flying.hairless: hebrew_israeli_prince my views favor american egalitarianism, the american creed, and american fair play, organic vegetarian apple pie, and big dogs lick my hand
http://allafrica.com/stories/200912150591.html
First, Ahmad debunks the historiography that links the first pa-
thology to ‘despotic’ traditions that pre-dated colonialism. Before
the advent of colonialism, governance in Asia and Africa – even
under the Mughal, Ottoman and Safavid empires – was quite de-
centralized, with power dispersed in the hands of provincial gov-
ernors, tribal elders, religious leaders, and land-owners (p. 121).
The centralized, repressive state was crafted to serve the interests
of colonial capital. Over time, this colonial state created a “state
In several countries, the
US played an instrumental role in supporting the military over-
throw of nationalist or socialist regimes, such as Iran in 1953, In-
donesia in 1965, and Chile in 1973. In other cases, the ever-present
threat of Western or Israeli interventions pushed radical national-
ist regimes in an autocratic direction
” this allows some Western
commentators to look upon the post-War period as ‘The Great
Peace.’ Forgotten are the horrendous wars of this period, directly
or indirectly connected to the United States, which collectively
killed twenty-one million people in the Third World. It also pro-
tects the major Western societies “from confronting the intellec-
tual and moral consequences of their own history (p. 225).” In ad-
dition, this framework fails in two of its main predictions. The
termination of the Cold War brought no ‘peace dividends,’ nor
did it herald the ‘end of history.’ On the other hand, it intensified
the imperialist siege of the Third World.
What distinguishes this phase is the rise of na-
tional liberation movements (NLMs), which Washington itself
saw as “the least manageable – hence ultimately the most serious
– menace to American interests (p. 334).” In their radical and revo-
lutionary forms, the NLMs challenged “the existence of the three
basic and interlinked elements that support and perpetuate the
structure of imperialism: the international corporations, the pro-
Western and procapitalist indigenous bourgeoisie, and the state’s
apparatus of coercion and control (such as the bureaucracy) (p.
334).” The US State Department reported twenty-two armed
NLMs in the Third World in 1958 and forty-two in 1965 (p. 299).
In at least two cases – Algeria and Vietnam – the NLMs demon-
strated their ability to defeat “two of the most advanced war machines and most highly developed national security states of our
time (pp. 298-99).” In the post-War period, Ahmad (p. 299) argues,
the NLMs “have been the primary force in defining conflict and
change in the international system.”
Depending on
the circumstances, the US countered this threat from the Third
World with military support for dictatorships fighting popular or
revolutionary movements; covert aid to coups against populist or
radical nationalist regimes; economic sanctions and open wars
against radical nationalist or revolutionary regimes; and arming
Israel in order to neutralize radical Arab nationalist states
Why, then, did the US direct its rhetoric and diplomacy against
the Soviet threat? To this, Ahmad (p. 246) tosses out a tantaliz-
ingly brief answer. The Cold War “served as the latest mechanism
for organizing and legitimizing a world system of domination.”
Does he mean that the ‘Cold War’ was hyped up to distract atten-
tion from the main – and bloody – business of suppressing NLMs
in the Third World? Ahmad (p. 334) also offers an intriguing take
on the détente: it allowed the US “to intervene with unlimited in-
humanity – against social revolutions.”
In order to pursue imperialist projects a great power must in-
vents myths to justify them. “A policy which responds to the in-
terests of the few but needs the support of the many must neces-
sarily invoke a people’s sense of mission and fear (p. 211).” Amer-ica’s mission is “to stand watch over the world’s freedom.” This
myth has worked so well because it has historical roots in the
American sense of mission born of its colonial origins in a ‘wil-
derness,’ the deep religiosity of the early settlers, and the convic-
tion of the founding fathers that they had launched a republic
founded on freedom. There were anxieties too about the US as an
‘island power’ confronting a great ‘continental power’ in the So-
viet Union. Without the conditioning of these factors, one cannot
explain the “almost theological anticommunism (p. 214)” that took
hold of America in the post-War period.
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