Issue No. 612
Opinion
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14 - 20 November 2002 Issue No. 612 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
American voices of dissent
Soheir Morsy* argues for greater attention to be paid to the increasing opposition within the US to the policies of the Bush administration
Inspired by the anti-globalisation slogan -- Another World is Possible -- activists of different political persuasions around the world have demonstrated their resolve to dismantle what South African President Thabo Mbeki described as the "global system of apartheid". Over the past year international solidarity with Palestinian resistance to US-subsidised Zionist settler colonialism and apartheid, as well as opposition to Washington's protracted war on Iraq, have become integral to the growing movement against corporate-led globalisation. The internationalisation of the Palestinian cause has developed to the point that a recent comment in Ha'aretz raised the question: "Who would have believed that... [Israel]... would be denounced by the world, that its products would be boycotted, its generals accused of crimes against humanity and its citizens advised not to speak Hebrew when traveling abroad?"
In the US the Bush administration's relentless campaign of intimidation has proved effective in silencing many, though others have not been deterred from speaking their conscience. Even in these times when US foreign policy has been purposefully reduced to an expression of Orwellian logic ("you are either with us or against us") many honourable Americans have resisted the pitiful "patriotic" daze inflicted on the country by the Republican administration's campaign of fear, misinformation, and McCarthyean blacklisting of intellectuals.
In recent months an energetic anti-War movement has grown, informed by a broad agenda of domestic and foreign policy issues. The signs carried by demonstrators, and the speeches delivered to audiences in the hundreds of thousands across the US, underscore the linkage between militarism and corporate interests and the serious compromise of civil liberties and growing socio-economic polarisation. Rejection of the militaristic solutions of the Bush administration has also come in the form of paid newspaper advertisements. A recent ad in USA Today read, "Let us not allow the watching world today to despair of our silence and our failure to act. Instead, let the world hear our pledge: we will resist the machinery of war and repression and rally others to do everything possible to stop it."
Opposition to the Bush administration's imperial war agenda has extended well beyond the confines of the usual anti-war arenas of university campuses to include members of the Republican national security establishment, former President Jimmy Carter, affiliates of the military, and high school students who have organised anti-war teach-ins. The growing opposition also includes such ordinary Americans as Lois Wright, a saleswoman from Houston, Texas, who undertook a two-day bus ride to participate in a demonstration held in Washington DC because she perceives the Bush administration to be "hell- bent on going to war". Others, including veterans of the 1991 Gulf War, have travelled as far as Iraq to express solidarity with its people or to work as volunteers with NGOs and international groups rehabilitating infrastructure destroyed by the war, providing a journalistic alternative to establishment media misrepresentations of the horrific impact of sanctions or in preparation to serve as human shields.
Cognisant of the relationship between external oppression and internal repression, US community representatives have engaged in a struggle of combined resistance against the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties and its imperial war agenda. On 16 October, 2002 the Madison, Wisconsin Common Council joined some 50 municipalities across the country which either passed or are considering resolutions to defend citizens against federal government encroachment on civil liberties. A peace coalition and local high school students drafted the Madison resolution in defence of the Constitution, and against the Patriot Act (which was rushed through Congress and signed into law in October 2001). The resolution protects citizens from profiling, random interviews by the authorities, surveillance of what they read and the videos they watch. A high school representative of Students for an Informed Response remarked that "since the tragic events of 11 September our treasured freedom has come under attack not from terrorists but from our own leaders in the Congress and the White House. Laws like the USA Patriot Act were passed in the name of freedom, but what they really do is take away our freedom to fully participate in our nation's democracy... Further, the Patriot Act is causing an escalation of racial injustice..."
Dissent has also been voiced by the American people's elected representatives: 133 members of the House and 23 members of the Senate voted against President Bush's pre-emptive war against Iraq. Those who refused complicity in Bush's reckless adventure to hang a "New Ownership" sign on Iraq have exhibited commendable courage in exposing themselves to witch hunters of the political right who readily impugn the patriotism of those considered "not with us".
One courageous dissenter is Democratic representative Cynthia McKinney whose principled support of the Palestinian cause (in addition to her opposition to sanctions and war on Iraq) incited the wrath of the American Israel Political Action Committee which worked diligently towards defeating her in the Georgia elections, as was the case of another African American, Representative Earl Hilliard of Alabama. As for the late Senator Paul Wellstone, his progressive political record on domestic issues, and his vote against Senate authorisation for war on Iraq marked him for defeat by the Republicans in the November elections. Before his tragic death in October polls showed a rise in his popularity after his "No" vote in the Senate.
Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Hilda Solis also cast "No" votes. The latter reasoned that given the voluntary nature of enlisting in the military "often it is the people of low-income families that answer that call of duty to serve our nation. The young men and women on the frontlines would disproportionately be Latino, African-American, and people of colour. These communities will lose so much if the US attacks Iraq."
Some elected representatives also saw a similarity between President Bush's sales pitch on the war targeting Iraq and Lyndon Johnson's fabrication of a 1964 North Vietnamese assault on an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson used this lie to gain congressional authorisation for a war that led to the death of 57,000 Americans and more than a million Vietnamese.
Arguing against authorising President Bush to use force against Iraq, Senator Robert Byrd, a recognised constitutional scholar, described the resolution as "blind and improvident". He went on to argue that "SJ Resolution 46 would give the president blanket authority to launch a unilateral, pre-emptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived to be a threat to the United States... This is an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the president's authority under the Constitution of the United States, not to mention the fact that it stands the Charter of the United Nations on its head."
As for the Bush administration's promised democratisation of Iraq, if not the Arab world as a whole, it is worth noting the remarks of David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, in his address to the European Parliament on 22 October, 2002. Insisting that the international community must firmly reject a US pre- emptive war against Iraq, Krieger maintained that "the Bush administration is more inclined to practice hypocrisy than democracy. The administration's hypocrisy takes many forms. The most pronounced forms are nuclear hypocrisy, compliance hypocrisy and criminal justice hypocrisy. In each of these areas the Bush administration practices a clear double standard."
Within the framework of the corporate-driven "market democracy" and the prioritisation of military spending by the Bush administration, established economic and social rights, including social security and public funding of social services, are under serious threat. As Ralph Nader (founder of the grass-roots organisation Public Citizen, and Green Party candidate in the 2000 presidential elections) observed: "Recession is deepening, unemployment is rising, and corporate corruption headlines are proliferating. Health care costs, drug prices and the number of Americans without health care coverage are all increasing. Median household incomes are falling. Corporate crime has heavily depleted 401Ks and other pension losses." In an open letter to Democrats running for public office in the November elections Nader chided them for not honouring the legacy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who deemed the Republican Party to be beholden to the wealthy while the Democratic Party represented the working people). Nader urged Democrats to relentlessly and aggressively emphasise fundamental domestic issues to distinguish themselves from "corporate-indentured Republicans marinated in corporate cash, soft on corporate and environmental crimes and demonstrably anti-labour". He went on to explain that the Democrats' chronic ambiguity "flows from being largely indentured to the same monied commercial interests as Republicans".
While opposition to the US imperial agenda and to Zionist ethnic cleansing has found determined expression in the form of an energetic anti-war movement and boycott Israel campaigns in the US (and elsewhere), Arab officialdom continues in its relentless pursuit of the Bush administration's benediction. The obvious underlying motivation is avoidance of the lone superpower's rage. This might take the form of targeting one or another Arab country for "regime change" under such pretexts as "possession of weapons of mass destruction" (provided, of course, courtesy of US corporations), or "dictatorial rule" (which the US itself has tolerated, if not in fact helped create and sustain). Arab officials thus remain distanced from any serious attempt to take advantage of the untapped potential of the ordinary American's solidarity in support of Arab causes, whether in relation to Palestine or Iraq. We have yet to hear of Arab officials making any concerted effort to meet and conduct a dialogue with progressive members of Congress.
On the home front, Arab governments have not turned to their own people for protection from the actual and potential assaults of the US empire. As they continue to suppress peaceful expressions of dissent, Arab rulers proceed in their stroll down the blind alley of creating an "Arab lobby" intended to neutralise the influence of the powerful pro-Israel lobby. The latter is erroneously assumed to determine US policies towards the Arab world. Along with chasing this mirage, and in the absence of serious and sustained efforts to forge alliances with progressive non-Arab forces within the US, one finds remarkable eagerness on the part of the leadership of certain Arab-American and Muslim-American organisations to foster an image of political integration. Noteworthy in this regard is the proliferation of photo opportunities with President Bush at the White House and during his visit to Washington DC's mosque following his "crusade" blunder.
Before the Bush administration's launch of the so-called War on Terrorism some Muslim-Americans used to boast that their organisations had helped bring the Republicans to power in the 2000 elections. One such organisation launched a letter writing campaign, urging expression of gratitude because the new president had appointed an Arab-American, Spencer Abraham, as Energy Secretary. Abraham is the Republican Senator from Michigan whose campaign was supported by a pro-Israel financier and whose voting record has endeared him to the pro-Israel lobby. During his senatorial tenure Abraham wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy, established under President Carter. But, as Energy Secretary, he discovered its potential in subsidising corporate welfare through such means as opening up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to exploration and drilling for oil. Conveniently, he rationalised explorations in the public lands of the Refuge by employing alarmist tactics, claiming that Iraqi threats to cut off sales to Israel's allies necessitated granting access to Exxon and Chevron. Neither environmental considerations, nor the sacredness and economic value of the Refuge to the Native American Gwich'n, deterred Abraham's pursuit of the interests of big oil. His corporate loyalty even extends to support of the discredited energy conglomerate Enron in its dealings with the government of India. This allegiance has earned him the aversion, not only of public interest environmentalists, but also of the opponents of corporate-driven globalisation. These activists have repeatedly reminded the world that the Bush administration's war agenda, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, has been drawn with corporate interests in mind.
It bears repeating that corporate interests do not coincide with those of the vast majority of the American people. As is true of President Bush's Orwellian logic -- "You are either with us or against us" -- anti-American reductionism represents a serious obstacle to informed attempts at forging a people-centered solidarity in opposition to global apartheid. The Us vs Them dualism eclipses the principled positions assumed by countless Americans, including elected representatives. A democratic society is, by definition, a multi-vocal society. As the Bush administration insists on terrorising the world, pro- democracy activists in the US raise their voices in unequivocal utterances: "Not in Our Name", they say, and "Silence is Complicity." The appropriate response from the Arab world ought to be a refusal of blind anti- Americanism, and the affirmation of the globalisation of justice, democracy, and human dignity. As the American historian Howard Zinn writes in You Can't be Neutral on a Moving Train "...not to believe in the possibility of dramatic change is to forget that things have changed, not enough of course, but enough to show what is possible. We have been surprised before in history. We can be surprised again. Indeed, we can do the surprising."
* The writer is an Egyptian-American academic and UN consultant.
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