[IMC Bombay] Arundhati Roy: Not Again

[PUKAR @ IndyMedia]

Not Again

Tomorrow thousands of people will take to the streets of London to 
protest against an attack on Iraq. Here, the distinguished Indian 
writer Arundhati Roy argues that it is the demands of global 
capitalism that are driving us to war

Friday 27 September 2002
The Guardian

Recently, those who have criticised the actions of the US government 
(myself included) have been called "anti-American". Anti-Americanism 
is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology. The term is 
usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not 
falsely -- but shall we say inaccurately -- define its critics. Once 
someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will 
be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the 
welter of bruised national pride.

What does the term mean? That you're anti-jazz? Or that you're 
opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or 
John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it 
mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens 
who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war 
resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does 
it mean that you hate all Americans? This sly conflation of America's 
music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the 
ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the US 
government's foreign policy is a deliberate and extremely effective 
strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily 
populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets 
will deter enemy fire.

There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with 
their government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, 
hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in US 
government policy come from American citizens. (Similarly, in India, 
not hundreds, but millions of us would be ashamed and offended, if we 
were in any way implicated with the present Indian government's 
fascist policies.)

To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, is not 
just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see 
the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set 
out for you: If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not good, 
you're evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.

Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at 
this post-September 11 rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and 
arrogant. I've realised that it's not. It's actually a canny 
recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war. Every day I'm 
taken aback at how many people believe that opposing the war in 
Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism. Now that the initial aim 
of the war -- capturing Osama bin Laden -- seems to have run into bad 
weather, the goalposts have been moved. It's being made out that the 
whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate 
Afghan women from their burqas. We're being asked to believe that the 
US marines are actually on a feminist mission. (If so, will their 
next stop be America's military ally, Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this 
way: in India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices, 
against "untouchables", against Christians and Muslims, against 
women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even worse ways of dealing with 
minority communities and women. Should they be bombed?

Uppermost on everybody's mind, of course, particularly here in 
America, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly 
3,000 civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The 
grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. 
And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each 
person who has lost a loved one surely knows that no war, no act of 
revenge, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved 
ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a 
brutal desecration of their memory.

To fuel yet another war -- this time against Iraq -- by manipulating 
people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by 
corporations selling detergent or running shoes, is to cheapen and 
devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. We are seeing a pillaging of 
even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a 
terrible, violent thing for a state to do to its people.

The US government says that Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, a cruel 
military despot who has committed genocide against his own people. 
That's a fairly accurate description of the man. In 1988, he razed 
hundreds of villages in northern Iraq and killed thousands of Kurds. 
Today, we know that that same year the US government provided him 
with $500m in subsidies to buy American farm products. The next year, 
after he had successfully completed his genocidal campaign, the US 
government doubled its subsidy to $1bn. It also provided him with 
high-quality germ seed for anthrax, as well as helicopters and 
dual-use material that could be used to manufacture chemical and 
biological weapons.

It turns out that while Saddam was carrying out his worst atrocities, 
the US and UK governments were his close allies. So what changed? In 
August 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so much that he 
had committed an act of war, but that he acted independently, without 
orders from his masters. This display of independence was enough to 
upset the power equation in the Gulf. So it was decided that Saddam 
be exterminated, like a pet that has outlived its owner's affection.

A decade of bombing has not managed to dislodge him. Now, almost 12 
years on, Bush Jr is ratcheting up the rhetoric once again. He's 
proposing an all-out war whose goal is nothing short of a regime 
change. Andrew H Card Jr, the White House chief-of-staff, described 
how the administration was stepping up its war plans for autumn: 
"From a marketing point of view," he said, "you don't introduce new 
products in August." This time the catchphrase for Washington's "new 
product" is not the plight of people in Kuwait but the assertion that 
Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Forget "the feckless moralising 
of the 'peace' lobbies," wrote Richard Perle, chairman of the Defence 
Policy Board. The US will " act alone if necessary" and use a 
"pre-emptive strike" if it determines it is in US interests. Weapons 
inspectors have conflicting reports about the status of Iraq's 
weapons of mass destruction, and many have said clearly that its 
arsenal has been dismantled and that it does not have the capacity to 
build one. What if Iraq does have a nuclear weapon? Does that justify 
a pre-emptive US strike? The US has the largest arsenal of nuclear 
weapons in the world. It's the only country in the world to have 
actually used them on civilian populations. If the US is justified in 
launching a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, why, any nuclear power is 
justified in carrying out a pre-emptive attack on any other. India 
could attack Pakistan, or the other way around. Recently, the US 
played an important part in forcing India and Pakistan back from the 
brink of war. Is it so hard for it to take its own advice? Who is 
guilty of feckless moralising? Of preaching peace while it wages war? 
The US, which Bush has called "the most peaceful nation on earth", 
has been at war with one country or another every year for the last 
50 years.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought 
for hegemony, for business. And then, of course, there's the business 
of war. In his book on globalisation, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 
Tom Friedman says: "The hidden hand of the market will never work 
without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell 
Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon 
Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, 
Navy and Marine Corps." Perhaps this was written in a moment of 
vulnerability, but it's certainly the most succinct, accurate 
description of the project of corporate globalisation that I have 
read.

After September 11 and the war against terror, the hidden hand and 
fist have had their cover blown -- and we have a clear view now of 
America's other weapon -- the free market -- bearing down on the 
developing world, with a clenched, unsmiling smile. The Task That 
Never Ends is America's perfect war, the perfect vehicle for the 
endless expansion of American imperialism In Urdu, the word for 
profit is fayda. Al-qaida means the word, the word of God, the law. 
So, in India, some of us call the War Against Terror, Al-qaida vs 
Al-fayda -- The Word vs The Profit (no pun intended). For the moment 
it looks as though Al-fayda will carry the day. But then you never 
know... In the past 10 years, the world's total income has increased 
by an average of 2.5% a year. And yet the numbers of the poor in the 
world has increased by 100 million. Of the top 100 biggest economies, 
51 are corporations, not countries. The top 1% of the world has the 
same combined income as the bottom 57%, and the disparity is growing. 
Now, under the spreading canopy of the war against terror, this 
process is being hustled along. The men in suits are in an unseemly 
hurry. While bombs rain down, contracts are being signed, patents 
registered, oil pipelines laid, natural resources plundered, water 
privatised and democracies undermined.

But as the disparity between the rich and poor grows, the hidden fist 
of the free market has its work cut out. Multinational corporations 
on the prowl for "sweetheart deals" that yield enormous profits 
cannot push them through in developing countries without the active 
connivance of state machinery -- the police, the courts, sometimes 
even the army. Today, corporate globalisation needs an international 
confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments 
in poorer countries, to push through unpopular reforms and quell the 
mutinies. It needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts 
that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing 
armies, sterner immigration laws, and watchful coastal patrols to 
make sure that its only money, goods, patents and services that are 
globalised -- not the free movement of people, not a respect for 
human rights, not international treaties on racial discrimination or 
chemical and nuclear weapons, or greenhouse gas emissions, climate 
change, or, God forbid, justice. It's as though even a gesture 
towards international accountability would wreck the whole enterprise.

Close to one year after the war against terror was officially flagged 
off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country freedoms 
are being curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil 
liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy. 
All kinds of dissent is being defined as "terrorism". Donald Rumsfeld 
said that his mission in the war against terror was to persuade the 
world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. 
When the maddened king stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their 
quarters. So, it's hard for me to say this, but the American way of 
life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that 
there is a world beyond America.

Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this 
mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and 
implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have 
already appeared. As the war against terror casts its net wider and 
wider, America's corporate heart is haemorrhaging. A world run by a 
handful of greedy bankers and CEOs whom nobody elected can't possibly 
last.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil 
but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too 
much power: 21st-century market-capitalism, American-style, will fail 
for the same reasons.
_____

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