US in Iraq: Not
in Our Name
By Angana Chatterji
Not in our name. The cry reverberates across the United States, as thousands
demonstrate their dissent against a US war with Iraq. Republicans, Democrats,
Greens, trade unionists, left, right, center, students, Muslims, Native
Americans, Latin-Americans, Asian-Americans, Jews, African-Americans,
Buddhists, Jains, European-Americans, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender people,
Christians, refugees, artists, white and blue collar workers, the homeless
and working poor, Atheists, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahais, government workers,
small business owners, musicians, writers, Goddess worshippers, dock
workers, teachers, reporters not in our name.
Is the US governments
impending war with Iraq connected to weapons inspections? Not long ago,
this war was marketed as a response to Iraqs assistance of Al-Qaida.
The impulse for war shifted as the US government insisted that Iraq
be attacked for amassing weapons of mass destruction while refusing
to allow weapons inspection. Following Iraqs agreement to unconditional
inspection, the latest reason for war is simply Saddam Hussein. The
decision to attack Iraq remains steadfast, the justification is refabricated.
While critical issues of oil supply from an increasingly distressed
Saudi Arabia and deflated Iraq remain, perhaps more important domestic
reasons power the US governments decision for this war. The nations
gigantic military-industrial complex requires continual conflict to
legitimate its immense costs and flex its power. It corrupts decency,
condones the death of innocent children, women and men. US sanctions
have already killed close to 500,000 children in Iraq, a reasonable
price to pay for protecting the free world, we are told. Inhumanity
must not become a nations legacy.
Americans, the people of
the United States, are being asked to name their enemies, but not ask
what prompts such hostility. The people of the United States are being
asked to overlook the legacies of colonization, irresponsible globalization
and militarization that have brutalized people the world over. They
are asked to support the sanctity of oil in determining policies connected
to the Middle East, but not question why relations with Saudi Arabia
remain normal while the US prepares to attack Iraq again.
Americans are told that to
oppose the Israeli governments oppression of Palestinian peoples
is anti-Semitic. They are asked to not make distinctions between the
Jewish people and the Israeli state, just as they are asked to not make
distinctions between the US government and its people. Since when have
the people become their state?
The corporate media and an
arrogant government ask Americans to overlook the history of US support
of dictatorships that have fomented violent regimes in Asia, Africa
and Latin America. Disturbingly too, the war against terrorism is increasingly
confused with a prevailing worldwide contempt for Islam, enabling the
bigoted misinterpretation of Muslims as monolithic and violent across
differences of nation, class, politics, gender, race and culture. Afghanistan,
post-Taliban, is in ruins as the US and the international community
fail to provide adequate security and resources for her reconstruction,
strengthening regional warlords and disabling Afghanistan's new government.
The failure of human rights, the violation of women, the disenfranchisement
of returning refugees continue. Such practice dishonors the commitment
to fight terrorism. Peace remains elusive because of a paucity of commitment
to justice.
Within the framework of the
campaign against terrorism, the executive arm of the United States has
increased its powers of surveillance and interrogation, and expanded
provisions of detention. This erodes the scope of public scrutiny and
the process of law, while narrowing civil liberties. Extending similar
jurisdiction to allied states, the US and the European Union have remained
silent on Russian mistreatment in Chechnya. Egypt, Uzbekistan, Indonesia,
Malaysia have systematically stilled their commitments to democracy
and secularism. China has attempted to use the campaign against terror
to justify its repression of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang, including Muslim
minorities and peace advocates. The Government of India introduced the
Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, a modified security law that empowers
the government to torture and detain minority groups and political opponents
alleged to engage in terrorism. Governments worldwide, post 9/11, have
utilized law and order to subjugate opposition in the guise of fighting
terrorism. The question what produces and defines terror is not
asked, it is consecrated to the custody of the state. It is of grave
concern that democratic dissent and free speech are increasingly languaged
as anti-national where traitors must be disciplined.
The US citizenry is asked
for an abiding loyalty to a government that has shown no accountability.
The attempt is to infantalize Americans into silence. They are either
for the ruler or against him. Democratic processes are dispensed with
while asserting a unilateral right to invade other nations, to make
regime changes, to violate international law. Such hubris, as history
reveals, accompanies imperial power.
Meanwhile the other war of
impoverishment and disenfranchisement continues in the US. The shrinking
wages of the American working class, the increasing disrepair of rural
life, escalating costs of living in urban areas, single mothers without
jobs that pay, children without health care, schools without textbooks,
women and men that cannot afford a college education. Young African-American
men fill the prisons -- casualties of institutionalized racism. Countless
Vietnam veterans, hated by the right for losing and the left for fighting,
are homeless. Native Americans, on whose genocide this nation was built,
are forced into brutal dispossession as the state systematically dishonors
treaties made with native nations. In a country of 288 million people,
35.6 million live below the poverty level. Environmental pollution,
endangered wildlife, nuclear tests, sweatshops, toxic spills, gang wars,
hunger, rising diseases. Well kept secrets? The national economy is
failing, foreign debt is about $2.5 trillion, workers are being indiscriminately
discharged under circumstances that underscore corporate irresponsibility.
This too is life at the center of the empire. There are no plans for
atonement. Ever vigorous trade and war with an expanding number of peoples
and countries will not resolve internal crises. It is a tired strategy
that only compounds the disarray.
The horrors of September
11 have jolted the national fabric. Hopefully its legacy is the awakening
of new forms of American citizenship pro-active, pro-conscience,
and affirmative of a global commitment to human rights predicated on
social justice. In the center of empire named the United States of America,
the people are taking it to the streets.
Angana Chatterji is a professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology
at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.