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 COMMENTARY
The battle
of the tyrants
By Ehsan Ahrari
President George W Bush in his inaugural
address on Thursday used the word "tyranny"
repeatedly. In one passage he said, "So it is the
policy of the United States to seek and support
the growth of democratic movements and
institutions in every nation and culture with the
ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
Hours before Bush was sworn in for his second
term, Iraq's "terrorist-in-chief", Musab
al-Zarqawi, issued a video in which he urged
Islamists to prepare for a lengthy holy war
against "tyrant" America. So the next four years
of Bush's tenure will be a contest between the US,
the eradicator of tyranny, and those who depict
the US as the chief tyrant of the world.
All major struggles of our time went
through a gestation period when they were defined
and redefined, when promoters of various agendas
developed new strategies and kept on refining them
in order to ensure their victory. Applying this
statement on the Cold War, the struggle between
the US and the Soviet Union was deftly defined by
Washington as a contest between freedom and
enslavement. That description was not merely
rhetorical. Anyone could see what the Soviet Union
had done to Central European countries when it
absorbed them into its camp. People from the
non-communist polities did not need much
persuading to believe that what the Soviet Union
was offering was a life with little or virtually
no human freedom or dignity, and a low standard of
living to boot.
By contrast, the current
struggle under the general rubric of "global war
on terrorism" does not enjoy the conceptual or
perceptual clarity of the Cold War era. One
frequently hears that this struggle is between
Islamists or terrorists who hate freedom. That is
a highly contentious proposition. Osama bin Laden
hates Saudi Arabia as much as he does the US, but
for different reasons. To state that terrorists
hate freedom or "our way of life" makes a good
speech in Pocatello, Idaho or Grand Rapids,
Michigan. But how is that description received in
Hamburg, Germany, or Jakarta, Indonesia, or
Casablanca, Morocco? Which way of life is an
American politician referring to? Is it the
Western way of life or the American way of life?
Strictly speaking, those ways of life are not
exactly the same from the perspective of standard
of living. Politically speaking, however, they
both share freedom of choice.
The "war on
terrorism" is described as a war between the West
and the Islamists. But Islamists don't have a
special quarrel with the West in general. They
have clearly disaggregated the phrase "West" and
have remained focused on the US, the lone
superpower and, of late, the chief proselytizer
for Western-style democracy, which is perceived as
antithetical to Islam. When it comes to
quarrelling with the US, the Islamists express a
lot of anger, but in Muslim societies at large,
the general perception is that the US - not the
current US government - stands for liberty,
freedom and a good standard of living. PEW public
opinion polls have been establishing that fact for
years.
After the terrorist attacks on the
US, there was that frequently heard question on
public forums: Why do they hate us? The question
was understandable in the sense that the amount of
violence perpetrated against thousands of innocent
citizens was flabbergasting. Where was so much
anger or hatred hidden for so long before it
surfaced with such an immense blast? After the US
military action against Afghanistan and then in
Iraq, a general feeling in the Muslim world was
that the lone superpower had declared a war
against Islam. It was not just those military
campaigns against two Muslim countries that were
persuading Muslims to think that their religion
was under attack. There were all those countless
detentions and deportations of Muslims, the USA
Patriot Act, and constant speculation about
al-Qaeda cells inside the US that was
not-so-subtly describing Muslim Americans as
potential terrorists.
The Bush
administration's overall position was that it had
no quarrel with Islam, only with terrorists who
were using Islam to perpetrate terror. However, a
great number of Muslims are at least sympathetic
to the proposition that the US is indeed waging a
war against their religion. They don't outright
believe it. Not right now, but they can be
persuaded. Al-Qaeda and other likeminded
organizations and groups are constantly waging the
propaganda war to persuade a large number of
Muslims that Islam is under attack. It is
important for them to win large followers.
However, the "fog of war" that professional
military personnel so ardently discuss describing
various military campaigns is also prevalent in
this "war" on terrorism. The overall result is
general confusion; hundreds and thousands of
thinking and law-abiding citizens in the US and
elsewhere in the West are becoming sympathetic to
the proposition that "Muslims hate the West", and
an almost equal number of similar people in the
Muslim world are similarly sympathetic to the
proposition that the US is waging a war against
Islam.
Many years ago, John Mearsheimer of
the University of Chicago wrote an excellent
essay, "Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War". He
wrote, "We may, however, wake up one day lamenting
the loss of the order that the Cold War gave to
the anarchy of international relations." It was so
easy to consider "godless" communism an enemy of
all religions and, most definitely, an enemy of
freedom. Today, we can't even define the struggle.
Everyone hates terrorists and rightly so. But what
is this fight all about? Is this about Islam or
against Islam? Is it about freedom? If so, how
should one establish it? Does "freedom" mean
Western-style democracy for everyone? An
arrangement like that would make the entire world
look like any US city that has malls, places of
worship, parking lots, playgrounds, union halls,
country clubs, etc. Then everything everywhere
else, as it is now in the US, would become
seasonal. You are supposed to be nice to people
during Christmas, since it is the season to be
jolly. You celebrate motherhood and fatherhood on
Mother's and Father's days, be thankful to the
almighty on Thanksgiving Day, etc. Should the
result be Americanization of the entire world?
Muslims, for sure, would object to that quite
vociferously.
So what are we fighting
about? For Muslims, their religion will last until
the end of this world. However, there are many
thoughtful persons - or at least that's what they
want to sound like when they speak on the subject
- who are publicly speaking about reforming Islam.
When one hears of that proposition, one thinks
along the lines of the preceding paragraph: the
Americanization of Islam. In other words, is it
possible that the real US agenda regarding Islam
is to make it similar to Christianity? But that is
not possible. Only Muslims are qualified to
discuss the possibilities of modifying Islam. So
you see how confusing the entire fight has become.
Now, Bush has wrapped himself in the
slogans of liberty and depicts himself as a
fighter against tyranny, while al-Zarqawi makes a
point of describing the US as a tyrant. Millions
of reasonable people of the world want some
straightforward explanations of the world about
them; a simpler world, even returning to the Cold
War. Then, the enemy was the Soviet Union. There
was no lack of clarity about that. Now, Bush is
clear in stating that his fight is not against
Islam, but he is not at all clear about what or
whom he is fighting. Now he tells us he is
fighting tyranny. But whose tyranny is he fighting
against? Looking at the world from Islamabad,
Cairo, Baghdad or Jakarta, there is no tyrant in
their parts of the world. They see another tyrant.
And you know who that is.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia,
US-based independent strategic analyst.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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