. The Wilsonian brand of internationalism died with the onset of the
Cold War and the neoconservatives' machiavellian schemes of world conquest
are not supported by the majority of American people as the hyped effect
of September 11 wears off. Sooner, rather than later, Americans will probably
realise that playing the emperor in a Second Roman Empire is not their mŽtier.
Americans are best at innovation, at crossing frontiers in science and
technology, but apart from a general belief in their own greatness and
goodness and the exceptionalism of the American constitution, they can
only seek to duplicate the US model in Tinbuktu, with disastrous results.
Of the Filipinos, it has been said that they lived in a Spanish convent
for 200 years and in Hollywood for the next 50. And we all know the
destructiveness of American recipes in the early years of Boris Yeltsin's
Russia. Americans are better at influencing the world
through their cultural exports and technology than by vainly seeking to
replicate Americas around the world. And it is really too late to pull the
world back to the old colonial era although it has become fashionable in
circles close to Britain's Tony Blair to talk about a new neocolonial era.
Unlike Americans, the British have a stiff upper lip to go with the
concept.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |