America, The Rogue
This post was originally published here in Jamhoor, on Nov 30, 2023.
In the last four weeks, as the United States aids and abets a genocide of the Palestinian people, an increasingly disillusioned and enraged American population has taken to the streets in the millions. On full display for all to see have been the Zionist ideologies baked into American institutions and culture, the dehumanizing language used for Palestinians by President Biden, the supremacy of Israeli lives, and the unconditional $14.5B in U.S. military aid to an aggressor even as it openly declares its genocidal intent.
Echoes of the Bush-Obama Era
For some of us who grew up in countries ravaged by America’s wars, the rhetoric being used to justify the genocide in Gaza harkens back to that used by the Bush administration to license its global War on ‘Terror’.
That isn’t to say that the violence in this moment is not unprecedented—it is—or that it hasn’t been shocking to understand that there are no limits to the hypocrisy and inhumanity of the world’s most powerful leaders. But the manufactured consent, half-truths and propaganda that has sustained Israel’s aggression for over a month now, harkens back to the Bush-Obama era and its reckless wars.
George W. Bush galvanized an overblown, vindictive response with rhetoric that came to be known as Bushspeak: those being invaded were ‘enemies of freedom’, and it was ‘civilization’s fight’. The world was invited to make a decision: ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists’. Terrorism was painted abstractly and broadly—there would be ‘no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them’.
All of this now sounds similar both to Biden’s words in the last few weeks and to the more extremist language used by Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. This is the language of dehumanization, categorized by genocide scholars as one of the necessary steps in genocide.
The manufactured consent in the wake of 9-11 to commit war crimes, to invade and bomb, to establish hundreds of new military bases and expand drone warfare—is strikingly similar to the manufactured consent that has supplied Israel with American F-16s, F-35s, F-25s, missiles and shells for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The paranoid frenzy of Bush, as he declared that it would be ‘suicidal’ for the United States to not invade Iraq in 2003—that a bombed, besieged, starved people were going to annihilate the mighty America—is mirrored by Nancy Pelosi as she tells us that a cessation of Gaza’s bombing will be ‘a gift to terrorists’.
Also familiar in this moment is media’s conflation of anyone that looks brown or Muslim as suspicious, and in need of proving their ‘good-Muslim’ credentials, of proclaiming their allyship to the right side, before they can be allowed to speak. Non-white guests are being interrogated, not interviewed, by anchors. They must pledge their unequivocal allegiance to the extermination of Hamas in the same with-us-or-against-us narrative.
Meanwhile, no Israeli official or Zionist guest is asked to condemn the 16 years of siege on Gaza, the 56 years of ruthless occupation, the 75 years of settler colonial expulsion, or the forced displacement of 1,100 Palestinians from the West Bank since 2022, alone. The double standards feel eerily familiar to Muslims who remember the post 9/11 mood.
This is one important reason why the Palestinian struggle has a singular resonance that few others do. This is the world protesting against the present, but also against the past — against the legacy of a War on Terror that was justified by the same Western leaders that must be resisted in this moment. This is a cry of frustration by a people that have “experienced power behave with impunity”, as journalist Nesrine Malik writes.
From One Aggressor to Another
Much has been written on the special relationship Israel has historically enjoyed with American politicians and successive political administrations. As historian Rashid Khalidi puts it, Israel is a colony, America is the metropole: “If you believe that this is a settler colonial project, then you are in the metropole of that colony, here in the United States.”
The obvious reasons have to do with Israel’s utility to American imperialism—specifically to its strategic interests in the Middle East, and with where money and power is concentrated domestically.
But it is also the case that all the Israeli atrocities the United States has and is providing cover for, are ones that the latter itself has a long, consistent and even more egregious record of. In that sense, the U.S is simply supporting an extension of its own foreign policy. It is easy to list the colonial projects and global aggressions of the United States in the last century across Asia, South America and the Middle East — always in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘democratic values’, and in a fight against an evil enemy.
The extermination and dispossession of native Americans, and the enslavement of black Africans are among the United States’ founding crimes. Today, it routinely puts migrants in camps where the inhumane conditions are in violation of humanitarian law. As part of its ‘deterrence’ policies, it uses unusual techniques and devises cruel ways for migrants to die on their already-dangerous journeys.
Upon looking globally, we find that the roster of countries that the U.S. has invaded, occupied, bombed and left in shambles is lengthy. In fact, very few parts of the world have been untouched by the American empire project.
Take the U.S. aggression and occupation of East Asian countries—Pulitzer-prize winning writer Viet Thanh Nguyen says of this: “I see total continuity between what the United States has done in the Philippines, in Korea, in Japan, in Laos, in Cambodia, in Vietnam , and now with Palestine. The greatest acts of anti-Asian violence are carried out in American wars in Asia. That’s been true for a century”.
Take America’s invasion of Iraq — which has now been called ‘one of the worst crimes of the 21st century’ — premised on the lie of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. It killed one million Iraqis; in Fallujah, 7000 U.S. marines broke into the general hospital (in itself a war crime), unleashed 1200 tons of depleted uranium munitions on the city which, to this day, cause birth defects and cancers that epidemiological studies call “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied.”
When no weapons or links to Al-Qaeda were found, the invasion was justified as a liberation of the Iraqi people, from a man whom Bush called a ‘homicidal dictator’. Never mind that he was put in place by the U.S. itself as part of an orchestrated regime change by the CIA in 1963, under President John. F. Kennedy. Never mind that America had financed and equipped Saddam in his worst crimes, including the 1988 gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja.
Of the destruction America’s invasion of Iraq inflicted on a 7000-year old civilization that produced the world’s first writing, first calendar, first library, and first city, of the desecration of its national museum, the plundering of its libraries and mosques, writer Arundhati Roy gives us this summary: “an ancient civilization has been casually decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation.” But, she reminds us, “when it comes to Empire, facts don’t matter”.
Take the expansion of drone warfare in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, which operated under such non-transparency that it came to be called ‘Obama’s secret war’. Obama authorized 542 drone strikes that killed close to 4,000 people, in violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict. Because drones can circle and hover visibly in the sky for hours, sometimes days, before striking to unleash fire at any moment — they have created a culture of terror in the local population that is described by researchers as strikingly similar to death squad activities in Central America in the 1980s. Journalists documenting evidence of attacks are mysteriously killed. Amnesty International’s reports from Pakistan document victims such as elderly women being blown to bits as they tend to vegetables on their farms, and 18 laborers killed in a tent while having their evening meal.
Take Afghanistan and Syria — two particularly horrific examples of America’s forever-wars that have devastated local populations and the economy, and ushered in inescapable spirals of terror, militarism, in-fighting and political instability.
Journalist Azmat Khan’s Pulitzer-prize winning investigation reveals that in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, the civilian death toll from strikes amounted to more than 31 times that acknowledged by U.S. officials. She says: “This is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history.”
Take Washington’s unleashing of violence and state terror in South America. Its terrorization of Cuba for over 50 years is well-known—from an illegal embargo (opposed by 188 UN member nations), to Operation Mongoose, with its paramilitary operations, economic warfare, and a promise by President Kennedy to visit the ‘terrors of the earth’ on the country. In the 1960s and 70s, the United States helped initiate and fortify dictatorships in some of the most powerful South American nations. In Chile, it was instrumental in ushering in the particularly brutal and bloody dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, which lasted for 17 years. In Argentina, it provided financial assistance for human rights abuses and counterinsurgency training to a right-wing military regime. Of Haiti and Honduras, the continent’s poorest, most vulnerable nations, Noam Chomsky says: “there's a quite good correlation between U.S. intervention over many years, and poverty and destruction”.
If anything competes with the repugnance of American war crimes, it is its leaders’ self praise in portraying themselves as upholders of human rights, as the benevolent defenders of democratic values, liberties and freedoms. Of this, Chomsky says in his ever-relevant book ‘Rogue States’:
States that have power or agency in the international arena face two related tasks: to portray the targets of their punitive actions as irremediably evil and their own acts as glorious and just. The task falls to agencies of propaganda, the information (media) system, and loyal intellectuals.
Much like the Israeli aggression, these aggressions were justified as self-defence, in the face of grave and imminent threat to American lives. Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive strike is what Roy calls a euphemism for ‘The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's Official’. In what is likely her most damningly apt description of the United States, she calls it:
an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination.
The nuts and bolts of this global war machine is the distinctly American phenomenon that is the U.S. imperialist bootprint — a scattering of military bases around the world: 750 bases in 80 countries, and 173,000 troops in 159 countries. As this piece states, these provide the logistical, supply and combat support that “make conflicts more likely to happen, leading to more wars, and more military bases, in a vicious cycle of expansion and empire.”
Is it really a surprise then, that the world’s most powerful empire—with its sustained history of human rights violations, aggressions, violence, terror and illegal acts—is now the dominant sponsor for its strategic ally in the Middle East to do the same?
It is also no surprise that it is the populations and countries brutalized by the American and British empire projects i.e. black Americans, the Irish, indigenous people, South American nations, or those that have lived under apartheid like the South Africans, that are overwhelmingly in support of ending Palestinian occupation. Or that American civil rights leaders and activists from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela, from Angela Davis to James Baldwin—all lent support to the Palestinian resistance, in their lifetimes.
A History of Continuity
On October 28th, the United States stood alone among all G-20 nations and much of even the Western world in vetoing the UN Resolution calling for a ceasefire. The veto votes came from the US, Israel, Hungary, Guatemala, Croatia and Austria and 6 island nations. The rest of the world — 120 member nations — supported the resolution. This is a continuation of the Unites States’ historic role in the UN when it comes to Israel: between 1972 and 2017, the U.S. used its Security Council veto 43 times to shield Israel from international censure.
This is also a moment to appreciate that the state support Israel enjoys from European nations and the United States is rooted in their history of sponsorship for Palestine’s colonization in the early twentieth century.
As Esmat Elhalaby writes in this excellent piece “Our Siege is Long”, Zionist militias did not accomplish the colonization of Palestine alone. They were facilitated by international, imperial support — the British Mandate authorities and the League of Nations — a context which permitted them to break the law in service of their goal, and “damned the Zionist project to success”. He goes on to say:
The structure of that support, in the form of the UN Security Council, the European Commission, and endless military aid from the United States, remains in place, fueling, as we speak, the motors of dispossession. Here we witness a history of continuity, in the patent refusal of American and European politicians to even utter the word ceasefire or de-escalation even as hundreds of Palestinians are killed each day.
The United States Is Looking Lonely
Defiance of international law and rejection of international conventions are defining features of rogue states. In this respect, the United States and Israel are among the most prominent rogue states of the world. They have largely viewed themselves as exempt from UN charters, and acted unilaterally over and over again.
The rest of the world is paying heed. In recent days, nine countries have recalled their ambassadors from Israel—Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Turkey, South Africa, Jordan, Bahrain, Chad and Honduras. In international polls, it is the United States, not Iran or Russia, which is viewed by the world as the largest threat to democracy, peace and security.
While we know history will not look kindly at Biden, Blinken, and other key figures in the U.S. administration that are funding the genocide, we also know that America — with its current indefensible stance on Israel — is doing more to isolate itself from the rest of the world than it ever has. It is deepening not only the distaste of the international community for its imperialist policies and its hypocrisy, but also the distrust of its own population.
The U.S. administration’s clamp-down on free speech at American university campuses, its institutionalization of deeper surveillance domestically, and a resolution by Congress condemning student groups advocating for ceasefire as ‘anti-semitic’, ‘repugnant’ and ‘sympathizing with genocidal violence against Israel’ all show the smokescreen that the country’s declarations of free speech are. They also show a disregard for the will of the people, and for popular sentiment. This is beginning to hurt President Biden’s re-election prospects, with only 10% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 approving of his policies on Israel.
That the US chooses to side with Israel to the degree that it will resort to proto-fascism and erosion of rights for its own citizens should be of concern to Americans. Ta-Nehisi Coates says this of it:
“When people start using instruments as blunt and direct as banning and censorship, they are threatened. It’s the weapon of a weak and decaying order.”
And that, unfortunately, is where United States stands today—complicit in the slow decay of its own institutions, values, democratic processes, and the fundamental rights of its own populace.
The Right to Refuse and Resist
In May 2003, at New York City’s Riverside Church—the same location where last week, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rashid Khalidi, Muhammed El-Kurd, Noura Erakat and others spoke at the Palestine Festival of Literature—Arundhati Roy gave a historic speech. On resistance to the crimes of Empire, she said:
“If it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade.
You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to remind yourself of this.”
Earlier that same year at the World Social Forum, Roy spoke words that, while 20 years old now, give us guidance on what resistance can look like in this moment:
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
