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| January 24, 2004 | ||||
Disregarding the World's New Rules: America's Disingenuous War on Terror |
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| by Christopher Deliso | ||||
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In significant ways, the post-9/11 world is unlike any before it. In previous epochs, when empires that made all the rules and made all others play by them were defeated, their powers of domination were merely transferred to a successor. Today, however, there exists no potential usurper that could possibly replace America's hold on empire. This reality has instead led to a sidelong reshaping of the very structure of the rules of international, and indeed, intranational relations. Thus the age of asymmetric threats, suitcase bombs, computer hacking, bacterial warfare, and terrorism in general. These are not the kind of threats that America has prepared for militarily. And, since the US economy since Eisenhower has been enhanced by a military-industrial complex geared to producing goods for massive conventional warfare, these are not the kind of threats that the economy has prepared for, either. Purposefully Stalled Reform Indeed, the military is in need of reform, and the top brass know it. 9/11 was a boon for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: in the days leading up to it, he had been prepared to announce a humiliating failure in his attempts to reform the military. The reason? He had come up against strong institutionalized pressure to retain bases, troop sizes, and contracts, even when they were clearly counterproductive and indulgent, because congressmen are by the nature of their business forced to lobby for their districts' corporations. When it comes down to it, the entrenched mid-level legislators have as formidable a hold on power as do a Bush or a Rumsfeld. Despite the current plague of knee-jerk patriotism, the kind that precludes any decrease in defense spending as being anti-American, radical changes in the defense structure – much more radical than Rumsfeld's boldest initiatives – are imperative for dealing with the new and reshaped structure of the rules. Yet threats that require finesse, diplomacy, human intelligence, and subtlety in dealing with them are not part of the American way. Whoever would have once advocated speaking softly has long been bludgeoned by the wielder of the big stick. A Fundamental Disconnect The disastrous invasion of Iraq is just further proof of Washington's willful ignorance in this regard. For no matter how "smart" the bombs, or how flawless the technology used, this war was still the territorial invasion and conquest of a country – publicly justified by recourse to the traditional rhetoric of Modernity – of the political structure of states, the rights of their citizens, and all the other values of the Enlightenment. The American and British governments' case for war in Iraq disingenuously linked Saddam Hussein to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the al Qaeda network in general. As everyone knew even before the war, there never were any such links. The motivating factors behind Saddam's belligerence and that of the terrorists were fundamentally different. Ironically, Saddam was always much closer to the Western mindset – he wanted to protect his state from internal fragmentation and outside attack, as does the West, and he repeatedly took recourse to nationalism in exhorting his citizens to defend the motherland, just as we do. It's not difficult, therefore, to see how Saddam was once our friend; his rhetoric was basically Western, as was Iraq's participation in the global economy before 1980. Saddam Hussein reflected, in the form of the traditional enemy, just the distorted figure of the West, the realized failure of its stated values. As for the terrorists, they aimed at something completely different – to strike a symbolic blow at the heart of the Western-shaped global world order. Yet if Saddam represented the style, they, ironically, represent the substance of the West, using the tools of globalization against the system itself, in support of a completely different rhetoric. It is a bizarre reversal of reality that has ominous implications for the future. Inapplicable Revenge What is the real relation between 9/11 and Iraq, then? The former was a shock, a moral defeat, a symbolic challenge. The latter was the misguided and anachronistic response to it, from an America that has clearly failed to adapt to the new reality. Of course, the base and banal material interests alluded to above have a lot to do with explaining why the war occurred. However, on another level, the war itself could not have gone forward in the absence of a tragic misunderstanding: a sufficient number of people needed to be deceived into believing that the old rules (territorial war between states, the ascendancy of a specific political system, etc.) still held sway rather than the actual, new rules (the rules of terrorism, as seen in 9/11). Up until now, the Western world has seen a reshaping of the structure of the rules in various cases, but never through human agency. All the major catastrophes that brought earlier civilizations to their knees – earthquakes, volcanoes, plagues, and the like – had their causes in mysterious natural forces. While these events still take place, there is no longer attached to them this ineffable causal factor, one that early cultures often used to justify religion. In the age of positivism and Modernity, we have lost this response to mysterious phenomena of this sort, and indeed that relation to the natural world. Maybe terrorism is restoring this ancient relation. After all, we are mystified in the same way; we are baffled by "irrational" terrorist violence (but not at the clean, "smart," modern way that America bombs foreign countries). But terrorism doesn't have to make sense, just exist. 9/11 Reassessed: Derrida on the Historical Applications of Terrorism Perhaps the most valuable contribution that French philosopher Jacques Derrida has made to our understanding of the post-9/11 world bears relation to this. Derrida poses an interesting question: do the seminal events of 9/11 mark the beginning of the war on terror – as is so often asserted – or rather, the end of something else? Vassar College philosophy professor Giovanna Borradori interviewed Derrida after the attacks. She transmits his views on the historical application of 9/11 as such: "…if we look at 9/11 from the standpoint of its continuity with the Cold War, it is easy to see that the hijackers who turned against the United States had been trained by the United States during the era of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan… possibly, said Derrida, 9/11 could be interpreted as the implosive finale of the Cold War, killed by its own convolutions and contradictions." Unsurprisingly, the US government is not eager to explore this lineage, as to do so would necessitate a richly deserved criminal investigation into the historical interventionist policies that brought about such a disaster, and which brought Third World hatred of America to a breaking point. Of course, a great many writers have explored this topic already, refusing to bow to governmental pressure and denial of the facts. But this will never deliver the justice it should, because events are moving too fast – and especially because the US government is pushing them so hard. One clear motive for the Iraq invasion becomes, in this sense, attempting to cover up embarrassing investigations by the disastrous creation of new interventions. These in turn yield their own embarrassing investigations, destined however to remain unfinished by the perpetual creation of new interventions. The process could go on to infinity, were American power infinite. Yet it is not. Eventually, the reckoning will come. The Real Threat: Derrida on Terrorism's Territorial and Non-Territorial Aspects Derrida's second point refers obliquely to the change to the structure of the rules we noted above. Again perceiving 9/11 in its historical relation to the Cold War, he posits that as a spectacular, specifically territorial event, it marks the finale of the territory-based wars of the past. This is not to say, of course, that similar attacks will not still occur; we have recently seen symbolic attacks on Jewish and British physical objects in Istanbul, for example. Yet this is not the worst danger of terrorism for Derrida – rather, it is the non-territorial variety, that which makes it truly global and truly sinister. He states: "…September 11 is still part of the archaic theater of violence aimed at striking the imagination. One day it might be said: 'September 11' – those were the ('good') old days of the last war. Things were still of the order of the gigantic: visible and enormous! …(however) nanotechnologies of all sorts are so much more powerful and invisible, uncontrollable, capable of creeping in everywhere. They are the micrological rivals of microbes and bacteria. Yet our unconscious is already aware of this; it knows it, and that's what's scary." The US government knows it too, but admitting as much would not reassure the people. Therefore it must substitute the old enemy, and the old war – a specific villain (Saddam) in a fixed place (Iraq) – for the inescapable reality that the rules have been changed. Without an Iraq War thrown into the mix, and without the media whipped up into a subsequent frenzy, the government would have had to publicly confront the unpleasant reality of the new world disorder on two fronts: first, an historical one (the disastrous results of a policy of massive global intervention); and second, the philosophical one (the reality that the "war on terror" is a farce due to terrorism's very non-territorial and globalized nature). Of course, neither would have reassured the public. Yet the people have a right to know – now more than ever. It is the US government's fundamental dishonesty and willful ignorance of the facts that are harmful to the world's health. |
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Christopher Deliso is an American journalist, travel writer and author concentrating on the Balkans and Southeast Europe, where he has lived and traveled for almost a decade. His criticisms of interventionist foreign policy can be found in his writings for Antiwar.com, and in his recent work on the West's failures to eradicate foreign-funded Muslim extremists in the Balkans, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West (Praeger Security International, 2007). Mr Deliso directs the Balkan-interest news and analysis website, Balkanalysis.com and is also the author of a travelogue, Hidden Macedonia (Haus Publishing, London). He holds an MPhil with distinction in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University.
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