Rogue superpower - Essay

New Internationalist, July, 2002 by David Ransom

Sympathy for the American people, and the easy charge of 'anti-Americanism', have restrained debate on what the US Government has really been up to since 11 September. David Ransom doesn't like the look of it -- or where it may be leading.

With alarming speed, what began as a series of crimes against humanity has become the pretext for war against anyone the US Government cares to nominate as an enemy. Like the collapse of the Twin Towers themselves, this result must be well beyond the most deranged imaginings of whoever was responsible for 11 September. The only way to deny the perpetrators satisfaction was, and still is, to bring them to justice. A supremely difficult task, no doubt, but scarcely beyond the wit of humanity to accomplish.

Instead, the crimes have been compounded. An undeclared war has been visited from the air on the people of Afghanistan -- none of whom was involved in 11 September -- using weapons like 'daisy cutters' that come as close to mass destruction as it is possible to get. Already, by 7 December 2001, more Afghani civilians had been killed by the bombing than died in the World Trade Center; (1) a far greater number suffer from displacement and hunger. Afghanis have been relieved of the Taliban only to be subjected again to the drug barons and warlords of the Northern Alliance. And war in Afghanistan continues.

In the wider 'war on terrorism' thousands of people have been detained without trial or evidence, other than their ethnic identity. Hundreds of non-prisoners of a non-war languish in cages in Cuba or Afghanistan, facing indefinite detention without charge, perfunctory tribunals and possible execution. The fate of Osama bin Laden himself is unclear. Whatever they have all been brought to, justice it most certainly isn't.

Even so, according to opinion polls three-quarters of Americans expect another major attack before the year is out -- scarcely a vote of confidence in the lavish security apparatus that so patently failed to protect them on 11 September. All this at the behest of a US regime whose democratic legitimacy bears some comparison with that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

From the outset, opportunist 'hawks' in the US administration urged the extension of the new war well beyond al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Top of their list was Saddam Hussein -- though there is no evidence that he was involved in the events of 11 September, or that he is actively promoting international terrorism now. So a different crime had to be devised for him: developing weapons of mass destruction. In this Saddam is scarcely alone. But, since there are no UN weapons inspectors left in Iraq, how do we know that he is guilty? The evidence relies on two sources: disgruntled Iraqi exiles and 'new analysis' of old reports from the last UN inspectors (Saddam may have been responsible for their departure, but the process was being abused to serve US interests as well).

However, the truth is that it doesn't much matter whether or not there is evidence -- or whether UN inspectors return to Iraq. For more than a decade the US and Britain have been bombing the 'no-fly zones' of Iraq anyway. Prior to that they were, of course, promoting Saddam as a counterweight to revolutionary Iran. No-one doubts that had Washington wished to rid itself of Saddam it could have done so during the Gulf War, when he was no less of a despot than he is now. But strategic interests dictated otherwise. When there was an uprising against Saddam in the Shi'ite south, the US sat on its hands. A breakaway Shi'ite south, or a Kurdish state in the north, would have 'destabilized' the region, and Turkey in particular: Saddam was a necessary evil. To this extent, it is thanks to Washington that he is still in power. Little has changed in the region over the last decade, other than a reordering of US priorities since 11 September and a readiness to act alone, without the endorsement of the UN.

Whatever interest the Iraqi people might have in their own country is of no consequence. Nor could it be otherwise, since it is safe to assume that the West in general, and the US and British Governments in particular, are the focus of an anger that will endure in the Iraqi people for generations to come. After all, many thousands of their children have suffered and died as a result of the radioactive detritus of the war and US-inspired, UN-sponsored sanctions. It is disingenuous to blame Saddam Hussein entirely for this, though culpable he undoubtedly is. Anyone at the UN with any sense of personal responsibility for the human consequences of sanctions has quit in shame and disgust. Only complete 'strategic' indifference could have allowed sanctions and Saddam to combine to such savage effect upon Iraqi civilians.

Of course the world shares the responsibility to rid itself of despots -- and to avoid creating them in the first place. The US may like to think its record is impeccable in this respect. But for every Hitler or 'Baby Doc' Duvalier it has opposed there have been a dozen others it has installed -- Saddam being only the most pertinent at the moment. His eventual successor, duly anointed by Washington, will doubtless follow suit, as the endless sequence of poodles turned predators continues.