RUSHING OFF TO BABYLON
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 11/3/02]
For empires, wars are easy things. They are convergences of wealth and power; demonstrations to those who would dare think about striking an imperial symbol, or challenging an imperial interest.
The bombing of Hiroshima was not so much as to back down the Imperial Japanese military, as to "send a message" to the hated Soviets. So what if roughly 100,000 people died? They were, as the saying goes, "collateral damage."
Babylon’s contemporary incarnation, the present Iraqi nation-state, is being foisted on the American public as but the latest American imperial demonstration project. Think of it as 'Gulf War II', a project to prove to the entire world that the Americans have grown out of that dreaded ‘Vietnam Syndrome’.
It is also designed to "send a message" to two constituencies; the neighboring Arab regimes, and the Euro-Japanese powers: "This is ours!".
Behind all the rap about democracy, human rights, and yes, 'weapons of mass destruction', is the fierce imperial greed to own the lake of dinosaur’s blood that gurgles under deserts of Iraq.
Americans (with the possible exception of Black and white southerners) live in the ever-present. Now, where history is what was on last night’s newscast. Few countries of the modern era are so openly ahistorical. But, a few generations ago, when a War was fought, and it dared to be called, ‘The War to End all Wars’ (Yep. Can you believe it?), the beaten, humiliated Germans were subjected to harsh terms of their defeat in WW I. Something called the Treaty of Versailles was imposed upon Germany, largely at the instigation of the embittered French. At the time, around 1919, Britain’s Prime Minister, Lloyd George, called the terms and reparations so harsh upon Germany that, "[W]e shall have to fight another war all over again in 25 years at three times the cost."
The hated conditions of the Versailles Treaty gave a young man named Hitler all of the public anger and energy he could use to launch another nastier, far more brutish World War.
The point is that nations, like individuals, don’t take humiliation very well. And unlike the 'happy go lucky' Americans, other countries and other cultures have long memories.
Iraq’s dismemberment, invasion, and yes, 'regime change' may have repercussions of which we (in the West) can barely conceive of.
The Bin Laden brand of vendetta has its roots in the colonial, and indeed, the pre-colonial era, maybe even the 14th century.
The very attack itself is now seen by many as "Blowback," from the U.S. CIA adventures against the Soviet regime in Kabul back in the 80s.
When Empires go to war, it is a kind of power-play, with power and wealth ever the objects of play (Remember the saying, ‘War is the Sport of Kings’?). But the unforgiving law of unintended consequences is always lurking, lying in wait, in the dark, like the Snake in the proverbial Garden of Eden.
With the banks, and military industrial complex fairly drooling for this shoot’em up for oil, the American Empire may be in for a really rough ride.
No empire has ever yet, correctly perceived its own falling.
Hitler dreamed of a 1,000 year reich. It barely broke ten.
The British used to sing that the sun will never set on the Empire. It has set now.
This new American Empire, barely 50 years old, is mighty indeed. But so was Rome. So were the Ottomans. So was the T'ang Dynasty.
They are all dust.
One wonders if they saw the fatal errors that they made, when they made them?
© copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
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