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| November 8, 2001 | atimes.com | ||
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Letters
Readers' responses to Escobar's 'The New Imperialism' Pepe Escobar's article was insightful and his points well taken. However let us be perfectly clear about something ... "France, Germany, Italy, Japan and China" don't have to be "keen on turning back the digital clock of history" because (a) they are still there in many respects (treatment of domestic minorities, influences on past colonies, nationalistic tendencies), and (2) they have some of the least attractive pasts to revisit (respectively: North Africa [Algeria], WWI and II, the invasion of Ethiopia, historic treatment of China and Korea, and occupation of Tibet.) I agree with the thrust of his argument, but obnoxious little swipes draw from its impact, especially when they are historically hypocritical and ignorant. If history is a lesson, I would rather have the Americans and the British taking some of the more difficult decisions than any of the above. Otherwise, thanks Mr Escobar for your insight. William Bryant Smith New Haven, Connecticut, US It was with great interest that I read the rather laborious piece by Pepe Escobar. Several questions came to mind ... mostly having to do with who his audience is (was) and why he was working so hard to sound smart (erudite sounds too trite). This reminds me of the op-ed pieces of the '60s: meandering, vaguely educated, quoting obscure writers of no reputation and always critical of America AND always linking (somehow) the CIA and oil companies. Aren't we beyond this? If we learned anything from the events of September 11, we learned that American hegemony is not all seeing and all knowing and we learned (to our grief) that the CIA has very little real power in the real world of terrorists. My own take is that time for sophomoric "political science 101" diatribes has come to an end. The world that has educated Mr Escobar has chosen to turn hateful and ugly in a way that can only result in violence. Sorry to say, but the tolerant language of "let's just talk and be friends" has been rejected over and over by a people (culture) that has one goal: to eradicate all opposition. That is not The American Way. It never has been and it never will be. Never forget that those who attacked America used our great strengths to hurt us ... our freedom, our tolerance for differences and our patience with the terrorists previous attacks on our country. You see, if we were really imperialist we would have crushed Iraq and Iran and Libya long ago instead of attempting to be culturally sensitive to local movements (ie, the Taliban) and trying to work within those frameworks - as opposed to imposing (acting imperialistically) our will on others. Now, we strike back and we will be forceful. If history teaches us anything about America we will not occupy an unwilling populace. We will fight to a conclusion. One can look at the Philippines for an example. Vietnam? Come to America and see "Little Saigon" in Garden Grove, California, and ask who won that war and how America deals with it's "enemies". I want to close with the thought that Mr Escobar would do well to study history as it is and not as he wishes it to be. Dan Denton Director of Development Bethel Seminary, San Diego, US I just read Pepe Esocbar's commentary. While I find most of it very interesting, I take issue with the claim that there is "no confirmed evidence" against bin Laden/Al-Qaeda. Regardless of what the state of the evidence was before the war was brought to Afghanistan, since then bin Laden's own self-incriminating statements on world television have basically made the case air-tight. Andy Shiner I found Mr Escobar's observations regarding the Taliban, globalism, and the new world order to be very insightful. Although I'm an American, I've always been fairly critical of the double standard the majority in this country has regarding themselves and everyone else. Until recently, and some would say I'm giving America too much credit, this country wasn't a land of liberty and justice. The institutional racism against African-Americans is a prime example. But, as Mr Escobar says, we have a dynamic society, one built on rationalism in opposition to the irrational, medieval European civilization of the past, and I firmly believe that anti-rational "doctrines" like racism will continue to crumble in the face of Western rationalism. The truth is, the US has been an imperial power since World War II (not counting our involvement in the Philippines or the conquering of Hawaii). Yet, the US has never been a colonial power, we've simply never had the moral stomach for it. That's why the physical abuse of civil rights protectors in the 1960s turned popular opinion against segregation. No, the US has always preferred the tools of economics and espionage to expand it's global influence. Don't get me wrong. I love the US and I wouldn't dream of taking my citizenship anywhere else in the world. But prior to September 11, I've always wanted America to practice in the global community more of what it preaches. But, things are a little different now. Regardless of what you say about American activity in this place or that, the US has largely restrained itself from lashing out against it's enemies. War is usually only in the interest of a relative few. Keep in mind that activists and revolutionaries in the Middle East have been carrying out attacks against the US and her interests for nearly 30 years. Now I see young Muslim children holding signs that say things like, "America is the most evil nation in the history of the world". If that were the case then we would have kept our biological weapons program going and reduced our nuclear arsenal the old fashioned way, and we certainly wouldn't be putting our own men on the ground in Afghanistan to direct the bombing campaign to reduce civilian deaths there. What would the lives of a few civilians mean to the most evil nation in history? Well, they mean a lot to us, and don't you think Al-Qaeda knows it? Don't you think it's exactly what they are hoping for? Months and months of bombing, maybe even a ground invasion, soldiers and civilians in body bags, the moral stomach of the West gradually turning. If anything our empathy, our regard for ourselves and the rest of the world is our greatest weakness. Ultimately, the point of Mr Escobar's article was to argue that a new world order is coming. My response to that is purely a liberal one. Change is constant. We are constantly living in a new world, and when you start to believe otherwise is when you are most vulnerable. Furthermore, unlike every other so-called imperial power before us, we have seldom used military force to prove a point or get our way, which means we have a host of tricks up our proverbial sleeve when it comes to expanding our influence. I'm certainly not implying we would ever conceive of doing such a thing (100,000 angry, lonely soldiers wives are more terrifying any day than the Taliban). It would take a helluva lot of pushing to get us that ambitious, and I'm sure most American's pray, as I do, that it will never get to that point. The scary thing is, that someone out there, as they proved on September 11, wants to find out how far we will go. Well, the question on everyone's mind right now is, or should be, "How hard will the terrorists push, and who are they willing to sacrifice in the process?" No, Mr Escobar, our reach is not overextended but, if I may take it upon myself to express the feeling of most Americans, we have no interest in testing our boundaries. So in a sense, we have stretched as far as we care to. But should the terrorists continue to bring the battle to us, I can't begin to predict the ferocity of this nation's response. Quentin Mendoza US Whether or not the US has mishandled the situations in the Middle East, we will not allow violence to be brought to our shores. You can blame the US for all the misery but the bottom line is that the Middle Eastern countries have had thousands of years to create stable governments yet have failed to do so by clinging to their nomadic, tribal mentality. Rather than develop their own resources and capabilities they have had to "deal with the devil (US)" to create economies that pull their countries out of the stone age. The people and governments in the Middle East are poorly educated and make highly emotional decisions resulting in the inability to negotiate positions based on reason. As for the innocent civilians of Afghanistan and Iraq, I can only have limited compassion for them. Freedom is obtained at a cost and requires sacrifice. There are thousands of able-bodied men in the refuge camps who should be fighting for a stable form of government instead of fleeing the country and waiting for some outside force to "save" them. As for Iraq, all they have to do is comply with the terms of surrender that they agreed to for ending the Gulf War. If they don't like it then they should have thought about that before invading Kuwait. Also, why did the US have to come to the aid of Kuwait? Where was the aid from their brothers in the rest of Islam? The US cannot just walk away from the Middle East. The instability of those governments is a breeding ground for terrorism and violence the world over as it has been for thousands of years. The best way to get us "infidels" out of your land is to create stable, rational governments and get control of the fanatics in your populations. R M Russon US Pepe Escobar went to great lengths to attempt to define the war in Afghanistan as a war of US imperialism as opposed to a war on terrorism. He provides quotes from authors and editorial boards in newspapers as evidence of such. Yet I find it amusing that Escobar did not find the mass murder in America on September 11 relevant enough to the current war in Afghanistan to even mention it in passing. The only explanation is that Escobar found it impossible to fit these murders into his theory, and thus he simply eliminated their mention completely. How is it possible to conduct a responsible review of the causes of this war by eliminating the mass murder of thousands in America? For those of you who would like to believe Escobar and those like him, that America is really the Great Satan and only fighting an imperialistic war in the name of Asian oil pipelines, it is important for me to not let you forget something. Nineteen Arabs, in the name of Islam, hijacked four civilian planes and crashed them into civilian office buildings in the largest urban center in America, killing thousands of people. Ultimately, the Taliban government of Afghanistan, by allowing Osama bin Laden to use their nation as a base for their murderous activities are accomplices by definition. By allowing it to happen, they are just as responsible as the ones they support. Why is Arab rage at America justified because America attacked Afghanistan, but American rage at Afghanistan is not justified because their agents attacked America? It simply isn't logical and exposes an anti-West bias. Tom C US Point 1: Your editorial is, without question, the best summary of what is occurring in Afghanistan that I've read thus far. Your reference to the support of the war by US citizens, and the apparent support of the administration, does not account for the jingoistic non-stop media blitz, and the witholding of pertinent information from the public, eg, the absence of any meaningful link between the Afghans and the "terrorist" attack, or the self-serving financial activity of businesses within the WTC shortly prior to the September 11 attack. In the future, as the cost of this war - in terms of lost services and freedoms - becomes clear to Americans, coupled with the effects of the flagging economy, I suspect that the American public will begin to question the enormous expenditures being made for this New Imperialism. There is already evidence that the establishment feels the need to initiate witch-hunts, and this suggests that opinion-makers believe that more will be needed to maintain public support for the war. I agree that the attacks on Afghanistan are a component of the "New Imperialism". With respect to imperialism as a geopolitical/geomilitary effort, I don't agree that this is a repeat performance. In short, I believe that the New Imperialism cannot be understood in terms of the Old Imperialism unless it can be shown that there was, overall, a meaningful end to imperialism. What, then, should be understood as "New"? The New Imperialism, I suspect, has more to do with maintaining the status quo; it has to do with self-preservation in a world which no longer can be defined by the term "Cold War" - a world in which lip service was given to assisting poor nations obtain economic independence and establishing democracies, while - simultaneously - corrupting governments, swindling economies, and arming rightwing death squads. Correctly understood, the phrase "War on Terrorism" takes on a double meaning. The "New" fears are environmental deterioration, hunger, lack of safe and controllable sources of power, civil strife, and so on. And it is precisely those fears that strikes "terror" in the heart of the Western establishment. Returning to your thesis of "overextension". Personally, I do not doubt that the US (especially when the combined military power of the West is added) can dominate the globe through force of arms. In many important ways it controls the globe already. Overextension, in my view, and "terror" must be understood in terms of a globe that cannot for long support the levels of consumption that are now occurring, especially in the West. Point 2: I have seen, nowhere, an evaluation of the Afghanistan in terms of China. When the Soviets were at war, the Western press frequently mentioned the frayed relations between the Soviet Union and China, and pointed to Soviet power in Afghanistan as a potential threat to China. Reading articles on this subject today, one would have to believe that China has somehow disappeared or been moved to another location. It is hard for me not to believe that China views the military action by the West as a potential threat, and I wonder how long the US can sustain a war in the region without antagonizing the Chinese government. Finally, I should point out that I'm an African American and have grown used to US belligerence. I've learned what it means to be subjected to a dominating and racist culture. Reading books has also broadened my perspectives. Recently, I read an outstanding book, The Assassination of Lumumba by De Witt, Verso 2001. This book is important because it shows how the blueprint for modern domination of nations and cultures was fashioned, and it also demonstrates the joint participation of Western nations, the United Nations, and the media when protecting Western interests. J Gray US Pepe Escobar's commentary goes on and on attacking the idea of the New Imperialism but there is absolutely no suggestion of what the US or the Western world (that is the part of the world which has stable democratic governance) is supposed to do about a terrorist organization which is trying to pull off spectacular missions. Then he tries to pretend that France and Germany aren't supportive - it's college political rant. The US empire has been a very laissez-faire affair until now - the world needs the US to be more involved in global affairs - not less. It is called to be the world leader by its sheer size and power - that's the way the world works. It can either take up its responsibilities, or cower in the corner like a helpless giant. The line of there not being "a shred of evidence" against bin Laden is incredible - even the Muslim world knows he did it and is planning more attacks - his own mouth condemns him. Stupid pseudo intellectual rubbish which entirely ignores the self-defensive nature of this war. George M UK Maybe Pepe Escobar should spend a little time at ground zero. He has turned the military action to rout terrorists into a long-winded, pedestrian, leftwing apology for the US bashers. The United States is an easy target for everything that is wrong is in the world. No one here in the States wants to colonize anything. We didn't ask for this war. It was thrust upon us. Last time I checked, America was the one who was attacked. America was the one who lost 6,000 civilians who were merely at work that Tuesday morning. As soon as your pals the Taliban lay down their arms, we'll cool it. Until then, all bets are off, bro. I have no problem with anyone or any religion. I do have a problem with psychopathic, murderous criminals. And those who harbor and abet them. Rick Rosenberg Chicago, Illinois, US |
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