Samar Magazine
written by Anjali Kamat, news producer at Democracy Now!
Monday March 1, 2010
If there is one unmistakable difference between Bush's wars and Obama's wars it boils down to this: we now have a president who can almost perfectly pronounce the names of the cities and villages US troops will occupy and bomb.
Adapted from a talk at a conference titled "Obama's Occupations" held at Pomona College, December 4, 2009.
"Unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination. Our union was founded in resistance to oppression. We do not seek to occupy other nations. We will not claim another nation's resources or target other peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours."
With these words President Barack Obama sought to reframe the imperial ambitions of the United States. He was speaking at the West Point military academy on December 1, 2009. But this was no marker of the change the world was waiting for in American foreign policy. The President was announcing the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, a country US and NATO troops have been occupying and bombing for over 8 years. There will now be at least 100,000 US combat troops in Afghanistan. But Obama would like us to believe they are not actually occupying Afghanistan.
"The people of Afghanistan have endured violence for decades. They have been confronted with occupation—by the Soviet Union, and then by foreign al Qaeda fighters who used Afghan land for their own purposes. So tonight, I want the Afghan people to understand—America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering. We have no interest in occupying your country."
Now that the US will have more troops in Afghanistan than Iraq and almost as many troops there as the Soviets did at the height of their Afghan occupation, it's only fitting that Obama must insist his escalation of war is actually an exit strategy. The only way to end the war is to expand the war.
Far from stirring the comatose anti-war movement out of its long slumber, Obama's Orwellian justification of war was instead sanctified with a Nobel prize for peace. After a perfunctory nod to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Obama used his acceptance speech to launch an unapologetic defense of the notion of a just war, the idea that violence can be sometimes morally justified and necessary. Just as non-violence did not stop the Nazis, he warned, peaceful negotiations will not stop Al Qaeda.
"To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism; it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."
While reason might have its limits, the reach of American empire in its hunt for "Al Qaeda safe havens" is apparently limitless and unconstrained by domestic and international law. As the Obama administration wages a "struggle against violent extremism and diffuse enemies," we can now measure just how far we've come: we've left behind the Bush-era fight against "rogue states" and the "Axis of Evil" only to move into the age of targeting "ungoverned spaces," "disorderly regions," and "failed states." The war on terror may be over but those diffuse enemies could crop up just about anywhere and US Special Forces and unmanned drones are ready to take them out without the slightest concern for due process, legal oversight, or Congressional authorization. Secret prisons in Afghanistan, covert operations in Yemen and Somalia, an undisclosed war in Pakistan, and a rising toll of disappeared, tortured, and dead civilians: Sarah Palin didn't have her notes quite right, this is a snapshot of America's foreign policy with a constitutional law professor at the helm.
If there is one unmistakable difference between Bush's wars and Obama's wars it boils down to this: we now have a president who can almost perfectly pronounce the names of the cities and villages US troops will occupy and bomb. We just can't call it occupation. It's "enlightened self-interest" as Obama emphasized during that same Nobel speech.
"Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. ... We have borne this burden, not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest."
Should we be surprised? Although Obama was the anti-war candidate compared to hawkish Hillary Clinton and John "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" McCain, he was no pacifist. Right from the start of the presidential campaign in 2008, Obama pledged to expand the war in Afghanistan and into neighboring Pakistan. And talking to a crowd at an anti-war rally in October 2002 organized by Chicagoans Against War in Iraq the young state Senator was clear about where he stood:
"I'm not opposed to all wars, I'm opposed to dumb wars. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics."
So as NATO and the Afghan army prepare to attack the Taliban-controlled town of Marja this February, perhaps the area's 80,000 residents should take heart that they are fleeing a smart and principled war and not a dumb one based on outright deception. And the families of 123 Pakistani civilians killed by 12 US drone attacks this January should be relieved that they lost their loved ones to a rational and carefully thought-out (but still secret) war and not a rash one based on neoconservative fervor. But such differences are suddenly irrelevant when you're on the receiving end of the bombs.
If we go further back in history Obama begins to sound more and more like every US president before him trying to justify American imperial overreach, cloaking it in the seductive language of liberation. And not very different from those old colonial powers Americans try so hard to distinguish themselves from. To turn to just one example—for history is littered with such empty words—this is what Lt. Gen. Sir Stanley Maude said to the people of Baghdad when British forces entered the city in March of 1917:
"Since the days of Halaka, your city and your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage... our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."
Domination masquerading as liberation is an old propaganda tactic of empires but it rarely works among the populations subjugated by this type of emancipation.
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