 |
||||||||||||||||
|
 Ice
Cube 
 "Bush's
lame response to North Korea has made it quite clear that all he
wants is to invade Iraq again. North Korea may be more dangerous
in fact, but there's no oil there, and it simply doesn't figure
in the grand eschatological design of Bush's theocratic circle.
Pyongyang isn't even in the Bible!" "Word
comes that brother Cat Stevens refuses to lend his support to
our virtuous jihad. May this turncoat's Peace Train be laden with
explosives and rammed into the Mountain of Mohammed, peace be
upon him. "
 "'When
it comes to learning from its mistakes, corporate America has
fallen off the rehab wagon more times than Robert Downey, Jr.
A quick glance at last week's papers reveals that it's monkey
business as usual on Wall Street."
 "'People
are more aware of the world that they want to live in, and
now they have to realize that they can actually create that
world and fight for the things that are worth fighting for
and not feel apathetic. We are all going to die. There is
no point in holding anything back. ."
 "The
idea -- if we may use so flattering a term -- was that the
Pentagon would monitor the site and the betting, and thus
get a jump on terrorist acts to come. After all, as the theory
goes (and never mind the whole dot.com fiasco), if people
are willing to put money on something, they must have a pretty
good idea what they're doing."
 "Well,
well, well. President George was in one hell of bind when
it turned that that Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda, not Iraq.
Realizing we'd invaded the wrong country, Bush did the honorable
thing: he's come out against gay marriages."
 "Voters
are sick and tired of having their electoral choices severely
limited by a ruling class that has done everything in its
power to maintain the status quo -- including the latest round
of under-the-radar redistricting deals that make it all but
impossible to unseat incumbents."
 "There's
some thing in our psyche, this kind of right or privilege
to resolve our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance
to that concept. To actually have to sit down and talk, to
listen, to compromise, that's hard work. To go for the gun,
that's the cowardly act."
 "If
news were reality, if every time one of our soldiers
died in combat, we witnessed the actual splatter, just
like in the movies, we might be inclined to give up
war. At least, war on such spurious terms as these.
Where are the weapons of mass destruction? There may
well be some out in the desert, but we should also look
for them in the lies that we allow ourselves to believe,
even after the truth is told." "Can
you believe these guys? After spending billions to make
Afghanistan safe for your local neighborhood opium lord,
our government continues its ludicrous domestic drug
policy of lumping all drugs together. A third grader
can tell you that crack is to pot like an Uzi is to
a banana. Crack kills, pot giggles."
 "America
embodies mimetic relations of rivalry. The ideology of
free enterprise makes of them an absolute solution. Effective,
but explosive. Competitive relations are excellent if
you come out of it the winner. But if the winners are
always the same then, one day, the losers overturn the
game table."
 "It
goes without saying that if you see any white powdery
substances anywhere in the office, you are to notify security
immediately. However, whoever removed the vial of white
powder from my upper right-hand desk drawer, please return
it at once. No questions asked."
|
by Scott Thill "Centuries can pass before men realize that there is no real difference between their principle of justice and the concept of revenge." -- Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred Now that the long-awaited American counterattacks against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime have finally commenced, the United States might want to keep in mind the ethos used by the countless public relations and marketing execs that foist their products upon the global landscape like we proffer our view of capitalism as "civilization": perception is reality. As linguistically galling as such a phrase may be, it is a thesis that many national and international Muslims have echoed in their ambivalence towards the September 11 attacks, their shoulder shrugs as ethnic profiling takes hold in the investigations following the tragedy, and their protests as U.S. air strikes strategically target the marginal military capacity of the Taliban as well as the stomachs of those under its thumb. Yet while the country has been itching for some form of reprisal for a singular terrorist act, President Bush and his administration has seized upon the September 11 massacre as an opportunity to spread American vengeance beyond Afghanistan and bin Laden to terrorism wherever it may occur. Which is a heartening idea on paper, but a much more delicate matter when put into practice, simply because the perception however obtuse that the United States has already overstepped its boundaries in this relatively tame and warranted response is already beginning to rear its ugly head. And it is one that needs to be addressed. However brutal the tactics of bin Laden and his al Qaeda network may seem, their basic theoretical thrust shares some common ground with everyone from Hamas, Ariel Sharon and Mossad, even ourselves -- the best defense is a good offense. And an offensive launched with a self-defensive posture is one that is perceived as just and deserved, regardless of the wrong it purports to either solve or erase. Check Ariel Sharon's statements on the violence that has soaked the Gaza Strip in blood over the last year and you will see his legitimation of Israel's butchery of stone-armed Palestinean adolescents and assassination of alleged members of Hamas in his use of the word "self-defense." You will also see the term used in U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte's letter to the U.N. Security Council: "We may find that our self-defense requires further actions with respect to other organizations and other states." When compared to bin Laden's recent statement suggesting that "what America is facing today is something very little of what we have tasted for decades" -- comments aired after the United States bombed Afghanistan but probably taped days earlier -- a pattern of discernible violence and retribution in the name of self-defense that threatens to escalate and possibly spin out of control makes itself clearly visible. All parties involved in this dispute -- and it is impossible to ignore the American-brokered creation of Israel as a major act in this international conflict since both bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, noted it in their taped call to arms -- argue that they are the innocent victims of the others' violence and influence, that they did nothing to warrant it, and that they are simply defending their way of life against what bin Laden and the Taliban call "infidels," what Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- and probably Margaret Thatcher -- calls attacks on the "superiority of our civilization." And where the attacks on New York and the Pentagon have resulted in a global coalition formed in a "part of the solution or part of the problem" siege mentality, killings and harassment of those who perhaps only look like Arab-Americans -- such as Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh killed by Frank Roque in Mesa, Arizona, shortly after the attacks -- and a military response, the bombing of Afghanistan has already stoked the fires of resentment in Pakistan -- where sizable protests have already burnt down the U.N. Children's Fund and other parts of the city -- and, of all things, has been characterized by the Taliban and others as, you guessed it, "terrorist acts." "I fear this begins the process of Talibanization of Pakistan," said Abdul Basit, a Pakistani lawyer interviewed by the Associated Press on the day of the protests. "All over the Muslim world people would like to make heroes out of people who had no chance before. The Taliban has a hideous face, but we made them into heroes." Confused? You should be. If the shrill jingoism
of Jerry Falwell, Osama bin Laden and Silvio Berlusconi is making your
ears bleed, that's nothing compared to the perception control that'll
be hitting the papers and making your eyes cry as this thing escalates.
It's already started with the food drops that follow shortly after the
bombs, and it'll continue until the global village puts together an
agreed-upon definition of terrorism, something that will probably never
happen. Why? Because these conflicts are based on a fear of the Other
so ingrained in the makeup of culture itself that each side uses the
same terms as a basis for their theorizations of the other. Take the
word "barbaric" -- a term that has been exhausted by all involved parties
to this point - for example. A quick search of a shorter Oxford English
Dictionary will show that the word originates from the Greek barbaros,
which is translated simply as "foreign." Therefore, in linguistic terms,
any act from either player in this farce can be labeled as barbaric,
and the tragedy within the farce is that this fact is perhaps lost on
the majority of the citizens who are only now driving through the streets
with American flags twisting in the wind, while some excited manufacturer
counts the escalating sales.
Lost inside this vicious cycle of violence and vengeance is any kind of extended, deep consideration of the mechanism of, well, the vicious cycle of violence and vengeance, such as the one found in French structuralist Rene Girard's seminal study of the subject, Violence and the Sacred. Although Girard's book primarily deals with myth and ancient civilization, it is precisely that civilization, the warring tribes of Zionism and Islam that has brought us to this impasse, cocked and loaded for World War III. Girard's study is a sobering exercise in retributive "justice," the kind we are implementing today, and how ultimately, it is a process which engenders its own legitimation, execution and response. He writes: "Vengeance professes to be an act of reprisal, and every reprisal calls for another reprisal. The crime to which the act of vengeance addresses itself is almost never an unprecedented offense; in almost every case it has been committed in revenge for some prior crime. Vengeance, then, is an interminable, infinitely repetitive process. Every time it turns up in some part of the community, it threatens to involve the whole social body. There is the risk that the act of vengeance will initiate a chain reaction whose consequences will quickly prove fatal to any society of modest size. The multiplication of reprisals instantaneously puts the very existence of a society in jeopardy, and that is why it is universally proscribed." Girard's theory
is a schemata for understanding why our various "wars" -- on drugs,
on terrorism, on other countries - tend to degenerate into solipsistic
exercises the likes of which have been criticized in every credible
cultural product having to do with war such as The Thin Red Line,
Platoon, Paths of Glory, Apocalypse Now These reprisals, then, are nothing but attacks in supposed "defense" of something, and who will sit idly by as their culture is dismantled? But revenge is the way to doom, we have to remind ourselves. Look at the example of the Israelis and the Palestinians, who have been going at it for hundreds of years, with no end in sight, and worse, no origin point to refer to, a crucial agent in Girard's cycle. Extending from that prime mover-like "foundational violence," such as the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the expulsion of the Jews from their self-appointed homeland, or your run-of-the-mill American denigration of barbaros in the name of a healthy profit margin, the cycle of violence and retribution steamrolls forward undeterred as long as its warring factions decide that their only recourse is yet another violent exercise of their own power. Which is ultimately futile, getting back to the Middle East conflict. Before the bombings of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, both strategic and symbolic manifestations of American potency, Girard's cycle was specifically exhibited in the tête-à-tête in the Middle East between Sharon and Arafat. Unable to go directly to war due to various strategic alliances that would be called into question and ultimately spell defeat for either side, the Israelis and the Palestinians have been campaigning violently against each other -- especially in this last year -- one side sending suicidal bombers into shopping malls, the other side firing bullets into a crowd of fed-up teenagers. Each blow was rewarded with another, each one more severe than the other, until the countless threadbare cease-fires were simply more litter on the ground of the Gaza Strip. So what is the foundational violence, you ask? You'd have to go so far back into the history books that it wouldn't be worth it; a fact that speaks volumes about the inefficacy of violence in civilized society. And there's the rub. The foundational
violence, although Girard might not commit to this, is already always
fluid and arbitrary, in my opinion. For example, is it America's fault
for bankrolling the establishment of the state of Israel in recompense
for the collective guilt the United States suffered when the Holocaust
became an acknowledged tragedy in 1948? Is it Israel's fault for sucking
the Palestinians dry in an already bleak environment, the occupied territories,
while it bankrolls the proliferation and sustenance of settlers, who
illegally seize land in a country that does not belong to them? Is it
Hamas' fault for degrading the bargaining position of Arafat and the
Palestinians with its suicidal missionaries who take out anything they
deem foreign (and therefore "barbaric" in the eyes of Muslim militants)?
In a clash as old as this one, the phrase, "foundational violence" is
one word too long. The "violence" is the thing. So, in light of all of this volatility, where do we go from here? Girard might have a few ideas. A full-scale, so-called War Against Terrorism might not be the way to go, especially since in Girard's terms, the only retributive measure that can fully succeed is a judicial one in which all of the offending parties are brought to justice and the cycle of violence is stopped in its tracks: "We owe our good
fortune to one of our social institutions above all: our judicial system
[which] does not suppress vengeance; rather, it effectively limits it
to a single act of reprisal, enacted by a sovereign authority specializing
in this particular function . . . There is no difference in principle
between private and public vengeance; but on the social level, the difference
is enormous. Under the public system, an act of vengeance is no longer
avenged; the process is terminated, the danger of escalation averted."
The closest thing we have to a "sovereign authority" that can approve an American agenda of vengeance is the United Nations, which so far has altogether supported our decision to burn Afghanistan to the ground. But how long will they remain on our side, as we move on from bin Laden and his extremist lunatics to the next terrorist organization we feel we need to prematurely "defend" ourselves against? And how long will the Muslims within and outside of America stand by as American influence, one that they already do not trust, begins to spread further? That is the ultimate question, because the Bush administration does not seem to view this attack on the United States as an isolated incident, a singular reprisal or offensive that can be eradicated once its source is destroyed. Plus, it doesn't help that Bush was painting his war as a "crusade," especially considering the religious context such a loaded term recalls. As my fellow Bad Subjects contributor, Aaron Schuman wrote, "Bush seems determined to satisfy, from the evangelical cadences of Wednesday's pledge to 'lead the world to victory, to victory' (9/12) to Friday's determination to 'rid the world of evil,' (9/14) as if he were Christ himself, stepping down from the dais of the National Cathedral to heal a sick nation." It is argued that the Bush administration is slowly positioning itself as the new millennium's answer to heathens everywhere, whether the U.N. gives its blessing or not. Such a "crusade" is far more dangerous than a simple act of vengeance, a United Nations-approved reprisal that avoids the possibility of counterattack and more reprisals. Why? Recalling the comments of Bush and Berlusconi, the longer the anti-terrorist campaign wears on, the more it resembles a cultural and religious obsession, especially within the terms that the offending parties will comprehend, a Manifest Destiny for the new millennium. "The more a tragic conflict is prolonged, the more likely it is to culminate in a violent mimesis; the resemblance between the combatants grows ever stronger until each presents a mirror image of the other," Girard writes in Violence and the Sacred. In other words, the longer America decides that it is itself the juridical agent in distributing justice and violence, not merely one player in an increasingly dangerous game, it will be perceived, as it is now by some, as the "terrorist" twin of the Taliban. Not convinced? Protesters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the occupied territories of Israel have already called this current reprisal a war against Islam, not against bin Laden and al Qaeda, and those are just the ones who are rioting in the streets. As much as this is only one among many perceptions, it is one that threatens to spread in equal measure to that of the Bush administation's War Against Terrorism. Given, it is as narrow a view as that proffered by demagogues like Jerry Falwell and ex-presidential candidate Pat Robertson, who blames everyone except Christians -- but most particularly gays and pro-choice advocates -- for the current sociopolitical atmosphere in which terrorist violence is allowed to flourish, while for some reason, the spread of Western culture stands innocent. But at some point, American culture will have to take the perception of the Others across the world as reality, react accordingly, and hopefully, as Malcolm X once said, "Make it plain." Which is not to say that Western culture -- which was the real target of bin Laden and al Qaeda -- is not an altogether rational response to fear-soaked, self-absorbed cultural products such as the Taliban, Zionism, Hamas, etc.; in fact, America is indeed the land of the free, which is why many of those under the thumb of corruption flee their homelands to claw their way to safety and sustainability in the United States. But many claim it is still is content to become the world's policeman when its own interests are aroused -- such as it was in Kuwait -- and an "innocent" bystander when they are not. The days of blissful American ignorance are over; that, at least, is one casualty of war best left buried beneath the rubble. But the perception of America as a shallow culture interested only in its own diversions continues, and it's in our highest interest to show the rest of the world that the reality is quite different indeed. 01 November 01  Scott
Thill enjoys writing for cats like Salon, XLR8R, Popmatters, All Music
Guide, AOL and others. His first novel, The Dangerous Perhaps,
should be done by the time the War on Terrorism is over. Does anyone have
a calendar handy?
|
|||||||||||||||
|
Copyright 2001-2003, Morphizm.com. All Rights Reserved. |
||||||||||||||||
Read it and weep. "Although Girard's book primarily deals
with myth and ancient civilization, it is precisely that civilization,
the warring tribes of Zionism and Islam that has brought us to
this impasse, cocked and loaded for World War III."
