When future historians write of the US empire, they will emphasize the process of empire building, methods of rule, the principle ideologues, and how at a particular moment in time a small, dependent state – Israel – was able to shape US war policy to suit its needs. Empire Building Military violence, direct and through […]
When future historians write of the US empire, they will emphasize the process of empire building, methods of rule, the principle ideologues, and how at a particular moment in time a small, dependent state – Israel – was able to shape US war policy to suit its needs.
Empire Building
Military violence, direct and through surrogates, was crucial to the expansion and consolidation of the empire in South and Central America and the Caribbean – from 1964 to 1990 US-backed surrogate military regimes and paramilitary forces took power in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Dominican Republic – and later in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Over 500,000 people were slaughtered in order to impose the imperial centered system of accumulation (later called «neo-liberalism»). Imperial strategy of invasion and intervention established the parameters for long-term consolidation: An economic system ‘open’ to imperial penetration and control («free market economies») and a state apparatus (judiciary, military, central bank etc.) capable of deepening and consolidating the imperial centered economy. Subsequently the domesticated electoral politicians accepted the imperial parameters and Washington encouraged political competition. In the case of Mexico, voter fraud ensured the election in 1988 of «President» Salinas who proceeded to «integrate» Mexico via NAFTA into the US Empire.
A similar process took place in Africa. Between 1970 to the 1990’s, massive US military intervention and support of «surrogate» mercenaries aided by US strategic ally, South Africa, killed millions in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Congo, destroying the economic and political basis for development and establishing client regimes. These mineral and oil rich countries were incorporated into the empire. In the case of South Africa the leadership of the African National Congress was coerced and then co-opted and became an integral part of the Euro-US imperial system. Similar processes took place in Asia where imperial wars were followed by economic ‘openings’ extending imperial dominance throughout the region…at the cost of over seven million dead Koreans, Indochinese, Filipinos, Indonesians and Timorese.
Between the 1990’s to the present the US empire expanded into the Balkans, Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries, Central Asia and the Caucuses by aggressive ideological intervention aided by the corruption and deep rot in the dominant Communist parties ruling in those countries. The Middle East, Southwest Asia and the Balkans were next, in part, because they are integral to exploiting oil resources, building pipelines and building military bases. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded. Satellite regimes were established in Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. A US puppet regime in Kabul rules in alliance with opium-subsidized mercenary warlords. Iraq was invaded, occupied and ruled by a US pro-consul. The US Empire is built on wars, using its own military forces, surrogate mercenaries and paramilitary forces.
Imperial Consolidation
To sustain power in the face of mass anti-imperial resistance, the US state has
repeatedly violated all international conventions and laws: Torture of prisoners, mass
killings of civilians, destruction of infrastructure and historical sites, the pillaging of natural resources, and the establishment of a client colonial state and imperial-centered economy.
The US conquest of Iraq is the latest example of empire building with its own particularities. The most salient feature of the imperialist conquest of Iraq is the exposé of the brutal methods of imperialist rule.
We have all read and seen photos of large scale , systematic torture of thousands of Iraqi citizens, suspected of being freedom fighters. Torture has been the principle source of «information» to buttress colonial rule. The model of rule via mass torture and sexual violence is heavily influenced by the Israeli experience, where nearly half of the male adult Palestinian population has been incarcerated and subject to «legalized» Israeli torture. This is not a circumstantial coincidence. The main ideologues defending torture include the most prestigious Zionist academics and policy makers in the United States. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis, William Kristol, Yale Professor Robert Kagan, John Hopkins Professor Eliot Cohen, to name only a few of the Zionist totalitarian ideologues, defending Israeli terror and US imperial force. Mass systematic torture in Iraq was the first but not the most important revelation of imperial rule. Within the Pentagon the top leaders, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith specifically ordered the use of torture while the Justice and Defense Departments insisted that the President could override any laws – international or national and the US Constitution – in defending the empire. In other words, torture was seen as a special Presidential power beyond any legislative or legal restraint. Ruling an empire knows no legal restraint. De facto and de jure dictatorial powers of the President are assumed in securing ‘Imperial Security’.
The third revelation resulting from the exposé of torture exposed an empire operating with a highly organized network of assassins throughout the world, killing, kidnapping and torturing «suspects» and sympathizers of resistance movements. ‘Murder Incorporated’ is called the Special Agency Program (SAP) and is composed of highly trained Special Forces (Army), SEALS (Navy), and DELTA Force. The SAP violate the sovereignty of every country in the world, engages in criminal behavior conducive to capital crimes including frequent arbitrary extra-judicial murder of suspected «terrorists» or sympathizers. Their model is the Mossad policy of «selective assassinations» of suspects. As the empire expands and the anti-imperialist resistance grows worldwide, the SAP acts as an international death squad of the US imperial terror network.
Ideologues of Imperial/Colonial Terror
The destruction of Iraq’s historical existence as a sovereign nation – the pillage of
its archeological museums and historical sites, libraries and archives, the violent intrusions into sacred sanctuaries, the humiliation of its people via torture, collective punishment and sexual violence are all designed to destroy the country’s historical identity as an Arab nation. The purpose is to create mini-states based on tribes, religion and ethnicity, to divide and rule. The model is the Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Israel’s practice of sexual humiliation of Palestinians (and Lebanese) has been routine (rapes, stripping and hooding of prisoners). Collective punishment and taking family members hostage are legally condoned and extensively practiced in Israel. The recent Rafah/Jenin invasions demonstrate the extremities of colonial savagery and inhumanity.
The Israelis deny the Palestinians their past as a nation, their land as a place to live, and their right to govern themselves. So do the US Imperial rulers in Iraq. They constantly work to ethnicize the conflict, deny the existence of the Iraqi nation, the people and their history. The US, like Israel, has taken land, resources and built fortresses and walls of segregation. A group of extremist Zionist scholars have contributed to the totalitarian denial of Arab culture led by the virulent Bernard Lewis (see From Babel to Dragomans). Recently Martin Wolf of the Financial Times justifies imperial wars throughout the world, rejecting national sovereignty and defending US-European and Israeli conquest of «failed states». (Financial Times, June 9, 2004 p.5).
Conclusion
We, in the United States, live in a House of Horrors – where empire building via torture and assassination is executive policy, where White House approved torture is exposed in the media but continues to be state practice. The mass media promoters and publicists of the House of Horrors, count on our short memory: They praise Ronald Reagan, whose infamous presidency marks a decade of genocide against Mayan Indians in Guatemala (300,000), in Nicaragua (50,000), El Salvador (75,000), Honduras (several thousands). It was Reagan who publically defended General Rios Montt, the butcher of Guatemala, from criticism for human rights abuses («He’s getting a raw deal».) and who praised the butchers of Afghanistan’s secular society as «The moral equivalent of our founding fathers». The White House, Pentagon, State Department, CIA, each in its turn has its own «side show» of horrors: Colin Powell’s blatant lies in the United Nations on weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon promoting torture, the CIA practicing assassinations.
The continuity of torture and mass murder, between the past Reagan regime to the present Bush regime is not merely due to many of the same political criminals (Wolfowitz, Abrams, Cheney and Rumsfeld) but to the politics of imperial conquest, destruction and extermination.
The House of Horrors does not merely replay the past scenarios for the same ideological and political interests. Today’s horror show has many of the same cast but with different directors and producers. In Central America and Southern Africa, fanatical anti-Communists were in command. Today it is the extremist Zionist militarists in the Pentagon who direct the US Horror Show in Iraq. Unlike Reagan’s Cold Warriors, today we have prestigious professors who provide the justification for unrestrained state terrorism. More than ever in recent US history there is a long list of distinguished professors who line up to defend the House of Horrors, the Prisons of Torture, the Seminars on Dehumanizing Arabs. These prestigious professors turn millions of victims into terrorists, all the better to justify their brutalization. All of them are unconditional supporters of Israel, its paranoid politics, its routinized torture, its nuclear threats to humanity, its savage assaults of Palestinians. They appear constantly in all the mass media, spewing their ideological venom: Perle, Abrams, Wolfowitz, Stern, Dershowitz, Cohen, Kagan, Kristol, Rubin, Adelman, Lewis, Pollock and many more. Their primary loyalty is in joining US imperialism and Israeli colonialism into one marvelous House of Horrors, under the big tent of a «Mid East Democratic Reform Initiative». Zionist influence on Washington’s criminal policies in the Middle East in favor of Israel is transparent. We should remember however that the «House of Horrors» has a history which preceded the Zionist ascendancy and will certainly continue after their influence has declined. The deeper problem is empire building – imperialism -, which provokes popular resistance to which the empire responds with torture and genocide. To end torture and defeat colonial powers overseas, we must resolutely confront their supporters and ideologues at home, whatever their ethnic or religious affiliations. We must not let their ideological fanaticism and aggression silence us from engaging a growing majority in the Americans opposed to the war and Zionist terror.
June 12, 2004