Unacknowledged Racism, Imperialism and the U.S. Occupation of Iraq

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Mon Feb-05-07 08:38 PM
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Unacknowledged Racism, Imperialism and the U.S. Occupation of Iraq

Racism and imperialism have been found together so frequently during the course of world history that they can be considered two sides of the same coin. Here�s how it works: One people (or nation) intend to take over the land of or enslave another people. If the two peoples look or act different from each other, then the process can be facilitated by racism. The dominant people claim that the other people are of an inferior race. They are �savage� or �barbaric� or better yet, not really human. That ustifies their removing them from their land or enslaving them. It is for their own good. Or it goes along with the �natural order� of things. Or it is �manifest destiny�. Or it is ordained by God. By dehumanizing the other people as justification for treating them badly, the dominant people feel licensed to treat the other people as the sub-humans that they claim them to be. And they often act upon that license to emphasize the point. The process creates a vicious downward spiral.

Racism and imperialism have been and are two of the greatest scourges in the world � today, and probably as far back in world history as people of different genetic make-ups and cultural behaviors encountered one another. In the 20th Century alone, numerous genocidal episodes have involved the brutal murders of tens of millions of people, including the Nazi Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the genocides in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Darfur. Prior to the 20th Century the historical evidence of genocide and racism is less clear, but I doubt that it was much less frequent. Certainly the near total European colonization of Africa in the 19th Century was justified and facilitated by racism, and although that may not have met the formal definition of genocide, certainly native Africans suffered terribly from the European colonization of their continent, and many millions died from it. The ancient Greeks and Romans referred to peoples of different cultures as �barbarians�, and they often went to war against or enslaved those �barbarians�. The role that racism played in those many wars and in the practice of ancient slavery has not been much written about, but recent scholarship has suggested that it played an important role.

A brief discussion of racism in U.S. history

Although Americans don�t talk about it much, the United States has been no exception to the above noted pattern, as demonstrated by their near extermination of the Native Americans, their enslavement of Africans, their violent repression of their former slaves following the American Civil War, their subjugation of the Philippines, and many other events.

The slave owning class in 19th Century pre-Civil War United States knew no bounds when it came to justifying the existing order. They could not stand the idea of putting limits on the extension of slavery in the United States. They could not stand the idea of northerners providing refuge to slaves who escaped from southern plantations. And they would become apoplectic whenever northern Congressmen insulted their sacred �institution�, as demonstrated so vividly when Preston Brooks nearly beat to death Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate for making an anti-slavery speech. Deep down inside, the southern slave owners knew that their justifications for slavery were fragile and fraudulent. Any discussion of the matter threatened to force them to realize it themselves, thereby causing the demise of the whole elaborate fantasy on which they maintained their self esteem. That�s why they tried so desperately to stifle any mention of slavery on the floor of the U.S. House, with the infamous �gag rule� in the 1830s and 1840s. And that�s why the election in 1860 of a U.S. President who had vocalized some anti-slavery sentiments resulted in the quick secession of 11 states followed by a bloody civil war, even though that President had promised to do nothing to interfere with the legal right to own slaves in those states.

To what extent should our history of racism continue to be acknowledged?

Some would say that that�s all water under the bridge � that the past cannot be changed, so there is no point in continuing to talk about such uncomfortable things. After all, much has been accomplished in ameliorating racism in the United States. Slavery was abolished in the United States by an amendment to our Constitution. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did much to ameliorate the affects of racism in our country. Indeed, the overt expression of racism in not even politically acceptable in the United States today.

Yet racism is far from dead in today�s United States. Though overt racism in no longer acceptable in our country today, subtle appeal to racist sentiments remains a viable means for some politicians to advance their own individual causes. And because that racist appeal is often subtle rather than overt, many Americans don�t consciously recognize it as racist.

It has often been said that if we do not learn from our past we are condemned to repeat it � and with today�s modern weaponry, the scourges of racism will indeed be terrible to behold if we cannot learn history�s lessons well enough to avoid our past failures. Notwithstanding the substantial progress that has been made, our nation has not yet sufficiently learned those lessons. Unfortunately, under our current leadership our country has moved substantially backwards in that area over the past few years. The Iraq war provides vivid proof � to those willing to see it � that we have not yet learned the lessons we need to learn well enough, as it also shows us some of the consequences of our failure to learn those lessons.

Our invasion and occupation of Iraq is rooted in racist and imperialistic impulses

For those who don�t believe that our invasion and occupation of Iraq is rooted in racism and imperialism, consider the following:

Over 600 thousand Iraqi civilians have died from our invasion and occupation of their country, and yet our national news media rarely mentions that fact. If the purpose of the war was to bring Democracy to Iraq, why aren�t the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis considered important enough to talk about?

The Iraqis don�t want us in their country. A majority of Iraqis feel so strongly about that that they approve of violent attacks against U.S. forces. Yet that is rarely mentioned by our national news media. Again � if our purpose is to bring democracy to Iraq, why aren�t the wishes of the Iraqi people considered important enough to form part of the equation?

Though our own Constitution, as well as international law, provides for the unalienable rights of accused persons to have a fair trial, George Bush and Dick Cheney have willfully ignored those rights. The prisoners that we take in our so-called �War on Terror� are held indefinitely, for years, without even being accused of a crime; they are denied the right to face their accusers; they are denied the right to counsel; and they are repeatedly tortured. George Bush, by over-riding a Congressional ban against torture with one of his many infamous �signing statements�, has made it clear that he approves of that torture. How do our leaders justify all this? We got attacked, they say, oblivious to the non-relationship between those who attacked us and those who we are attacking and throwing into our prisons. And �they are the worst of the worst� they say, oblivious to the quaint American philosophy of �innocent until proven guilty�. Unacknowledged racism in the United States gives them just enough cover to stem the widespread outrage that would otherwise be generated by these crimes against humanity.

Three and a half years after our invasion of Iraq, residents of Baghdad were receiving an average of only 2.4 hours per day of electricity. Our lack of commitment to reconstructing the Iraqi infrastructure that we have destroyed can be seen also in the billions of dollars that have gone missing after being awarded in no-bid contracts to friends of the Bush administration.

The imperial foundations of our war in Iraq can also be seen from our construction of 14 permanent military bases in Iraq and our insistence on making arrangements for the distribution of oil in Iraq that will benefit American oil companies.

Racism and imperialism disguised

As has always been the case throughout the history of the world whenever crimes against humanity are perpetrated, our current leaders disguise their true intentions behind a veil of gobbelygook. A blueprint for how this is done can be deciphered by an examination of the �statement of principles� of the group known as Project for a New American Century (PNAC), from which the Bush/Cheney administration takes its ideology. The relevant portions of that �statement of principles� are as follows:

We need to � challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values � We need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

The terms �accept responsibility� and �moral clarity� and �principles� make it clear that the members of PNAC wish the world to know that they are a responsible, moral and principled organization � though what is meant by the morality and principles that they refer to is utterly unclear. The frequent references to security and prosperity lets the American people know that PNAC intends to act in their best interest to protect them and make them prosperous. And the reference to �ensuring our greatness� in the 21st Century serves as a reminder that we are better than the other peoples of the world, which is why they should be morally duty bound to do what we tell them to do. Thus it is that American icons such as Lee Hamilton can say that they are losing patience with Iraq because they are not participating in our war in the manner in which we have repeatedly told them participate.