Part 32: From Alexander Hamilton and Iroquois to George Bush and Iraqis
By B. J. Sabri
Online
Journal Contributing Writer
Apr 29, 2005, 19:28
� . . . The deeper origins of the War
on Terror lie more in the events of July 4, 1776, than in those of September
11, 2001. They lie more in a provision in the Declaration of Independence
collectively criminalizing the "merciless Indian savages" than in the
commercial airplane attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers. This provision
in perhaps the most consequential political manifesto ever issued began a trend
in 1776 that is only now reaching the full potential of its menacing
propensity.��Anthony J. Hall, founding coordinator of Globalization Studies, author
of: The American Empire and the Fourth World, and associate professor of History University of Lethbridge,
Canada [Lecture: the Colonial Genesis of the War on Terror, 1492-present, United Nations University, Tokyo,
Japan, December 18�19, 2004]
Alexander Hamilton and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), George Bush
and Iraqis, is there any relation? Can the history of Native Nations in the
United States offer the ideological key to understand the occupation of
Afghanistan and Iraq?
Although answering these two questions would delay our
discussion on the pretexts for occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the detour
is vital. It will help us in defining a host of current issues. Primary among
these is setting an ideological frame of U.S. colonialism, pattern of pretexts
vis-�-vis official postures, as well as basic forces�capitalism, imperialism,
Christian fundamentalism, Zionism. Two forces: Zionism and Christian
fundamentalism have changed the American state so radically that it modified
its political structure, ideology, and agenda. The result is hyper-imperialism.
Hyper-imperialism as an ideology and power structure has
been the guiding force of the United States for over a decade. Technically,
since Gorbachev began dismantling the Soviet Union; officially, since Bill
Clinton embraced Zionism to win the presidency. Recent military interventions
of hyper-imperialism include but are not limited to attacks against Bosnia,
Sudan, Haiti, Yugoslavia, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the pillage of
Palestine via Israel, threats of war against Iran and Syria, the
destabilization of Turkey and Arab states, harassment of Venezuela and Cuba,
and the semi-occupations of several former Soviet Republics and socialist
states.
The current dominant ideology of the American Power is
complex. It is insidious. It covers up its motives for war with abstract
slogans and rationales such as building civil societies, opening free markets,
instituting human rights, spreading democracy and freedom, national interests,
security, and terrorism. It is pervasive. It depends on seemingly domestic
democratic institutions to perpetuate its cyclic reproduction through election
and re-election. Finally, it is hyper-violent. It surpassed Nazism. While
Nazism�s hallmark was the genocide of European Jews, the U.S.�s hallmark was
either extermination (read, genocide) of Native Nations, or mass destruction of
Asian and Middle Eastern nations. Further, while Nazism was limited to a period
lasting 12 years (1933�1945), American Nazi-style violence has become an
uninterrupted experience since the founding of the United States.
Another equally important U.S. trait is immunity from
prosecution, that is, the U.S. is unaccountable for all crimes it committed
since it became an independent political state. In short, after it exterminated
or killed Native American Indians, Africans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans,
Nicaraguans, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese, Panamanians, Serbians, Afghanis,
Iraqis, Palestinians via Israel, and so on, the world is still unwilling,
afraid, or incapable of making the United States pay for its crimes or force it
to change its policy of perpetual violence.
Is it true that American international violence surpasses
that of Nazism? Let us compare a limited historical sampling:
- It is
true that when Hitler invaded France, he destroyed the Maginot Line,
defeated the French army, and ransacked the countryside; but he did not
destroy Paris or other French cities. Moreover, having had a sympathetic
stance toward Britain via the Anglo-Saxon connection, he [Hitler] did not
destroy Britain despite his intense bombardment of London. The U.S.-UK, as
well as the USSR, on the other hand, had razed Berlin and most German
cities.
- Via the same
sympathy toward the British or because of other calculations, Hitler
allowed 400,000 British soldiers entrapped at Dunkirk (Northern France,
1940) to escape unharmed by halting his military offensive. He [Hitler]
also allowed 100,000 French soldiers to escape from that same entrapment.
On the other hand, U.S. Gen. Barry McCaffrey ordered the slaughter of tens
of thousands of withdrawing Iraqi army units after an agreed upon
ceasefire.
- Without
casus belli, Hitler invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.
Yet, although he defeated the small armies of these states, he did not
devastate Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, and Warsaw. This does not exclude
that invaded territories had suffered damage concomitant with invasions
and resistance. Of course, the generalized destruction of Europe happened
after Britain and France declared war on Germany. On the other hand, the
U.S., without casus belli invaded and destroyed half of Iraq in a blink of
an eye. Before Baghdad, which the U.S. had already semi-destroyed in 1991,
under the official motive to liberate Kuwait, the U.S. of Kissinger
reduced the North Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, to rubble through massive
bombardment, although North Vietnam never attacked the United States.
After the U.S. forces landed in Anzio [Naples, Italy, WW II,
1944], the retreating German army passing through Tuscany while proceeding
North, destroyed most bridges and roads; yet they spared Florence�s ancient
bridge Ponte Vecchio from destruction for its incalculable historic
value. In the Iraqi case, the American occupation force is tearing down ancient
Babylonian ruins to use its rocks and bricks as barricades against attacks by
anti-occupation forces. The latest archeological atrocity is the destruction of
the top two stories of the Spiral Minaret of Sammarrah (North of Baghdad) which
is 1,000 years old.
Affirmatively, it is a historical fact that American
international violence surpasses in severity and magnitude that of Nazi
Germany. The extermination of Native Nations, the enslavement and mass murder
of Africans, the mass destruction in the Philippines (200,000 people killed),
Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq are but the most notorious acts of genocide and
violence perpetrated by the United States against non-European nations. Still,
U.S. violence surpasses Nazism on another account: pretexts.
While Nazism used German grievances (which, to certain
extent, were legitimate) left from WW I as an alibi for its aggression, the
United States fabricated a hypothetical Iraqi threat to invade that
country. Arguably, a hypothesis on the presumed threat from an adversary is
applicable when military force and strength are identifiable but information on
intent and strategy are not (example, U.S. vs. USSR). In the Iraqi example, the
U.S. fabricated an inexistent threat, and then built a hypothesis upon it
(example, Powell�s U.N. presentation). Thus without a casus belli, but with an
elaborate hypothesis, the U.S. attacked Iraq, bombarded its capital with
depleted uranium and daisy cutters, annihilated the Iraqi state within just 21
days, and killed over 120,000 Iraqis in two years of colonialist occupation.
One point to remember is that in states with centralized
governments, such as Iraq, the destruction of the government means the
inevitable collapse of the state. But since the state supports society, the
collapse of the state means the parallel collapse of society. With this
foreknowledge, the prospected simultaneous collapse of state pillars
(ministries, police, army, civil organizations, food supply, utility services,
etc., and of societal structures�economic activities, access to health systems,
social activities, etc.) was the most pressing target behind the U.S. invasion
of Iraq. That target was the dissolution of the Iraqi state and its re-making
to serve the needs of U.S. capitalism, imperialism, military and service
industry, Israel, and, of course, to restart the march for world domination.
Nevertheless, the swift disintegration of Iraq under the
American onslaught was not limited to one factor, as the U.S. wants us to
believe. That is because of U.S. war technology. There were other concomitant
structural factors; principle among them is that, after a devastating previous
U.S. war against Iraq (Gulf War, 1991), a 13-year economic sanction and
blockade, a long war of attrition, and world isolation, Iraq, state and
society, passed, by far, the point of elasticity or functional recovery. In
short, Iraq was ready to collapse under the slightest external pressure.
Exactly, how did the U.S. manage to occupy Iraq? By now, the
answer should be automatic: through pretexts. Pretext that Iraq possessed WMD;
pretext that the U.N. was incapable of disarming Iraq; pretext that Saddam was
cheating; pretext that post-invasion Iraq became the �center stage for the war
on terror�; pretext to building a �free,� �democratic� and �stable� Iraq.
Now that we established that
pretexts are the voluntary nervous system of U.S. imperialism, then what comes
next? I contend there must have been a starting point and successive
stages where carefully studied colonialist impulses guided U.S.
expansionism and violence to implement it. One such impulse is the
determination of U.S. ruling classes to destroy all those who oppose its
imperium, encroachment, colonialism, or coercion. This means U.S. imperialist
actions are a product of extensive deliberation and coherent decision-making.
One way to evaluate the effects of
the starting point on the American society is by observing the evolving
ideology of violent domination. Of course, those effects extend to the
political order, popular culture, as well as to the culture of the U.S. army.
This means the ideology of domination has become a natural practice that
the American society accepts without discussion. On a wider ground, however,
one result of the continental conquest by the United States is that the
practice of exterminating Native Peoples has become a messianic option and a
paradigm projected into the future.
Incidentally, when I say American
culture, I do not intend to constrict it to Americans of white European descent
but also to many ethnic groups descending from exploited or colonized peoples.
And by this, I am unequivocally pointing out to a paradox and an anomaly in the
conduct of non-white ethnic groups that the U.S. had once colonized,
brutalized, or enslaved. Surprisingly, Native Americans Indians, African
Americans, and Hispanic are supplying the U.S. army with enough personnel to
colonize, murder, and suppress foreign nations. Even more surprisingly, a
multitude of non-white individuals now emulate the racism, fascism, and
violence of the white masters who once enslaved and annihilated their great
grandparents�they call this �patriotism.�
It is ironic that African
Americans (enslaved or not) helped the U.S. army in defeating American Natives,
and that American Natives helped their captors in defeating other American
Natives. The English settlers� strategy to use non-Europeans to fight their
wars of colonialism has persisted since Britain occupied India, mostly with
conscripted Indians. That practice is now the backbone of U.S. strategy for
expanding imperialism. In fact, tens of thousands of Native Americans, African
Americans, and Hispanic (from the U.S. or Latin America) are now serving the
aims of U.S. colonialism in Korea, Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Whether these groups joined the
American colonialist bandwagon out of co-option, co-habitation, subordinate
participation, or just servitude to identify with an oppressive system, thus
escaping discrimination and obtaining some economic or social benefits, is of
no critical relevance. Opportunistically this phenomenon has an aphorism: if
you cannot beat them, join them. Sociologically, it has a different name:
alienation within a system. Psychologically, it has a different meaning: Occupied
Mentality Syndrome, which is my definition of ethnic, cultural, or social
insecurity that afflict some of the non-European segments of the American
society. What is relevant, instead, is that a substantial number of
underprivileged non-white Americans participate consciously in the crimes of
colonialism and adopt its ideology, vocabulary, attitudes, and predilection for
unjustified killing.
Pointing to Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and others as an
example of achievement of non-European groups in the American
system is invalid. These personalities are exponents of co-option, and, as
such, are alien to the issues of true emancipation and social empowerment of
the groups just mentioned. (Note: Campbell,
a former US senator, first as
Democrat, and then as a Republican, from Colorado is partly Northern Cheyenne
Indian via his father; his mother was Portuguese. He was an
aggressive advocate of the U.S. imperialist policy toward Iraq in the
1990s. His recent voting
record indicates an ingrained colonialist ideology, imperialist
militarism, and it includes the resolution for war on Iraq in 2002, the
approval of $82 billion dollars to continue the war on the people of Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the resolution to relocate the American Embassy from Tel
Aviv to Jerusalem, thus acknowledging the essence of Israeli colonialism.)
Having outlined an incremental
historical approach to the occupation of Iraq, we have to investigate whether
we can connect past and present when dealing with the ideology of colonialism.
For instance, the similarity between the Indian Holocaust to implement
conquest, and the cumulative Iraqi holocaust also to implement conquest is
striking. Despite difference in magnitude, this statement is true. One reason
is that the ideology of conquest that animated Spaniards, British,
Portuguese, French, Dutch, and, later, the emerging Americans is identical
in makeup and finality to the ideology of conquest that is now animating
the United States.
This ideology has a name: exterminate
to dominate.
Peter Montague, co-founder
and director of Environmental Research Foundation (E.R.F.) in Annapolis,
Maryland, highlights the Indian Holocaust with a piercing statement:
By then [1891] the native population
had been reduced to 2.5 percent of its original numbers and 97.5 percent of the
aboriginal land base had been expropriated. . . . Hundreds upon hundreds of
native tribes with unique languages, learning, customs, and cultures had simply
been erased from the face of the earth, most often without even the pretense of
justice or law. [Source]
[Read statistics]
In the U.S. example, what was the pressing rationale to exterminate
Native Peoples? Thomas Jefferson, among others, explained the situation with astounding clarity and unflinching
determination. In a letter to Baron Von Humboldt (a German naturalist, geologist and explorer
[1769�1859]. He wrote:
The interested and unprincipled policy of England
has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. They have seduced the geater part of
the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the
crule massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers
taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or
drive them to new seats beyond our reach� [Quoted
in Facing West by Richard Drinnon, Schocken Books, 1980, page: 98]
[Emphasis added]
We can interpret Jefferson�s
thought as follows:
- The
United States is a racist and supremacist state: it considered Native
Nations, unfortunate people. Did Jefferson consider their
extermination as an unfortunate episode? Or did he consider them unfortunate
because history put white European settlers on their land?
- The
United States of Jefferson was a nation of foreign settlers and
colonialist encroachers, yet it considers the Original Peoples as an
accidental presence on their own soils and in the settlers� neighborhoods.
In addition, Jefferson admits colonialism as when he used the phrase, �our
frontiers.�
- The
United States does not consider its massacres of the natives as cruel, yet
it considers the struggle of the natives to defend their land and existence
as cruel.
- The
United States is keen to describe how the Natives killed the women and
children of their frontiers, but never describe how it killed Native women
and children who once owned those frontiers.
- The
United States can pursue and exterminate its adversaries (Native Indians
or others) at will, and there is no compunction for the use of the word,
�extermination.�
- The
United States of Jefferson appeared to have invented Apartheid long before
the Afrikaners of South Africa invented it�Jefferson proposed to exile
the Natives to seats beyond the reach of the settlers.
- The
United States implicitly considers any Native�s retaliation for
U.S. barbarity, a form of savagery.
- The
United States implicitly does not accept responsibility for causing
adversarial actions by forces opposing its imperialism or imperialism.
Each of the points I deduced from
Jefferson�s quote confirms an article of specific ideology that I already
called: exterminate to dominate. Consequently, since the U.S. objective
is domination by extermination, can we then establish, through examples, an
ideological and practical continuity from a Nazi-like Jefferson to present day
American leaders, thinkers, and the military in Iraq?
Another matter that we shall discuss next, relates to
Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton offers a powerful synthesis of American violence.
Although he was never president, but as one of the framers of the Constitution,
as a thinker, and as the first secretary of the treasury who shaped American
capitalism and Wall Street, Hamilton is accredited for being the man who
created modern America. It is appropriate, therefore, to use him as a reference
point, especially in his role for eradication of the Iroquois confederacy, a
reasonably developed state that included closely related Native Nations:
Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora.
In the end, what is that Starting Point that I
alluded to in this article?
Next, Part 33: Facing East: Iraqi Hating and Empire
Building*
* In honor of Richard Drinnon for his monumental work: Facing West: Indian Hating and Empire Building
B.
J. Sabri is an Iraqi American anti-war activist. Email bjsabri@yahoo.com.
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