The Sacrificial Lambs of Imperialism
by Rick Gunderman
Yesterday morning I changed my Facebook status. I do this on a daily basis, and typically include politically-charged thoughts or lyrics from songs I like. On September 11, 2009, my status read:
“Rick Gunderman remembers today the victims of 9/11 – the sacrificial lambs who paid for the crimes of US capital-centric imperialism in the Middle East.”
It had occurred to me in the week leading up to the eighth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon as the TV documentaries and jingoist news demagogues reared their heads. For the eighth time I found myself reflecting on that paradigm-shifting event in a very different manner than many people around me.
For a significant proportion of the Canadian and American populations, it is a time to remember the victims of the attacks as the Saints of Democracy. These fallen 3,000 to the media-vulnerable mind represent heroes whose death at the hands of nineteen Muslims will mean hell reigning down from Beirut to Islamabad.
Innocent, they were. Heroes who died in the name of democracy, freedom and independence? Not quite.
It is strange to me how cognitively dissonant the dominant views on 9/11 seem to be. On the one hand, many people are aware of the history of U.S interference in the Middle East. Maybe not quite the extent, but they are aware that the American government has got caught up in affairs they ought not to for decades.
Yet many of these same people also believe Osama bin Laden to be some sort of satanic incarnation, and believe that the wars in and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were in some way justified.
This is attributable more than anything to the aforementioned paradigm shift. After 9/11, the media rallied to the calls of the ultra-right Bush Administration and their hound dogs in Congress. Those calls were for nationalist unity, a culture of militarism, and the blurring of the line between patriotism and state-obedience.
Theories abound that the United States government orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but solid, incontrovertible evidence is lacking. What is clear is that some of the most powerful members of the Bush Administration wanted “a new Pearl Harbor.”*
The Bush Administration used patriotic and emotional blackmail to round up enough scared and proud Americans to re-elect them and to marginalize all opposition to their warmongering agenda. Through this, they have legitimized for many North Americans illegal invasions, torture, religious and racial intolerance, and military fanaticism.
The approximately 3,000 victims of 9/11 were not heroes safeguarding a democracy or a free way of life – the United States has neither. No single capitalist country in the world allows for the maximum freedom for their people nor does democracy mean anything more than the right to pick an unaccountable representative.
The Bush Administration did not mourn those who died in the attacks. It would come as no surprise to me if they didn’t get drunk and have a party as soon as Bush’s national address was done. They got exactly what they wanted: a nation paralyzed by terrorism with a national media telling them to trust the government or perish in a terrorist-induced hellfire.
The victims were sacrificial lambs, dead because the crimes of their government against the people of the Middle East caused nineteen members of those societies to strike back. Then, their memories were exploited to convince the 300,000,000 American survivors of 9/11 to elevate Bush from president to God-king, and the Republicans from political party to the manifestation of patriotism.
* Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and several other Bushies were members of the Project for a New American Century, whose publication “Rebuilding Americas Defenses” explicitly mentions a new Pearl Harbor as necessary to implement their agenda. This is EXACTLY what happened. Proof can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#.22New_Pearl_Harbor.22
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-pilger.html
http://www.terraknowledge.net/news/terrak040503a.htm
and for the original…
www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
Much Ado About Iran
There is no revolutionary situation in Iran.
I have perused many a Trotskyist blog and website since the Iranian elections on June 12. I find myself continually baffled by their haste to find a revolution wherever there is a protest, while simultaneously buying into their fantasy of how wonderful it would be to see the Islamic theocracy toppled and replaced with a socialist democracy.
Truly, if the Worker-Communist Party of Iran were in a position to seize power, or if any other socialist party had even the chance to challenge the clerics’ monopoly on the state, such ecstasy could be forgiven. But as it is, those who the Trotskyists are branding “revolutionaries” are no more likely to usher in a new era than the vegans who picket Toronto’s KFCs. They are accusing Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of electoral fraud and are mostly followers of the defeated Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
This much is true: Mir-Hossein Mousavi was only allowed to run in the election because he is not a challenge to the Islamic state. Under Iranian law, no candidate whose platform posed a threat to the paramountcy of Iran’s theocracy would be allowed to run. Any attempt to brand Mousavi a “revolutionary” or even to suggest that his victory could destabilize the Islamic Republic in any significant way is ludicrous.
As the Trotskyists hold their breath for a revolution (which will surely suffocate them before their victory party), various other socialists have appeared to be siding with Ahmedinejad, the ultraconservative “winner” of the election. It seems that the sole rationale for this is that Ahmedinejad represents a powerful force in opposition to US imperialism – which he certainly does.
It does, however, become alarming when the Venezuelan government, a diligent pioneer in 21st Century socialism, issues statements condemning attempts to “destabilize the Islamic Revolution”.
Suppose that US imperialism could be taken down by an ultraconservative Christian revolution in the United States that pledged to dismantle the US military and seek a new society of peace and order through strict implementation of Old Testament laws that promote genocide and murder as reasonable when done in the name of the Father. Should the Venezuelan government, or indeed all socialists, fall in line behind such an abomination of a state?
Certainly not!
To appear to defend the Islamic Revolution can only further damage the public perception of socialists as despots and dictators anyways. We must condemn American attempts to establish a capitalist bourgeois democracy in Iran for their own interests, thoroughly exposing such plans to do so and why it cannot be allowed to happen. But we cannot become apologists for Islamist regimes that hand down the death penalty to homosexuals and girls who kill their would-be rapists in self-defense. We, as socialists, should have no part in defending a murderous, ultrareligious regime.
If we are searching for anti-imperialist friends, there are surely much better places to look. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has already spent so much time uniting the Latin American left (Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and the FMLN in El Salvador, to name a few), why would he compromise this with an alliance with an execution-happy theocracy?
Socialists: stand up to imperialism and theocracy!
