The End of the "End of History"

[Michel Collon <michel.collon at skynet.be>]

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September 11

The End of the "End of History"

By JEAN BRICMONT -
<http://www.counterpunch.org/>http://www.counterpunch.org/

All was going well. Serbia, on its knees, had just sold Milosevic to the
International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague for a fistful of dollars (some
of which, it was learned later, went to pay debts accumulated since the
time of Tito). NATO was stretching eastward as Russia looked on helplessly.
Whenever one wished, one could, in all impunity, "bomb Saddam Hussein"
(that is, the Iraqi population). The Palestinian territories were under
tight police control and their leaders assassinated by smart bombs. In
recent years, stockholders had made record profits. The political left no
longer existed, all parties having rallied to neo-liberalism and
"humanitarian" military intervention. In short, even if we had not yet
arrived at the "end of history"; its course was well under control and its
"happy ending" in sight.

And then -- shock, surprise, horror -- the greatest power of all time
struck in the very center of its wealth and strength. A sophisticaled
electronic spy network had been unable to do anything to prevent the
catastrophe.

I do not, of course; share the "values" of Ms. Albright who, when asked if
the death of a half million Iraqi children is "worth it", replies: "I think
this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it"
. The massacre of innocent civilians does not ever seem to me to be worth
it. This does not prevent me from considering it necessary, on the occasion
of that tragedy, to ask a few questions.

An American pacifist, A.J. Muste, once observed that the big problem after
a war is the winning side: it has learned that violence pays. All of
post-World War II history illustrates the pertinence of that remark. In the
United States; the War Department was renamed Defense Department, although
in reality there was no direct danger threatening the country, and
successive American governments embarked on campaigns of military
intervention and political destabilization. It takes a large dose of good
will to see all that as a mere attempt to contain communism. But let us
stick to current events and try to see how they look outside West --
without trying to think in terms of another culture or another religion,
but simply asking ourselves how we would react if we were confronted with
certain situations:


The Kyoto protocol: The American objections are not primarily scientific,
but of the type: "it would hurt our economy". How does that reaction sound
to people who work twelve hours per day for starvation wages?

The Durban conference -- [ i.e., the World Conference against racism, held
in Durban (South Africa), from August 31 to September 7 2001. It was widely
criticized in the West for its support of Palestinians.]
The West rejects any suggestion of reparations for slavery and colonialism.
But how is it possible not to see that the State of Israel functions as a
reparation for anti-Semitic persecutions, except that, in this case, the
price is paid by Arabs for the crimes committed by Europeans? And how is it
possible not to understand that, to the victims of colonialism, this shift
of responsibility looks like a manifestation of racism?

Afghanistan: The Americans did not hesitate to train and arm bin Laden to
destabilize the Soviet Union, according to a scenario developed by
President Carter's advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. How many lives are lost in
the game that Brzezinski called "the Great Chessboard"? And how many
terrorists, in Asia, in Central America, in the Balkans or in the Middle
East, are left to their own devices after having served the "free world"?

Iraq: For ten years the population has been strangled by an embargo that
has cost hundreds of thousands of lives -- of people who are also civilian
victims, even if they are not shown on television. All that because Iraq
attempted to recuperate oil wells that had been de facto confiscated by the
British. Compare this to the treatment of Israel which occupies, in perfect
illegality, territories conquered in 1967. Does one really think that the
idea, generally accepted in the West, that Saddam Hussein is to blame for
everything, makes a big impression in the Arab-Muslim world?

China: When an American spy plane is shot down along the Chinese coast on
April 1, 2001, and its crew is briefly held prisoner, there is indignation:
how dare the Chinese? But how many Chinese or Indian spy planes venture to
fly along American coasts?

USA: Is it really of foremost importance to squander the planet's rare
resources, including brains, to build an antiballistic shield that will not
protect the United States from terrorist attacks and, eventually, not even
from nuclear attacks?

All that doesn't excuse terrorism, they will say. Agreed, but it does make
it possible to undertand why the reaction outside the United States is
often mixed: sympathy for the victims, yes; for the American government
that tries to play on emotions to legitmatize its policies and is getting
ready to violate international law once again, no.

By a pure coincidence; the attacks took place on September 11, anniversary
of the overthrow of Allende (1973), which marked not only the installation
of the first neo-liberal government, that of Pinochet, but also the
beginning of the end of the national and independent movements in the Third
World -- roughly speaking, those that emerged from the Bandung Conference
-- which would all soon bend to the dictates of the United States and the
IMF. That coincidence recalls that the West's victory over independent
political movements in the Third World has been achieved by methods that
are far from democratic: Pinochet, obviously, but also the assassination of
Lumumba, terrorist armies in Central America, and, last but not least,
support to "good" Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia and in
Afghanistan. In fact, so long as the obscurantist and feudalist forces
could be used against the political left, they were employed profusely. If
the accusations against those forces turn out to be true, it will be
appropriate to meditate on that curious irony of history.

Marx thought that a political struggle against oppression would cause
religious obscurantism to recede. For the past twenty years, the trend is
in the opposite direction: the more the political left loses ground; the
more obscurantism asserts itself, and not only in the Muslim world. And
this is largely because it has become the only possible form of protest
against this "vale of tears" on earth.

In the West; the "firm responses" will of course be applauded when they
come. Numerous intellectuals will be found to link those attacks to
whatever they don't like in the world: Saddam Hussein, Western pacifists,
the Palestine liberation movement, and, while they are at it, the
"anti-globalization" movement. Spy networks will be built. Citizens will be
watched more closely. Edifying stories will be told about the struggle
between Good and Evil and the wicked people who attack us because they
don't like democracy; or women's liberation, or multiculturalism. It will
be explained that we have nothing to do with such barbarism -- indeed, we
prefer to bomb from on high or use embargoes to kill people gradually. But
none of that will solve any basic problem. Terrorism grows in the soil of
revolt which is itself nourished by injustice in the world.

For the immediate future, it is to be feared that those attacks will have
at least two negative political consequences. On the one hand, the American
population, which in its vast majority displays a disturbing nationalism,
risks "rallying around the flag", as they put it, and supporting their
government's policy, no matter how barbarous it is. It wants, more than
ever, to "protect its way of life", without asking the price paid by the
rest of the planet. The timid movements of dissent that have appeared since
Seattle will no doubt be marginalized or even criminalized. On the other
hand, millions of people, who have been defeated, humiliated and crushed by
the United States all around the world, will be tempted to see in terrorism
the only weapon that can really strike the Empire. That is why a political
-- and not terrorist -- struggle against the cultural, economic and
especially military domination of a tiny minority of the human race over
the vast majority is more necessary than ever.

Jean Bricmont sat down and wrote this essay a few days after the attacks of
September 11, 2001. It was published in Europe in French in a number of
venues including Le Monde, on September 27, 2001, under the title "Quelques
questions à l'empire et aux autres". This is the first time it has appeared
in English, with very minor changes.

Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium. He is a member of the Brussells
Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, will be published by
Monthly Review Press.

He can be reached at : bricmont at fyma.ucl.ac.be

More from Bricmont and others in French at <http://www.michelcollon.info>: