[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Jensen / It's Not Just The Emperor Who Is Naked, But The Whole Empire / May 30

[Morton K.Brussel]

Another clear headed article by Robert Jensen. FYI.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: ZNet Commentaries <sysop at zmag.org>
> Date: May 29, 2004 9:12:26 PM CDT
> To: brussel at uiuc.edu
> Subject: Jensen / It's Not Just The Emperor Who Is Naked, But The 
> Whole Empire / May 30
>
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> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-05/30jensen.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> It's Not Just The Emperor Who Is Naked, But The Whole Empire May 30, 
> 2004
> By Robert Jensen
>
> Republican politicians took potshots at House Democratic leader Nancy 
> Pelosi last week after she called President Bush "incompetent" and 
> criticized his judgment and leadership. Her conclusion -- "the emperor 
> has no clothes" -- understandably made Republicans angry, because it 
> is so obviously accurate.
>
> Pelosi's remarks deserve scrutiny, but not because she was too harsh 
> on the president. The lies and distortions that Bush and his top 
> officials used to promote the U.S. invasion of Iraq were exposed long 
> ago, and day-by-day the disastrous consequences of the occupation are 
> obvious to all but the most fanatical of the Leader's faithful.
>
> But the problem is not just that the EMPEROR is bare, but that the 
> U.S. EMPIRE has no clothes, and in that respect mainstream Democrats 
> stand before the world as naked as the most reactionary Republicans.
>
> It is understandable that many think of Bush administration policies 
> as a radical departure from past U.S. foreign policy, and certainly 
> the doctrine of preemption (which is so far untested, because Iraq 
> posed no threat to the United States; the U.S. invasion, therefore, 
> didn't preempt anything but was instead a simple crime against peace) 
> and the open call for world domination have taken the country -- and 
> the world -- down a particularly dangerous path. But Bush is hardly 
> the first president to engage in empire building.
>
> A few years ago, anyone who described the United States as an empire 
> was branded part of the loony left. But since 9/11, even conservative 
> pundits talk of empire, albeit in perversely positive terms, exhorting 
> U.S. leaders to seize the opportunity to remake the world.
>
> But that project didn't begin with 9/11. Whatever point in U.S. 
> history one claims as the beginning of the imperial project (the 
> genocide of indigenous people in North America? the Monroe Doctrine? 
> the conquest of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War?), 
> there is no doubt that U.S. empire building went into high gear after 
> World War II.
>
> The fact that the United States doesn't acquire colonies in the same 
> fashion as past empires, preferring instead to install compliant 
> governments that will do its bidding, doesn't make us less an empire. 
> The modalities of control change, but the game remains the same; set 
> the terms for the world economy and derail the possibility of 
> independent development by any means necessary, with a gargantuan 
> military on call when violence is required.
>
> Nor do the differences in style and tactics make Democratic 
> administrations any less imperial than Republicans. The Cold-War 
> liberals of the Democratic Party had no greater qualms than 
> Republicans about using the military to extend U.S. power in the Third 
> World. The blood of millions of dead Vietnamese is on the hands of 
> liberal darling John F. Kennedy and conservative curmudgeon Richard 
> Nixon alike.
>
> Whatever the differences in domestic policy in the postwar period 
> between Republicans and Democrats, in international relations the 
> consensus on each side of the aisle was firmly in favor of militarism 
> to project U.S. power around the world. The only admirable people in 
> either party were the few dissidents (such as Democrats Wayne Morse 
> and Ernest Gruening, the only two senators to vote against the Gulf of 
> Tonkin resolution that justified expansion of the Vietnam War, or 
> Republican Rep. Pete McCloskey, who challenged Nixon).
>
> That pattern continues up to this day. We should not forget that for 
> all the talk of Bill Clinton's "multilateralism," he launched an 
> illegal attack on Iraq in 1998 and insisted on maintaining the 
> harshest economic embargo in modern history on that country for eight 
> years, which killed as many as 1 million Iraqis -- policies that had 
> virtually no support in the world. In short, Clinton killed more 
> Iraqis than Bush as he ignored international law and world opinion. I 
> doubt the fact that Clinton is smarter and more rhetorically gifted 
> than Bush makes much difference to the dead in Iraq.
>
> And while Bush bears primary responsibility for the Iraq War, he 
> couldn't have done it without the help of some Democrats (such as John 
> Kerry, who voted for it) and the inaction of others (such as Pelosi, 
> who voted against the war but expended no political capital to mount a 
> serious campaign to stop it and added to the case for war with false 
> statements such as "Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and 
> biological weapons" as late as November 2002).
>
> There's no indication that any of the current strategists in the 
> Democratic Party have learned anything from all this. Kerry is not 
> calling for an end to the illegal and immoral occupation but instead 
> advocates a continued U.S. presence with an international fig leaf.
>
> Neither Republicans nor mainstream Democrats seem capable of admitting 
> that the invasion of Iraq was never about weapons of mass destruction, 
> terrorist ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, or creating democracy; it 
> was simply an intensification of the longstanding U.S. project of 
> controlling the strategically crucial energy resources of the Middle 
> East. That project has gone on under Democratic and Republican 
> presidents alike, taking different forms but always with that same 
> goal of expanding U.S. power.
>
> It's not just the Iraq War that is immoral. The whole rotten project 
> of empire building is immoral -- and every bit as much a Democratic as 
> a Republican project. When politicians from both parties offer 
> platitudes about America's benevolent intentions as they argue about 
> the most appropriate strategies for running the world, we should 
> remember this trenchant comment after World War I from W.E.B. DuBois: 
> "It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself, 
> first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in 
> this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this role."
>
> This analysis doesn't mean voters can't judge one particular 
> empire-building politician more dangerous than another. It doesn't 
> mean we shouldn't sometimes make strategic choices to vote for one 
> over the other. It simply means we should make such choices with eyes 
> open and no illusions.
>
> Here, I borrow phrases from Pelosi's condemnation of Bush: "When are 
> people going to face reality? Pull the curtain back."
>
> Indeed, Rep. Pelosi, pull the curtain back. You will see naked 
> emperors, Republican and Democratic. You will see the cowardly 
> legislators who chose to step aside before the war, when spirited 
> opposition in Congress might have helped derail the disaster that is 
> playing out in Iraq.
>
> Pull the curtain back, and step in front of the mirror.
>
> Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at 
> Austin and the author of "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to 
> Claim Our Humanity." He can be reached at rjensen at uts.cc.utexas.edu.
>
>
>
>
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