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Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
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Recent
Stories
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
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6, 2003
Steve
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Morse
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Said
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Guthrie
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August
7, 2003
Word Games About the
Iraqi Resistance
Is
the United States "a Terrorist Magnet"?
By M. SHAHID ALAM
Is it possible that a single metaphor, one that
has dropped from the lips of a serving American general, can
offer some forbidden insights into the dynamics of America's
relations with the Islamic world?
On July 28, 2003, Lieutenant General
Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US ground forces in Iraq, while
talking to CNN, blamed the "multi-faceted conflict"
Americans face in Iraq on "terrorists," "former
regime leadership," "criminals" and "hired
assassins." Then he volunteered an explanation that I think,
perhaps unintentionally, was daring in its clarity. "[There]
is what I would call a terrorist magnet where America, being
present here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity if you
will."
Is it really necessary to pick bones
with the General's description of the Iraqi resistance as "terrorist
activity"? The Iraqis have not attacked any American civilians,
inside Iraq or elsewhere; they have only targeted American troops.
Nor are they not attacking just any American troops. They are
attacking only those who have invaded and occupied their country.
Why then does the General call the Iraqi guerrillas terrorists,
criminals and hired assassins? Perhaps, this is another semantic
ploy we have borrowed from the Israelis. The Palestinians are
terrorists even when they attack Israeli tanks and armor, even
when their only weapons are stones.
It is all the more stunning, after this
dissimulation, when General Sanchez offers his theory of "a
terrorist magnet." It claims that the presence of American
troops inside Iraq has become a "magnet" for "terrorist
activity." It is the presence of American troops in
Iraq that is the source, the cause of this "terrorist activity." Moreover,
this is natural. What else would you expect if you placed a "magnet"
among iron filings? The iron filings would all be drawn towards
and stick to the magnet.
This theory of "a terrorist magnet"
is disconcertingly heretical. Although no one seems to have noticed,
it undermines two key arguments the Bush administration has used,
both ex ante and ex post, to sell the war on terrorism.
First, the war on terrorism has been based on the premise that
the terrorist attacks by Arab extremists are an ontological phenomenon.
It is in the nature of the attackers, a nature
instilled by their societies and in particular by their religion,
to attack America. They fear America's virtues: its freedom,
prosperity, and the rights it grants to women. The terrorist
attacks are motivated by the ontological rage of an inferior
and flawed civilization--Islam--against the superior, dynamic,
Christian civilization of the West. It is a thesis that has been
advanced assiduously by Jewish and Christian Zionists. And it
is this thesis that President Bush embraced when he declared
war against the attackers of 9-11.
The theory General Sanchez offers contradicts
this. It substitutes a Newtonian explanation for the ontological
postulate favored by the Bush administration and much of the
American media. The Iraqi resistance is not rooted in Iraqi nature,
or in Sunni Iraqi nature, or Baa'thi Sunni Iraqi nature. The
Iraqis have not sneaked into the United States to attack American
troops. As the Iraqis see it, the American troops are being attacked
because they are in the wrong place (Iraq), doing the wrong thing
(illegally occupying Iraq), for the wrong reasons (capturing
Iraqi oil and deepening Israeli hegemony over the Arabs).
The theory of a terrorist magnet would
seem to run afoul of a second rationale for the US war against
Iraq. In the first weeks after the official end of the war, when
it appeared that no WMDs were to be found--and there was a risk
that the earlier claims about WMDs would be seen as weapons of
mass deception--we invented a new buzz word: Liberation. The
WMDs were not the only reason for invading Iraq. We went in to
liberate the Iraqis from Saddam's tyranny. Conveniently forgotten
was our support for this tyranny before the First Gulf War, our
betrayal of the Kurdish resistance and Iraqi uprising, and the
deaths and suffering we had inflicted on the Iraqis over thirteen
years of bombings and sanctions.
Why then have the liberators become "a
terrorist magnet"? Admittedly, the armed resistance is not
national yet; it is confined mostly to Iraq's Sunni Arab population.
But if the Iraqis leading the armed resistance are "former
regime leadership," "criminals" and "hired
assassins," they could not hide among an Iraqi population
well-disposed to their American liberators. However, to this
date, no Iraqi has yet betrayed members of the Iraqi resistance.
If the toll of American dead and wounded
continues to mount, this will raise more troubling questions.
Why had we not seen this going in? Why had we not foreseen that
150,000 Americans deposited amidst a hostile population--a population
that we had bombed and besieged for thirteen years--would become
a magnet for "terrorists"? It is true that Muslims
have a poor record of resisting local tyrannies, even when they
are proxies for foreign powers; but we should have known that
they have unexceptionably resisted foreign occupations. We should
have known that Mujahideen ("terrorists" for their
enemies) from all corners of the world would soon be entering
Iraq to fight the foreign occupation, as they had done in Afghanistan,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Kashmir, and Palestine.
So, if ordinary young Americans are dying
today in Iraq--and many more recover from war wounds--that is
not because the administration, the neoconservative ideologues,
and the media could not have foreseen this. They did, but chose
to ignore these concerns. In their calculus, the lives of a few
ordinary Americans were expendable, compared to the great prizes
before them. Arab oil had to be secured; and the Arab world had
to be made safe for Israeli hegemony.
The thesis of a terrorist magnet raises
a broader question, one that is at the heart of America's relations
with the Islamic world. General Sanchez's remark--about Americana
troops in Iraq serving as "terrorist magnets"--has
drawn few comments from the media. The Newtonian connection he
drew between an American action (insertion of troops into Iraq)
and the reaction (Iraqi resistance) was perhaps too obvious to
deny. And who would dare impugn the patriotism of the General
commanding our forces in Iraq? Perhaps, that is why his remarks
were quickly laid to rest.
However, no one in America's mainstream
media, much less a general or a politician, will dare to make
a similar connection between America's foreign policies towards
the Islamic world and the anti-American forces that now proliferate
in that region. The American political establishment promotes
the ideology that the United States can do no wrong in its dealings
with foreign countries. The United States is not only the most
powerful country that has ever existed; it is also the most benevolent.
As a result, it is heretical to suggest
that 9-11 may have been a blowback from our policies towards
the Middle East. To suggest such a connection is not to justify
9-11. Yet most Americans are unwilling to separate the morality
and causality of 9-11. Until we learn to do so there can be no
rational discourse on the etiology of the growing conflicts between
the United States and the Islamic world. And if that does not
happen soon, the civilizational war which the Zionists--Christian
and Jewish--and some Islamic extremists so avidly project may
become a frightening reality.
M. Shahid Alam
is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last
book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published
by Palgrave in 2000. Visit his webpage at http://msalam.net.
He is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's The
Politics of Anti-Semitism. Alam may be reached at m.alam@neu.edu.
© M. Shahid Alam
Weekend Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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