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America’s dreams of empire

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Here is a remarkable analysis of American imperial dreams and plans from a clear-eyed man. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physicist, has been a courageous and lonely antinuclear activist in a country, now an American ally in the war against terrorism, whose government hasn’t hesitated to wave and threaten to play the nuclear card while at the very edge of war with India.

So here we are at what seems to be another “edge” — the edge of what may be America’s first great colonial war since the turn of the nineteenth century, a war (in the fashion of the European countries that preceded it in the region) meant to redraw the very map of the Middle East in the course of a full-scale occupation of the region. Hoodbhoy wants us to know that the “clash of civilizations,” whatever embattled Muslims or emboldened Americans may think, is so much foolishness; that America’s dreams have been longer in the making, more self-interested, and largely unrelated to any distaste for Islam. He does, however, see a striking new element in the post-post Cold War imperial mix: “Now that there is no other superpower to keep it in check, the U.S. no longer sees a need to battle for the hearts and minds of those it would dominate.” Don’t miss his piece, which appeared on the opinion page of today’s Los Angeles Times.

Let me mention two allied views of the present crisis from the embattled region: We, of course, are waiting for war to begin, but recently journalist Pepe Escobar ended a piece, “Three meetings and a funeral,” in the Asia Times with the following comments from the Egyptian historian Tarek El-Bishri:

“Now many in Egypt consider that there is a sort of replay of direct military occupation, similar to what happened under the British and the French in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. El-Bishri notes that “Iraq has been subject to military strikes over the past 10 years, and they have not stopped”. His analysis echoes the pervasive Arab opinion on what’s really going on: the US “is here to occupy not only Iraq, but the region. The Gulf is under full military occupation. We are not waiting for a war, because it has started already.”

To read more Escobar click here

At the same time, the scholar and Palestinian activist Edward Said recently wrote a piece, or rather a cri de coeur, “When will we resist? The US is preparing to attack the Arab world, while the Arabs whimper in submission,” a version of which appeared in the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram and then in the British Guardian. It ends:

“There is a wonderful expression that very precisely and ironically catches our unacceptable helplessness The expression is: will the last person to leave please turn out the lights? We are that close to a kind of upheaval that will leave very little standing and perilously little left even to record, except for the last injunction that begs for extinction.”

To read more Escobar click here

At the same time, the scholar and Palestinian activist Edward Said recently wrote a piece, or rather a cri de coeur, “When will we resist? The US is preparing to attack the Arab world, while the Arabs whimper in submission,” a version of which appeared in the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram and then in the British Guardian. It ends:

“There is a wonderful expression that very precisely and ironically catches our unacceptable helplessness The expression is: will the last person to leave please turn out the lights? We are that close to a kind of upheaval that will leave very little standing and perilously little left even to record, except for the last injunction that begs for extinction.”

“Hasn’t the time come for us collectively to demand and formulate a genuinely Arab alternative to the wreckage about to engulf our world? This is not only a trivial matter of regime change, although God knows that we can do with quite a bit of that Will no one come out into the light of day to express a vision for our future that isn’t based on a script written by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, those two symbols of vacant power and overweening arrogance? I hope someone is listening.”

To read more Said click here

These are voices from “elsewhere” — and we should be listening carefully. Tom

America’s Dreams of Empire
By Pervez Hoodbhoy
The Los Angeles Times
January 26 2003

: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Street opinion in Pakistan, and probably in most Muslim countries, holds that Islam is the true target of America’s new wars. The fanatical hordes spilling out of Pakistan’s madrasas are certain that a modern-day Richard the Lion-Hearted will soon bear down upon them. Swords in hand, they pray to Allah to grant war and send a modern Saladin, who can miraculously dodge cruise missiles and hurl them back to their launchers.

Even moderate Muslims are worried. They see indicators of religious war in such things as the profiling of Muslims by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the placing of Muslim states on the U.S. register of rogues and the blanket approval given to Israeli bulldozers as they level Palestinian neighborhoods.

But Muslims elevate their importance in the American cosmography. The U.S. has aspirations far beyond subjugating inconsequential Muslim states

Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of high-energy physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.

To read more Hoodbhoy click here