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Let's Be Clear

The brutal beheading of Nick Berg by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is in no way a justifiable reaction to the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Nor, for that matter, are the 3,000+ deaths of September 11th in any way a justifiable reaction to the exploitation of Afghanistan in the superpower proxy war of the Cold War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the generally rotten treatment of the Arab world by Western imperialist and neo-imperialist powers. Nor are suicide-bombings or the slaying of a pregant mother and her daughters by Hamas guerillas a justifiable reaction to the irresponsible assassination of either Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi or Ahmed Yassin—or Israeli policy in general regarding Palestinians. In sum, the shedding of the blood of innocents is never justified, no matter how much one's lizard brain argues for "collective guilt" or "guilt by association" or any of the other perverse and angry notions compelling these acts of murder.

Yet let's also be clear: as this brief list of tit-for-tat should demonstrate, "we", as in "we Americans" or "we Westerners" or "we citizens of democratic societies"—we are not "better than they are." Arabs are pissed off for good reasons. They have a long history of legitimate grievances, they have innocent blood on the hands of our governments and corporate mercenaries, and they would very much like us to stop running their lives while claiming it is in their best interest. Yet it's this "we" and this "they" that is growing increasingly slippery, dangerously vague.

During yesterday's Senate Armed Forces Committee hearings, Joe Lieberman made a good point when noting that Al-Qaeda is not likely to publicly inquire into the death of Nick Berg. There will be no court martial for al-Zarqawi, no public apology by Osama bin Laden. So, yes, in that sense, "we"—our government, our democracy, our system of justice—are superior to Al-Qaeda. In fact, along side the group's maliciousness, it is the Al-Qaedan agenda—the reactionary establishment of a perverse religious-fascist order that dispenses with human rights, democracy, fairness and advanced principles of justice—that warrants an international struggle, militarily and otherwise, against them.

But that isn't the war "we" are engaged in, now is it? British and American troops face opposition from a variety of groups—Al-Qaeda here, al-Sadr there, Shiites and Sunnis everywhere—who comprise in military diction a singular term "the enemy" and whom military spokesmen must repeatedly distinguish from the "mainstream" Iraqi people. Yet in public discourse these terms quickly elide, the "Iraqi people" become lost beneath constant references to "the enemy," just as surely as the conflation of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein remains fixed within a large percentage of American public perception (the oft-quoted figure I have seen is seventy percent). The "we" are obviously "better than" the "they"—so why trouble us with Geneva Conventions and International Law and the responsibilities of the occupier? I mean, they chop off heads, see?! "We" are self-regulating; "we" have God on our side; "we" are not babbling brown desert-dwellers but rational, enlightened mall-shoppers; "we" have great gifts of civilization and democracy to bestow, for the mere price of opening up your markets and surrendering your resources to "our" corporations. You're either with "us" or you're with "the enemy."

Missing from the public discourse, from the commentary from talking heads and camera-friendly politicians, is any sense that these terms can be flipped, that "we" are someone else's "enemy", that "we" are a "they" to the people whose land British and American troops occupy. "They" brush off our concerns, "they" shoot our protesters, "they" invade our homes and drag our men to that awful prison once run by a dictator "they" supported, "they" can't turn on the fucking electricity, "they" won't give us any business contracts, "they" insist on final approval of our constitution, "they" brought Al-Qaeda here, thank you very much.

In all this slip-and-slide of the "we" and "they", innocent people get killed, either by a machete at the neck or a cluster bomb dropped in a school yard or a not-so-targeted killing. And yet innocent people get recruited, too, people whose innocence, in another sense of the word, has been violated by witnessing the senseless murder of their own. They join the army, they join the resistance, they join a terrorist cell, and wherever they enlist, soon enough their innocence—in any sense of the word—is lost.

Posted by kevinmoore at May 12, 2004 10:56 AM | TrackBack