A P O C A L Y P S E

N O W

Edward Said

The present crisis concerning Iraqcontains all the elements of the much larger situation -- one ofalmost desperate complexity and fragmentation -- now beginning toovertake the region, perhaps irrecoverably. It would be amistake, I think, to reduce what is happening between Iraq andthe United States simply to an assertion of Arab will andsovereignty on the one hand versus American imperialism, whichundoubtedly plays a central role in all this. However misguided,Saddam Hussein's cleverness is not that he is splitting Americafrom its allies (which he has not really succeeded in doing forany practical purpose) but that he is exploiting the astonishingclumsiness and failures of US foreign policy. Very few people,least of all Saddam himself, can be fooled into believing him tobe the innocent victim of American bullying; most of what ishappening to his unfortunate people who are undergoing the mostdreadful and unacknowledged suffering is due in considerabledegree to his callous cynicism -- first of all, his indefensibleand ruinous invasion of Kuwait, his persecution of the Kurds, hiscruel egoism and pompous self-regard which persists inaggrandizing himself and his regime at exorbitant and, in myopinion, totally unwarranted cost. It is impossible for him toplead the case for national security and sovereignty now givenhis abysmal disregard of it in the case of Kuwait and Iran.

Be that as it may, US vindictiveness,whose sources I shall look at in a moment, has exacerbated thesituation by imposing a regime of sanctions which, as SandyBerger, the American National Security adviser has just saidproudly, is unprecedented for its severity in the whole of worldhistory. 567,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the Gulf War,mostly as a result of disease, malnutrition and deplorably poormedical care. Agriculture and industry are at a total standstill.This is unconscionable of course, and for this the brazeninhumanity of American policy-makers is also very largely toblame. But we must not forget that Saddam is feeding thatinhumanity quite deliberately in order to dramatize theopposition between the US and the rest of the Arab world; havingprovoked a crisis with the US (or the UN dominated by the US) heat first dramatised the unfairness of the sanctions. But bycontinuing it as he is now doing, the issue has changed and hasbecome his non-compliance, and the terrible effects of thesanctions have been marginalised. Still the underlying causes ofan Arab/US crisis remain.

A careful analysis of that crisis isimperative. The US has always opposed any sign of Arabnationalism or independence, partly for its own imperial reasonsand partly because its unconditional support for Israel requiresit to do so. Since the l973 war, and despite the brief oilembargo, Arab policy up to and including the peace process hastried to circumvent or mitigate that hostility by appealing tothe US for help, by "good" behavior, by willingness tomake peace with Israel. Yet mere compliance with the US's wishescan produce nothing except occasional words of Americanapprobation for leaders who appear "moderate": Arabpolicy was never backed up with coordination, or collectivepressure, or fully agreed upon goals. Instead each leader triedto make separate arrangements both with the US and with Israel,none of which produced very much except escalating demands and aconstant refusal by the US to exert any meaningful pressure onIsrael. The more extreme Israeli policy becomes the more likelythe US has been to support it. And the less respect it has forthe large mass of Arab peoples whose future and well-being aremortgaged to illusory hopes embodied, for instance, in the Osloaccords.

Moreover, a deep gulf separates Arabculture and civilization on the one hand, from the United Stateson the other, and in the absence of any collective Arabinformation and cultural policy, the notion of an Arab peoplewith traditions, cultures and identities of their own is simplyinadmissible in the US. Arabs are dehumanized, they are seen asviolent irrational terrorists always on the lookout for murderand bombing outrages. The only Arabs worth doing business withfor the US are compliant leaders, businessmen, military peoplewhose arms purchases (the highest per capita in the world) arehelping the American economy keep afloat. Beyond that there is nofeeling at all, for instance, for the dreadful suffering of theIraqi people whose identity and existence have simply been lostsight of in the present situation.

This morbid, obsessional fear andhatred of the Arabs has been a constant theme in US foreignpolicy since World War Two. In some way also, anything positiveabout the Arabs is seen in the US as a threat to Israel. In thisrespect pro-Israeli American Jews, traditional Orientalists, andmilitary hawks have played a devastating role. Moral opprobriumis heaped on Arab states as it is on no others. Turkey, forexample, has been conducting a campaign against the Kurds forseveral years, yet nothing is heard about this in the US. Israeloccupies territory illegally for thirty years, it violates theGeneva conventions at will, conducts invasions, terrorist attacksand assassinations against Arabs, and still, the US vetoes everysanction against it in the UN. Syria, Sudan, Libya, Iraq areclassified as "rogue" states. Sanctions against themare far harsher than against any other countries in the historyof US foreign policy. And still the US expects that its ownforeign policy agenda ought to prevail (eg., the woefullymisguided Doha economic summit) despite its hostility to thecollective Arab agenda.

In the case of Iraq a number of furtherextenuations make the US even more repressive. Burning in thecollective American unconscious is a puritanical zeal decreeingthe sternest possible attitude towards anyone deemed to be anunregenerate sinner. This clearly guided American policy towardsthe native American Indians, who were first demonized, thenportrayed as wasteful savages, then exterminated, their tinyremnant confined to reservations and concentration camps. Thisalmost religious anger fuels a judgemental attitude that has noplace at all in international politics, but for the United Statesit is a central tenet of its worldwide behavior. Second,punishment is conceived in apocalyptic terms. During the Vietnamwar a leading general advocated -- and almost achieved -- thegoal of bombing the enemy into the stone age. The same viewprevailed during the Gulf War in l99l. Sinners are meant to becondemned terminally, with the utmost cruelty regardless ofwhether or not they suffer the cruelest agonies. The notion of"justified" punishment for Iraq is now uppermost in theminds of most American consumers of news, and with that goes analmost orgiastic delight in the gathering power being summoned toconfront Iraq in the Gulf.

Pictures of four (or is now five?)immense aircraft carriers steaming virtuously away punctuatebreathless news bulletins about Saddam's defiance, and theimpending crisis. The President announces that he is thinking notabout the Gulf but about the 21st century: how can we tolerateIraq's threat to use biological warfare even though (this isunmentioned) it is clear from the UNSCOM reports that he neitherhas the missile capacity, nor the chemical arms, nor the nucleararsenal, nor in fact the anthrax bombs that he is alleged to bebrandishing? Forgotten in all this is that the US has all theterror weapons known to humankind, is the only country to haveused a nuclear bomb on civilians, and as recently as seven yearsago dropped 66,000 tons of bombs on Iraq. As the only countryinvolved in this crisis that has never had to fight a war on itsown soil, it is easy for the US and its mostly brain-washedcitizens to speak in apocalyptic terms. A report out of Australiaon Sunday, November l6 suggests that Israel and the US arethinking about a neutron bomb on Baghdad.

Unfortunately the dictates of raw powerare very severe and, for a weak state like Iraq, overwhelming.Certainly US misuse of the sanctions to strip Iraq of everything,including any possibility for security is monstrously sadistic.The so-called UN 661 Committee created to oversee the sanctionsis composed of fifteen member states (including the US) each ofwhich has a veto. Every time Iraq passes this committee a requestto sell oil for medicines, trucks, meat, etc., any member of thecommittee can block these requests by saying that a given itemmay have military purposes (tires, for example, or ambulances).In addition the US and its clients -- eg., the unpleasant andracist Richard Butler, who says openly that Arabs have adifferent notion of truth than the rest of the world -- have madeit clear that even if Iraq is completely reduced militarily tothe point where it is no longer a threat to its neighbors (whichis now the case) the real goal of the sanctions is to toppleSaddam Hussein's government. In other words according to theAmericans, very little that Iraq can do short of Saddam'sresignation or death will produce a lifting of sanctions.Finally, we should not for a moment forget that quite apart fromits foreign policy interest, Iraq has now become a domesticAmerican issue whose repercussions on issues unrelated to oil orthe Gulf are very important. Bill Clinton's personal crises --the campaign-funding scandals, an impending trial for sexualharassment, his various legislative and domestic failures --require him to look strong, determined and"presidential" somewhere else, and where but in theGulf against Iraq has he so ready-made a foreign devil to set offhis blue-eyed strength to full advantage. Moreover, the increasein military expenditure for new investments in electronic"smart" weaponry, more sophisticated aircraft, mobileforces for the world-wide projection of American power areperfectly suited for display and use in the Gulf, where thelikelihood of visible casualties (actually suffering Iraqicivilians) is extremely small, and where the new militarytechnology can be put through its paces most attractively. Forreasons that need restating here, the media is particularly happyto go along with the government in bringing home to domesticcustomers the wonderful excitement of Americanself-righteousness, the proud flag-waving, the"feel-good" sense that "we" are facing down amonstrous dictator. Far from analysis and calm reflection themedia exists mainly to derive its mission from the government,not to produce a corrective or any dissent. The media, in short,is an extension of the war against Iraq.

The saddest aspect of the whole thingis that Iraqi civilians seem condemned to additional sufferingand protracted agony. Neither their government nor that of the USis inclined to ease the daily pressure on them, and theprobability that only they will pay for the crisis is extremelyhigh. At least -- and it isn't very much -- there seems to be noenthusiasm among Arab governments for American military action,but beyond that there is no coordinated Arab position, not evenon the extremely grave humanitarian question. It is unfortunatethat, according to the news, there is rising popular support forSaddam in the Arab world, as if the old lessons of defiancewithout real power have still not been learned.

Undoubtedly the US has manipulated theUN to its own ends, a rather shameful exercise given at the sametime that the Congress once again struck down a motion to pay abillion dollars in arrears to the world organization. The majorpriority for Arabs, Europeans, Muslims and Americans is to pushto the fore the issue of sanctions and the terrible sufferingimposed on innocent Iraqi civilians. Taking the case to theInternational Court in the Hague strikes me as a perfectly viablepossibility, but what is needed is a concerted will on behalf ofArabs who have suffered the US's egregious blows for too longwithout an adequate response.