Mungkin dapat meluaskan cakrawala pemikiran? Anti-imperialism vs.
anti-Americanism: an exchange of letters 26 February 2007 Use this version to
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The following is an exchange of letters with a reader on the article Blaming
the Iraqis: A new cover-up for American militarism.
You are absolutely right! And the first one in print to say so. My husband
and I have noticed that diversionary tactic in political speeches.
But what else can they do in this political shell game? The Blaming Iran
tactic seems to have failed (so far), so they need to place the blame
somewhere. The Iraqis are like the likely choice. Remember, many Americans
still think Saddam was behind 9/11!
The fact that the massacres did not start till after the US invasion has
already been forgotten by the US public. Just keep talking about Brittany
Spears shaved head and lack of underwear, and the latest X-Box, and they
forget there even is a war.
In the recent documentary on the Iraq war, Ground Truth, a 25-year-old
soldier who lost a hand said that when he got home someone asked him how it
happened. When he answered that hed lost it in the war, the next question was,
What war? He answered, The Iraq war. The response was, Really? Is that
still going on?
The US never had the right to invade Iraq, just like the Nazis had no right
to invade Poland, France, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Russia, etc. The people of
those countries sabotaged Nazi trains and killed as many German soldiers as
they could. Were they right? Or were they wrong?
If another country invaded the USA, would it be wrong for US citizens to
sabotage and to kill the invading soldiers? I think all killing is wrong, but
we should apply the same rules.
Its pathetic for American soldiers to play Innocent Victim when they
invade a country that has done nothing to them, bomb villages, torture innocent
civilians, rape 12-year-old girls and set them on fire The survivors are going
to take revenge on the next American soldier they see. And the soldiers in this
war dont even have the excuse that they were drafted. They volunteered to go
kill, but cant understand why anybody would want to shoot them. Lets get real.
Americans paradoxically think of themselves as saints with God on their side
and as Tough Guys who have every right to do anything to anybody if it gives
them a little more oil for their SUVs, or more land stolen from Native
Americans and Mexico, or passage for their ships, such as taking the Panama
Canal from Colombia.
I cant even figure out why we went to war with Vietnam, or fermented
assassinations in Indonesia, Angola, Chile and Chad, just to name a few.
I wish the US Government would at least stop being so hypocritical and admit
they dont give a rats ass that theyre murdering innocent men, women, and
children for money, instead of justifying it by saying they are bringing
Democracy to a country, or Liberating it from and evil dictator, or saving
them from Communism, or by lying that Iraq was behind 9/11, or they had WMDs,
or whatever the latest bogeyman happens to be.
Iraq never attacked the US, just like Vietnam, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile,
Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama or the other tiny little, unknown
countries which never attacked the US. Yet the US always manages to find a
pretext for killing innocent people there. Its all about money!
Sorry about the rant. I just finished reading Fiasco and Im pissed. Not only
is this an evil, greedy government, it is also incredibly and absolutely
incompetent!
Which reminds me of the great quote by Will Durant: A civilization cannot be
destroyed unless it has already been destroyed within.
MB
20 February 2007
* * *
Dear MB,
Your response to Patrick Martins article Blaming the Iraqis: A new cover-up
for American militarism is welcome. We can certainly appreciate the anger and
frustration you feel over the rapacious and criminal war being waged by the
Bush administration. But the salient point here is that you are not alone in
this view.
There continues to be no political outlet for the mass opposition to the war
that revealed itself in the repudiation of Bushs policies in the 2006 mid-term
election. The lack of any genuine outlet for antiwar sentiment within the
two-party system has been underscored by the post-election prostration of the
Democratic Party opponents of the war.
Your letter indicates a more than passing familiarity with the crimes of US
imperialism over the last six decades. But it is now time to place these events
within a proper analytical framework, or, as the great philosopher Spinoza once
wrote, Not to laugh, not to weep, but to understand.
When you say, The fact that the massacres did not start till after the US
invasion has already been forgotten by the US public, it is time to pause. I
think you tend to identify the obvious lies and distortions advanced by the
capitalist media with the consciousness of the vast majority of the American
people, which has not remained by any means static.
How does one account for the results of the 2006 elections? The growing
disquiet and anger, even hatred, aimed at the governments policies has not
gone un-noticed by Bush and Cheney, who have made it abundantly clear that
massive public opposition will have no impact on their decisions either to
continue the Iraq war or to launch a new one against Iran.
I believe that to an unfortunate extent your response to blaming the Iraqis
is to blame the Americans (the American people as a whole), and this is a wrong
approach that I hope you will reconsider. That there has been backwardness and
confusion expressed in the American population since the events of 9/11 is
undeniable. How could it be otherwise?
The US ruling elite through its kept media has worked incessantly to sow this
confusion and to conceal the actual events behind the peculiar stand-down of
domestic security and intelligence on the eve of 9/11, and in its aftermath,
the real motivations behind the explosion of US militarism.
It is true that the Republican and Democratic parties collectively exercise a
dictatorship over political life, constricting the parameters of the debate
on the war, as though no-one outside of their cloistered environs recognizes
that it was their decision to launch this aggressive war in the first place
that has created this tragedy for the Iraqi people and for thousands of
American families. The machinations of Democrats and Republicans alike have
become increasingly transparent, so ensnared are they in the catastrophe that
is the Iraq war.
Their attempt to bludgeon the American people into supporting this criminal
enterprise has turned dangerously awry. There has been a dramatic, but as yet
politically inchoate shift in the thinking of a large section of the American
people towards the war and the militarism of the ruling elite in this country.
People are drawing their own conclusions, and events such as the governments
callous disregard for the victims of the Katrina disaster, the attack on the
right of habeas corpus and the general erosion of democratic rights, and,
finally, the unprecedented socio-economic polarization have burrowed their way
into the consciousness of millions.
We are in agreement that the Iraqi people have the right to take up arms to
repulse the attempt at re-colonization of their country and the plundering of
their natural resources. At the same time, however, it cannot be emphasized
enough that the Iraqi masses urgently need a political perspective no less so
than people in this country.
Socialists do not blame the general population of a particular country for
the crimes of their rulers. Thus, we opposed residual anti-German sentiment
that revealed a profound ignorance of the reasons for the rise of Hitler and
the victory of fascism, particularly the pernicious role of Stalinism in paving
the way for the historic defeat of the German working class.
In the same way, we are opposed to ascribing collective guilt for the crimes
of the Bush administration to the American people, and for that matter, even
the US soldiers, most of whom are economic conscripts forced into this
situation by circumstances that they themselves barely understand. The question
of supporting the troops, hurled at genuine opponents of the war by Democrats
and Republicans alike, is a fraud. What has been the result of this support
except the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3,000
Americans, with over 20,000 wounded?
We have to place the blame squarely where it belongs. Anti-Americanism as it
is advanced in some radical circlesand by political reactionaries in other
countries who use it as a convenient cloak to mask their own nationalist
appetites as well as attacks being prepared against their own working
classesdepicts the United States as a monolithic society devoid of social
contradictions. I think you would agree that nothing could be further from the
truth. The United States is an extraordinarily diverse country, rife with class
divisions of an explosive and potentially revolutionary character.
You must not content yourself with superficial analyses and emotions. It is
the American ruling elite and its political representatives who are criminally
responsible for waging aggressive war against Iraq.
I would urge you to read an article we posted in the immediate aftermath of
9/11, Anti-Americanism: The Anti-imperialism of fools. In it, we wrote, For
Bush and his ilk defending freedom and democracy is merely a code phrase for
the right of the American elite to have its way around the world. To the
ordinary American citizen these words mean something quite different. The
sinister reality of the US governments new war against terrorism, with its
grandiose aim of reorganizing an entire region of the world in line with
American geo-political interests, will make its way into the popular
consciousness provided the necessary work is conducted by socialist
internationalists.
I hope you will continue to read the World Socialist Web Site and correspond
with us.
Yours truly,
Walter Gilberti, for the WSWS editorial board
26 February 2007
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