After all it’s crimes, the Great Satan still wants to attack the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Payamat Ey Emam Esteqlal, Azadi Naqsh-e Jan-e Mast!
The Uglier American](http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7944.htm)
By Amulya Ganguli
02/02/05 “The Asian Age” – India: –
*The Ugly American of Vietnam has become the Uglier American of Iraq. It is not the inhumanity of My Lai which defines the US today but the sadism of Abu Ghraib. But even this hideous version may not have reached its nadir. That depth will be plumbed when the Bushies, comprising the American neocons and Israeli Zionists, attack Iran’s nuclear installations, a possibility which Dick Cheney has mentioned. It will be an act which is likely to make even the poodle Tony Blair squirm in embarrassment. But will this US-Israeli “noble” endeavour to eliminate WMDs and spread democracy fulfil their dream of establishing an American empire? Or will it mark the beginning of the end of America’s hyper power status as the bombing raids on Iran unleash uncontrollable forces of religious and ethnic fury?
Ever since the Soviet Union’s demise, the US hawks had believed that the time had come to conquer the world. As a prelude, they began by mocking the UN and trashing all international treaties — on ballistic missiles, global warming, germ warfare, land mines, small arms, international criminal court, the Geneva conventions, et al. But it is the flouting of the Geneva Conventions which proved to be their Achilles’ heel. Once the neocons coined the term “enemy combatants,” there was no holding back the guards and interrogators. Hence, the cruelty at Abu Ghraib. But what the torturers did not realise is that the 21st century is far more integrated because of the power of the media than the earlier age of colonialism. All empires are built on brutality. However, the barbarism of the earlier periods remained largely hidden. It is only when a major incident of massacre came to light, as in Jallianwala Bagh, that the empires were stirred into trying to douse the flames of anger. Otherwise, minor incidents were routinely hushed up.
As Curzon’s biographer David Gilmour noted, “when natives were beaten up or occasionally killed by drunken soldiers, the guilty men were almost invariably lightly fined or even acquitted.” But imagine what would have happened if the Jallianwala Bagh carnage had taken place in an age of satellite television. First, it probably wouldn’t have, for even so pig-headed a person as Gen. Dyer would have been aware of the fatal consequences for the British empire if there was any possibility of the heart-rending scene being captured on camera. But even if the massacre did take place, the empire couldn’t have lasted for another nearly three decades, as it did. The shock and revulsion around the world would have been too great.
Even at that time, the tragedy was described by Winston Churchill, an unrepentant imperialist, as an incident which stood in “singular and sinister isolation” in British colonial history. One of the virtues of the modern-day audio-visual communication has been to ensure that the maltreatment of the people of an occupied country cannot persist for long. Even the ragtag group of Iraqi insurgents comprising, among others, the Al Qaeda terrorists, may earn a measure of sympathy for resisting the American invasion of Iraq. They are serving the same purpose which the Vietcong did three decades ago when they let a nuclear-armed superpower know that it cannot hope to control the affairs of another country. True, neither the Iraqi militias nor the Vietnamese Communists are, or were, paragons of virtue. Both represent totalitarian forces. But they are, and were, at least fighting in their own country or in a country in their region against an alien army from thousands of miles away.
Before the currently contemplated shock and awe tactics in Iran (even as Iraq remains ungovernable) provokes a “diplomatic mess,” as Cheney has warned, it may be remembered that at the height of its arrogance after the end of the Cold War, Washington used to boast that the US was capable of fighting two wars simultaneously. There were also claims that the American satellites kept such a hawk’s eye watch all over the world that they could even read the number plates of a car. But these Argus-eyed electronic spies couldn’t spot Osama bin Laden and his unholy warriors escape into Pakistan. And far from being able to fight two wars together, the Americans do not seem to be able to fight even one war against a country which has no weapons of mass destruction. And they didn’t dare to go against a country which does — North Korea.
A misreading of their own prowess and barbaric behaviour towards prisoners are not the only reasons for the ugly image of the Americans. There was barbarism in Rwanda, too, and also in Chechnya. But though tragic, these were localised conflicts, not the result of empire-building (though the battles in Chechnya can answer partly to that description). Moreover, if such incidents tended to get out of control, the international community intervened, as in Kosovo, or apologised later for not intervening, as in Rwanda. But when a country takes upon itself the task of setting things right in a distant place simply because the ruler there tried to “kill my dad,” one of George W. Bush’s explanations for invading Iraq, then the blood-soaked aftermath can leave no winners.
Having got into Iraq, the US cannot now leave, for a retreat will not only reopen America’s old Vietnam angst, but also unnerve Israel. The Zionists were looking forward to America’s world conquest, which would have enabled them to initiate a “final solution” of the Palestinian “problem,” entailing a fake withdrawal from Gaza while retaining the right to attack if Tel Aviv suspected that the “terrorists” were still lurking there, and shredding the West Bank into ungovernable disjointed strips of land in between the vast Jewish settlements.
As part of that plan, Ariel Sharon had presented to the White House a map identifying Iran’s nuclear installations, with the implicit suggestion that the Americans bomb these just as the Israelis had bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor to the applause of the neocons. But it is the mess in Iraq which has scrambled the happy scenario. Perversely, however, it is the very difficulties in Iraq which may make America (and Israel) stir up a further mess because a hyperpower (and its pit bull) cannot afford to be seen floundering in a quagmire and have to keep battling their enemies in the axis of evil. Yet, it is the nature of quicksand that the more you try to extricate yourself by lashing out at all and sundry, the deeper you sink.*
