6 - 12 December 2001
Issue No.563
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 6 - 12 December 2001 Issue No.563 |
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Principles of resistance
Say one thing, do another: Mohamed Khaled Al-Azaar* explains hypocrisy
Washington's persistent attempts to describe liberation movements as terrorism defy laws and conventions that distinguish clearly between random crimes and acts aimed at liberating an oppressed and occupied people. The history of international jurisprudence is made up of painstaking efforts to ensure that humanity is fully aware of this distinction, and the UN, as the representative and sponsor of principles of international law since World War II, has been a prime agent in disseminating such awareness.
The US, today, is bucking this powerful and progressive current, driven by its own interests and emboldened by its vast resources. Its policies arouse alarm and anger because it is helping propel the world community toward the chaos that prevailed before the elaboration of a systematic legal corpus governing international relations.
Distress mingles with surprise when we reflect that Washington's insistence on equating resistance with terrorism in a particularly capricious way is at odds with its own history and the values upon which it was founded over two centuries ago. Rereading the story of the American struggle for independence, one is forced to ask whether Americans today truly know the American revolutionary legacy and liberation ideology of the 18th century.
The Declaration of Independence emanated from a fervently humanitarian political philosophy that sought to make principles of liberty, equality and justice valid in daily life: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
Why is this advocacy of liberty and the right to self- determination so absent from US policy today, universally censured for its bias in favour of regimes that live off the oppression of others and the occupation of their lands, and for its crudely and cynically selective application of humanitarian values and laws in the service of extremely self- serving vested interests?
The US achieved its independence from Great Britain through revolutionary violence and insurrection, although the revolutionaries employed non-violent means of resistance such as economic boycott, refusal to pay taxes and other acts of civil disobedience. Now, however, the US seek to deprive other nations of the rights and means Americans enjoyed -- rights and means, indeed, without which America would not exist.
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed the birth of a new nation, supposedly built upon a new set of values and conceived as a worldwide champion these values. The Declaration, however, in fact represented a transitional moment between revolutionary activity and a war of independence that lasted over six years. It marked the Americans' resolve to break political bonds with the British crown, throw off all symbols of its power and authority, and create a new body of law subject to their own will and commensurate with the needs and values of their society.
By the time "Great" Britain took stock of the threats to its hegemony over the colonies in the New World, these had already taken considerable steps toward crystallising the administrative, economic and legal principles of self- government. It was only at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in May 1775, however, that America's founding fathers realised they would have to strive for full independence from the British crown if the principles of self-government were to become reality. Attempting to reconcile self-government with British sovereignty was a logical impossibility. Thus, the Continental Congress appointed a committee, headed by Thomas Jefferson, to draft the famous document delineating the principles that were to sever allegiance to the British crown.
Determination to gain independence was also revealed in the decision to create an army and a fleet subject to the authority of the United States government. Yet, while America's founding fathers felt it was their right and duty to take up arms in defence of their inalienable and nonnegotiable rights to liberty and equality, the British perceived this defence as "rebellion and insurrection" that had to be vigorously suppressed. Were the "American resistance movement" to have taken place today, it would have been labeled terrorist almost automatically. Americans today overlook this simple point when they classify other peoples' national liberation and resistance movements.
Today, too, colonial powers reject the pleas of colonised peoples for freedom and independence. Just as the British scoffed at the US Declaration of Independence and unleashed a merciless war against the American resistance (or terrorist movement, as Washington would put it today), so does Israel regard the Palestinian liberation movement with outraged contempt. Although the American freedom fighters relied primarily on their own resources, they happily accepted the assistance of the French in the form of arms, ammunitions and supplies. Spain and Holland, too, intervened on behalf of the "rebel" states. Again, America seems struck by amnesia: Washington now condemns those that support the Palestinian resistance as forces that aid and abet international terrorism.
Britain only attacked the American separatists after it had suffered critical defeats on land and sea and sustained vast human and material losses. The British forces surrendered to a coalition of American freedom fighters and their French supporters in York Town, Virginia. Soon after, the House of Commons voted to end the war and King George formed a new government to begin peace negotiations with the independent US. Negotiations were held between April and November 1782, producing a treaty that was ratified the following year. How extraordinary Washington's insistence today, given its own revolutionary experience, that the Palestinians must cease all acts of resistance before negotiations can resume.
The American narrative of the US war of independence boasts unreservedly of the valiant struggle to end foreign domination and establish a "government of the people by the people" -- the principle that constitutes the very heart of "American democracy." According to this narrative, the United States was founded to bring to fruition the principle of domestic self-rule -- that a people should not be ruled by laws and systems of government forcefully imposed by others -- and to eliminate differences among individuals through the implementation of the creed of human rights.
Although the American story of independence embodies these principles, the story of US policy -- both at home and abroad, although primarily abroad -- betrays a tendency to deny them to others. It took the Americans nearly a hundred years following their revolution to condemn racism and emancipate their slaves; yet another hundred years passed before they granted African Americans their civil rights. Nor did the revolution prevent the US from exercising a policy of economic and political expansionism, as entrenched, for example, in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.
US policy-makers seemed bent on contradicting the principles that motivated their revolutionary forefathers (or should we now term them terrorists?). Their decisions have caused other peoples, Arabs above all, immense suffering; and these peoples' awareness of the gross discrepancy between the ideals upon which the US was founded and US policy in practice has only exacerbated widespread frustration at Washington's conduct in the international arena.
An American commentator wrote recently: "They hate us, not because of the things we do, but because of the values we are supposed to stand for: freedom, democracy, plurality, or civilization in general." His point is that those who oppose US policy contrast it with the principles the US itself purports to uphold, and find it sorely lacking. America's founding fathers established noble standards for the conduct of domestic and foreign policy; but their descendants failed to abide by these standards. The US Constitution, ratified in 1778, has undergone few changes since that time. The principles it enshrined may have endured; but their application has not.
* The writer is a Cairo-based Palestinian analyst.
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