Guest Editorial
"It's
totally immoral"
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/magazine/05EMPIRE.html
I only realized what these kinds of magazine
pieces are after going to a party of sociology grad students
at the U. of Chicago (in about 1998). The
students were cliquish and gossipy. One of the thing that they
were gossiping about was how their advisors
were writing op-ed pieces to try to get jobs in Washington.
You do this by demonstrating your ability
to be a good little intellectual and justify whatever it is that
the big boys intend to do anyway. Judging
from the spin, this guy wants to get hooked up with whichever
democrat gets the nomination. You
can see the same sort of thing in "empire studies." Bush declares that
the US will rule the world and, poof, suddenly
you will see people writing books with "empire" in the title,
giving lectures and generally cooking up
justifications for this. Anyway, I predict that this guy will end up
in Washington if and when there is ever
a Democratic administration.
As far as the content goes, it's basically:
"We have no choice to be an empire, but we're
going to be a good empire, not like those bad empires you
may have heard about. We're good because
our intentions are always to bring freedom and democracy
to everyone, even if, somehow, this mostly
ends up in bringing brutal dictators to power who loot the place
for themselves, torture their citizens
by the thousands and provide cheap labor and raw materials to
elite US interests. Oops, we did it again.
Unfortunately, though, due to the world
that "America has inherited," we have to be an empire. We have to be,
because everyone seems to hate us now,
so we have to take over places like Afganistan or they'll bomb us.
Why do they hate us? Dunno. It's a mystery.
"
My basic problem with this is
1) It's totally immoral. This guy just tosses
off the implication that what happened in Iran, Chile and
Guatemala is *our* responsiblity.
Who, then, was responsible for these policies? What were the details?
Are they still in government by
any chance? We should name these people, hold these people publicly
accountable and take steps to make
sure that this never happens again. We should apologize as a nation
and we should pay reparations. The
US government has committed the most vile atrocities in our name.
The current administration, however,
shows every intention of continuing in this fashion, in, for example,
Venezuala, if it's to the benefit
of Bush's cronies and benefactors.
2) The author suggests that it is historically
inevitable that we become an empire due to a "power vacuum."
In the cold war days, we had to have an
empire because there *wasn't* a power vacuum - it's us or the
commies. Now, it's the opposite argument.
We have to have an empire because the incredibly strong sucking
force of the power vacuum is compeling
us to dominate other countries. I feel the force and it really sucks.
3) When he speaks about "laying down the
rules that America wants" while "exempting itself from other
rules that go against it's interest" (like
Kyoto) he's identifying "America" and it's wants and interests with the
wants and interests of the elites who decide
these things. Although we're "Americans," you and I are out of
the loop on this one and so are our congressmen
and Senators. If our interests are different, well, that's tough.
4) Somehow, we didn't have these difficult
choices when my hero Bill was president. There was peace
breaking out all over the world and the
world really was becoming more democratic. I seriously doubt
if 9-11 would have happened on Bill's watch,
but if it had, you can be sure that, by now, the entire world
would be united in tracking down these
creeps and really making sure that this kind of thing didn't happen
in the future. If Bill wasn't forced to
have an empire, why is this historically inevitable?
Party_like_its_1984