Shall We Tell President Bush1 ?
By
Even as individual Americans are still trying try to make sense of the tragedy of Dark Tuesday, the country and its leaders have come under
ferocious verbal attack from leading human rights activists, intellectuals and other critics who argue, like I did last week, that American foreign policy
played a key role in bringing about the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre. Prominent among them are Noam Chomsky, the writer and polymath
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and John Pilger, the Australian political journalist.
It is no doubt true that the United States has, since it emerged victorious and even more powerful after the Second World War, pursued a foreign policy
that relies more on brute force and naked self-interest than concern for world peace and the well being of weaker peoples. But we must remember that the
United States is not alone in this racket. It is significant that a few hours after the World Trade Centre came down, taking with it over five thousand
lives, Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain, went on air and told the world that Britain would stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with the United States
to hunt down the 'terrorists'. Blair, of course, knows on which side his country's bed is buttered. His government's dealings with the world, in spite of
all the song and dance about a new 'ethical' foreign policy, is a mirror image of America's.
Britain is the second-leading manufacturer of lethal weapons in the world after America, the bulk of them sold to corrupt and repressive regimes in
Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East. The British government has not done anything to curb the excesses of such oil companies as British Petroleum
and Royal Dutch Shell as they run riot all over the world, subverting legitimately elected governments, propping up thieves and dictators, trampling and
murdering local people and their leaders and taking away their resources.
Australia and Canada are noted for dealing harshly with their aboriginal populations, herding them into reserves, denying them self-representation, and
encouraging mining companies to barge into their land to wreak havoc. Koreans still remember the orgy of rape and mass murder that was their lot when
Japan came calling. Brazil's aboriginal and black population, which taken together constitute almost half of the entire population of the country, are
discriminated against, denied jobs and other social facilities, and generally treated as second class citizens.
Nor is Africa free of the virus of racial intolerance and the urge to plunder. I was in Tripoli in August 2000 when Arab-Libyans were sharpening their
knives and preparing cudgels to bludgeon black Africans in their midst to death. One week after I left Arabs rose up and descended on these unprotected
people and murdered thousands of them in a ferocious orgy of racial hatred. Southern Sudan is still the favourite hunting ground of Arab slave traders as
I write this. The Arabs have added yet another vicious arrow in their bow: getting rid of the black African population of southern Sudan who happen to
inhabit a land filled with oil and gas wells. And in this genocidal project they enjoy the support of China and Canada.
This long catalogue of greed, hate crime, and intolerance tell us one thing clearly: America is not the only bully in the neighbourhood. She only happens
to be the biggest and the most powerful. And there are many other nations, particularly in the northern hemisphere, that are working night and day to take
America's place as top dog. The way journalists, politicians and ordinary people in Europe have been going about it in the past one week, blaming the
United States for all the world's ills from the AIDS pandemic to Globalisation, you would think their countries are paragons of good conduct in their
foreign affairs. Take France for example. When President Chirac visited George Bush last week, he made a show of commiserating with the government of the
United States, but was quick to point out that there was need for America to consult widely with other countries before she embarked on any action in response to Dark Tuesday. Stripped of the diplomatese, what Chirac was merely saying to Bush is
this: for too long have you shouldered France aside in global affairs; you deserve what you got; and now, if you want France to assist you in this time of
need, you and I will have to sit down and decide how our two 'great' nations can plunder the world on a more equitable basis.
What then is required in these trying times is not finger-pointing and the smug 'holier than thou' attitude currently being adopted by some European
countries, but a frank recognition of the appalling state of the world and its peoples, and a new resolve to go boldly forward and put things right. It is
significant that in all the tons of newsprint and air time devoted to analysing and explaining what happened in the United States two weeks ago, pretty
little has been said about the ultimate underlying cause of the tragedy. The farthest the pundits have gone in trying to understand Dark Tuesday has been
to link the political and economic crisis in the Middle East and the Arab world in general to American policy in the region, the consequence of which was
the attack on the World Trade Centre by enraged and aggrieved Arab political activists determined to hit back against the American aggressor.
But this is only part of the explanation; it is not the whole story. America is not congenitally racist. Nor is her foreign policy informed by purely
racist sentiment, seeing the rest of the world as inhabited by genetically inferior beings. At the heart of American policy in the Middle East is profit,
and the all-consuming desire to maximise it using such convenient and self-serving phrases as 'free trade.' Global capitalism has its own unique logic,
one that reduces international relations to a dog-eat dog and 'the devil take the hind-leg' attitude. Corporate America, in the shape of giant
multinational corporations and the multi-billion dollar financial institutions that nurture and sustain them, dictate American policy. Corporate America, after Bill
Clinton dared question its hold on the people of the United States and other countries in the world, decided that the time had come to put one of its own
in the White House. George W. Bush's assault on the White House last year was financed by Big Oil and other players in America's board rooms who saw him
as a tool they could use in pursuing and securing their interests.
The Bush family's link to oil companies in the United States is well-known.n George Bush senior has considerable interests in Halliburton, the biggest oil services company in the country and which is active in Africa and the Arab
world. It is significant that his son, when he became presidential candidate of the Republican Party two years ago, chose for his running mate Dick
Cheney, a former senior executive of Halliburton who had also served as his father's
Defence Secretary in the early 1990s. America's strategy in the Middle East is driven by the need to protect its vital energy interests in the region,
centred mainly in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait whose oil reserves are enormous. This is why there is an American military base in Saudi Arabia, whose sole task
is to maintain the corrupt feudal potentates who go by the name of 'royal family' in power in that sad country. This is also why America went after Sadam
Hussein like a pack of hounds when the latter invaded Kuwait in 1990. There is oil in Kuwait, and the United States did not want it to fall into the 'wrong'
hands.
But where does America's national interest stop and where does the interests of individual capitalists like the Bush family begin? It is precisely when
private greed is passed off as 'vital national interest' that the nation is in trouble.
For I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of Americans are a peaceful and hardworking people who genuinely desire that the outside world leave
them alone to go about their daily business of earning an honest living. This explains the genuine shock and outrage that greeted the events of Dark
Tuesday.
What have we done to deserve this, millions of ordinary Americans asked themselves over and over again all over the country last week. Who could hate us
so much to murder thousands of our citizens in cold blood?
The American media, ranging from the 'venerable' New York Times baying for blood to the loquacious CNN treating the maimed and the grieving with
inanities, are not supplying the answers. Handmaidens of a rampaging capitalism of which the present occupant of the White House is a shinning icon, these
media organisations are deliberately obfuscating the issue by chanting 'Taliban!
Taliban!' As though murdering a handful of mullahs ensconced in the hills of Afghanistan would remove the outrage and anger felt by impoverished billions
all over the world who are at the sharp end of American capitalism's big stick.
November 2001