Editor’s Page
Is Bush Mad – or just dumb?
In the previous issue of Southern Cross Review John Le Carr� stated that the U.S. has gone mad, and listed
reasons which seem to indicate that that is indeed the case:
- an erosion of the admired American freedoms;
- compliant U.S. media and corporate interests limit debate
on the war on Iraq to the East Coast press;
- Bin Laden made the war on Iraq – planned long before –
possible by the attack on the Twin Towers of Manhattan;
- This event put on the back burner the administration’s
abrogation of international treaties and the international court;
- Administration officials do not have to explain their
connection to firms like Enron – and so on.
Le Carr�’s thesis is that the American people have been hoodwinked into
supporting a war that makes no sense and will have disastrous consequences.
Jimmy
Carter objects more
on the basis of morals, specifically Christian ones. He does not condemn war as
such, but can only condone it as a last resort.
Amos
Oz, an Israeli
writer, also objects to the war, but for another reason. He fears (or knows)
that extremist Islam nationalism can only be stopped by moderate Islam
nationalism. And that war on Iraq will only inflame Arab extremists more than
they already are.
Gaither Stewart explains why Europeans – governments and populations – are so opposed to
their perceived U.S. hegemony.
If the world is so opposed to this unilateral action – though the Bush
administration prefers to call it a “coalition” which, however, consists of the
U.S., the U.K. and a few Australians – why did the United States go ahead with
a war which threatens to alienate the rest of the world, weaken perhaps
irreparably the United Nations and NATO, and give ideological nourishment to Al
Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism?
Jane Addams, an American sociologist, said in 1894 on the occasion of a violent
conflict between owners and labor, that antagonism (conflict) is always
unnecessary because it never arises from real, objective differences, “but from
a person’s mixing in his own personal reactions-the extra emphasis he gave the
truth, the enjoyment he took in doing a thing because it was unpalatable to
others, or the feeling that one must show his own colors.”
Addams invokes the image of King Lear to explain conflicts. Cordelia, after
all, does love her father. And Lear doesn’t oppose her, he merely misinterprets
her. And yet, tragedy occurred. “It is easy for the good (sic) and powerful to
think that they can rise by following the dictates of conscience by pursuing
their own ideal unconcerned with the consent of their fellow-men.”
Does this apply to George W. Bush and his cohorts? I think in a sense it does. In
an interview with Bob Woodward, Bush admitted that he acts according to his
instincts. If he does, then he must be convinced that these instincts (and
instinctual acts preclude, to a large extent at least, thinking) must be
correct. It’s fine when instinctive athletes such as Willie Mays and Diego
Maradona always do the right thing without having to think, but a person with
the fate of the world in his hands who acts instinctually is a very dangerous
actor indeed, especially when these instincts are born of experience limited to
parochial business interests and fundamentalist (so-called Christian)
capitalism. And, like Lear, Bush goes about his instinctual business without listening
to exterior warning voices. The voices he does hear are from his own interior
and those of the people around him who are ideological clones. Perhaps the most
important unheard, very exterior voice, is a book entitled In the Shade of the Qur’an. (More about
this below.)
We tend to simplify the motives of the suicide bombers or, if we are honest
with ourselves, admit that we do not understand them in the least. There is a
great difference between the brainwashed teenage fanatics who walk into Israel caf�s
with explosives tied around their waists, and the people who took out the World
Trade Center. These latter were educated men who learned to pilot 747s with
sufficient expertise to hit their targets dead on. It is very hard for us to
understand why men who had lived for years in Europe and the U.S. and had
university educations could want to commit suicide and bring about the violent
death of thousands of others while they were at it.
In the March 23, 2003, issue of the New York Times, Paul Berman, in a ten page
article titled “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror”, introduces us to the Karl
Marx, as it were, of Islamic Terrorism: Sayyid Qutb (pronounced KUH-tahb). His
most important work, In the Shade of the
Qur’an, is a 12 volume opus, partly translated into English and
published in the 1970’s by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, an organization
suspected of being involved in terrorist attacks. Another organization, the
Islamic Foundation in England, is frantically working to bring out the rest.
Qutb is not shallow. Qutb is deep. In
the Shade of the Qur’an is, in its fashion, a masterwork. Al Qaeda
and its sister organizations are not merely popular, wealthy, global, well
connected and institutionally sophisticated. These groups stand on a set of
ideas too, and some of these ideas may be pathological, which is an old story
in modern politics; yet even so, the ideas are powerful. We should have known
that, of course. But we should have known many things.
Qutb, born in 1906 in Egypt, received a modern, secular education, which
is reflected in his early writings. He even earned a masters degree at the
Colorado State College of Education in the 1940’s. Back in Egypt in the 50’s he
turned to radical fundamentalism, which meant turning Islam into a political
movement to create a new society based on ancient Koranic principles. He soon
established himself as Islamism’s principle theoretician in the Arab world. This
movement dreams of resurrecting, in a modern version, the Islamic caliphate of
the seventh century, when the Arabs were conquering the world. Qutb envisioned
the caliphate as a theocracy, strictly enforcing shariah, the legal code of the
Koran – the one we now have seen an example of as condemning that Nigerian
woman to death by stoning for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Bin Laden’s Al
Qaeda, along with the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, represents the violent wing
of this philosophy, while Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party represents the most
violent wing of the more secular Pan-Arabism.
Nassar of Egypt was also of the Pan-Arabism movement and feared the Muslim
Brotherhood so much that he jailed Qutb for ten years - during which time Qutb
wrote In the Shade of the Qur'an,
which, according to Berman, “must surely count as one of the most remarkable
works of prison literature ever produced” - and finally hanged him in
1966.
In his book Qutb relates how humanity has lost touch with human nature and is
therefore in an unbearable crisis. Sexual relations are deteriorating “to a
level lower than beasts”, people are turning, in their unhappiness, to drugs,
alcohol and existentialism. And what is the cause of this unhappiness, this
split between man’s true nature and modern life? Western philosophers,
especially Nietzsche, pointed to ancient Greece to explain this – where man put
his faith in human reason instead of God. Qutb looks to Palestine. God gave man
the Law through Moses. But Judaism degenerated into what Qutb called “a system
of rigid and lifeless ritual”.
Jesus – a human prophet, not divine – tried to correct this and also introduce
a new spirituality. The squabbles with the old-line Jews, however, made it
impossible to realize his mission. His followers were persecuted, so were never
able to give a reliable account of his message. Christianity introduced Greek
philosophy into its religion and abandoned the Mosaic code, thereby opening the
way for sin and wantonness. Furthermore, following Jesus’ dictum “Render unto
Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”, Christianity divided the
spiritual from the physical, the political from the religious. For Qutb, this
was a “hideous schizophrenia”.
As time went on, this schizophrenia was intensified to include science on one
side and the church on the other. Everything Islam knew to be One, Christianity
separated into Two. The European mind itself split asunder in a fateful divorce
between the sacred and the secular. The sin of the United States is not that
its founding principles have not been lived up to, but rather those principles
themselves, especially the separation of church and state.
Perhaps we can understand just a little the terrible angst and fanatical
feeling of necessity that could have motivated the suicidal assassins of
September 11 and others of their ilk. Surely they knew well not only the Koran
itself, but also Sayyid Qutb’s interpretation of it. We may well wonder,
however, to what extent the Western powers, especially the Bush and Blair
administrations, are aware of the terrible spiritual power working in the souls
of Arab religious nationalism; how this distortion of the spiritual can explode
in acts of terror and can only be increased by attacking an Arab country, even
one controlled by a vicious dictator like Saddam Hussein.
Enemy number one of the Muslim world, until now, has been Israel. The United
States of America, with the war against Iraq, has moved into first place – but
not only of the Muslim world. It seems now that the world at large sees the
U.S. as its enemy. How things have changed!
Allow me to indulge in a personal note to illustrate this change. I was in the
U.S. army in Germany in the late fifties, when Germany was still reconstructing
and the Soviet bear was breathing down its neck. America, far from being the
great Satan, was the great protector, not only respected, but loved. Fraternization,
though frowned on officially, was the natural order of things. Soldiers were
forgiven their ignorance of European reserve and manners, German-American
Friendship Clubs abounded and were well attended by both nationalities. In
Berlin, the city most exposed to the Soviet threat, American soldiers were
invited into German homes at the slightest contact, and beer in the bars was
consumed in great quantities along with vows of eternal friendship. In the
early sixties, when I was no longer there, Jack Kennedy went to Berlin and
said: Ich bin ein Berliner. He
could have been elected Kaiser on the spot.
In Argentina, where I was living when Kennedy was assassinated, his death
affected the Argentine people almost as much as the Americans. A line of people
waiting to sign the condolence book in the United States consulate in downtown
Buenos Aires was wrapped around the block for a whole week.
I lived again in Germany as a civilian after Vietnam, and things had soured considerably.
The Soviet threat was still there, and the American presence was therefore
still necessary – but now considered to be more a necessary evil than a welcome
alliance of friendship. Soldiers, though present, were hardly seen outside
their ghettoes.
Since the advent of the Bush administration, and especially since the war
against Iraq, admiration of the United States in most of Europe and Latin
America (I only speak of my own experience) has turned to open contempt. Is
this important? Do we care what others think of us? Many in the U.S. obviously
couldn’t care less. (If you’re not with us, you’re against us.) I, however,
think that it is very important, for it shows that something is wrong. The war
against Iraq is perceived by the world as one motivated by arrogance and greed
and perpetrated by a nation most defensive of its own security, but indifferent
to the suffering of innocent, defenseless people who are the real victims of
any war. This perception is not completely accurate, but it’s close enough.
Why didn’t the U.S. government wait for the United Nations weapons inspection
process to run its course? Why not accept Canada’s alternate proposal to extend
the time limit, but include an ultimatum? France said it would not accept any
resolution that included an ultimatum, true, but that was valid only if no
weapons of mass destruction were found. One suspects, then, that the U.S.
feared just that, that none would be found because there were none. But even if
none were found but Iraq could or would not account for the ones they once had,
and a United Nations ultimatum might finally have been negotiated, it would
mean the world united against the brutal Iraqi regime. Even Saddam Hussein
could not have survived that. Bush said the other day that the war will last as
long as it takes. The inspections could also have lasted as long as it takes.
What will happen if Iraq really does have biological or chemical weapons and,
in a last destructive impulse of revenge, uses them against American and
British troops in Iraq? Bush and Rumsfeld could clap and say: See, we told you
so! And what would be their reaction? Revenge on revenge. Until now the bombing
of Iraq has been selective, but the U.S. is perfectly capable of wiping it off
the map and I fear that would happen. But it raises another question. If they
are so sure that Iraq has these weapons, why do they expose their own troops to
them?
The key to the whole question is, in my opinion, Palestine, as it has so often
been in world history – the seat of all three religions directly involved. The
Bush administration has ignored the Israel-Palestine conflict, has even
supported Sharon’s misguided actions, perhaps because Bush and Sharon are birds
of a feather. This lack of interest is criminal, because the United States is
the only party with enough influence with Israel and Palestine (especially
Israel, of course) to continue the arduous road to peace there, as initiated by
Carter and continued by Clinton – now abandoned by Bush. I have doubts as to
the wisdom of a Palestinian state, but one thing is certain. The Jewish
settlements in Palestinian territory must go. Before that happens nothing can
be accomplished. Israel says that Arafat must go. I agree, he is an
untrustworthy survivor. But Sharon, then, must also go. This is wishful
thinking, of course, and more so if we include Bush in the exodus.
It would be encouraging to see a courageous Secretary General of the United
Nations instead of an over-cautious bureaucrat like Kofi Annan. But who wants a
courageous SG, one who might tell the world what he thinks of the honorable
members of the Security Council? Certainly not those members themselves, and
they appoint the Secretary General.
Bush and Co. are neither mad nor stupid, nor are they evil. Despite their
professed born-again Christianity, they are in an Old Testament time warp (the
Koran, though of a much later date, is contemporary with the Old Testament), together
with the Israeli and Arab leadership, in which an “eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth” is the commandment that still prevails. The remaining eye, though,
is blind, and lashes out in
fury.
